The Face That Must Die - Ramsey Campbell - 2 stars

I had this book for a very long time and I was very excited to be able to choose it for a Spook season read. I found that I was pretty disappointed in the story telling, the plot and the characters. This is a first time read for this author and will probably be the last.
Synopsis
Ramsey Campbell’s daring look into the mind of a psychotic killer was published in truncated form in 1979; an expanded edition was later published in 1982. The paranoid outlook of the book's main character, Horridge, is a grim commentary on a bleak Liverpool suburb and Thatcher-era England. Millipede Press is proud to present this masterpiece of paranoia literature in a brand new edition, with the corrected text by Campbell and the compelling photographs of J.K. Potter.

Ramsey Campbell is Britain's most respected living horror writer. He has been given more awards than any other writer in the field, including the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, as well as numerous World Fantasy Awards.

I thought the plot of this story would be much more than it was. I expected that this would be an exciting psychological thriller but actually I found that the story was really just all over the place which made it quite confusing at times. There were parts that really grabbed my attention, but the slow and confusing parts far outweighed those parts that were appealing. I also found that the main storyline seemed to be put back on the back burner while other parts of the story were more in the forefront. I wanted to read about a maniacal killer, not a relationship between two messed up characters. This lead to parts of the story that I found were unnecessary.

The characters were just boring. I found that there was no connection for me with any of them. They did not have any development at all. Horridge the main character, who I expected to be chilling, creepy and beyond evil, was really just a guy who was confused, indecisive and mundane. I kept expecting him to turn into this psychotic serial killer, and never really got that from him. He was not a nice guy by any means, but he was a far cry from malevolent.

I really can't recommend this book to anyone since it was such a disappointment to me. I expected one thing and got something totally different. The reason it even got 2 stars was because I did really enjoy the illustrations by J.K. Potter. If the story would have been as good as the pictures it would have been a 5 star read.