The killer's name is Horridge, which sums up in Dickensian manner so much of what this book is about. A vision of Britain as Hell on the eve of Thatcher. Every space is a prison within a prison within a prison... Housing inflation and a straight razor to the eyeball. Still the grimmest horror novel I know of. The most awful part of it is perhaps its seemingly undying relevance.
Someday, as they've done with Shirley Jackson, the highbrows will give Ramsey Campbell his due as not just a great horror writer but a great writer. This out of print novel will get its Oxford World Classics or Penguin Classics edition. I hope it's within his lifetime, if he cares about that sort of thing.