John Blackburn

John Fenwick Anderson Blackburn (26 June 1923 – 1993) was a British novelist who wrote thrillers, and horror novels. Blackburn was described as "today's Master of Horror" by The Times Literary Supplement.

Many of his books feature stock characters, including General Charles Kirk of British Intelligence and his friends, the scientist Sir Marcus Levin and his Russian wife Tania. He attended Durham University after returning to civilian life – the alma mater of both his father Eliel and brother Thomas – and graduated in 1949. This means that, as with some of the books of James Herbert, many of Blackburn's horror novels are notable for pace and plotting rather than for atmospheric effects. Blackburn specialised in mixing modern concerns such as germ warfare and international conspiracies with ancient traditions and curses, often to ingenious effect. His use of science fiction is generally borderline, though not in Children of the Night, which features – in classic sci-fi fashion – an underground lost race, this time with telepathic powers. Adrian Schober has argued Blackburn was likely interested in racial intolerance because of his own family history in colonial Mauritius, which had seen intermarriage between whites and native women over previous generations.

Adaptations Blackburn's novels Nothing But the Night and The Gaunt Woman were the basis for screenplays. The Gaunt Woman appeared as a made-for-TV movie in 1969 as Destiny of a Spy and Nothing But the Night was released to theaters in 1972. A Scent of New-Mown Hay was also adapted as radio serial for BBC Radio 2 in 1969.

Critical reception John Welcome in the Irish Times praised Blackburn's Blow The House Down as a "brilliant evocation of present-day stresses...more than a thriller, a contemporary novel and good one". Blackburn's novel Bury Him Darkly was included by horror historian Robert S. Hadji in his list of "unjustly neglected" horror novels for Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine. Frank Denton described Blackburn as "undoubtedly England's best practicing novelist in the tradition of the thriller/fantasy novel."