UNSPEAKABLE horror is gripping Tenby in a new book by an established author - with nearly 50 real-life local people appearing as some of the dark tale’s characters.

Black Snow has been six years in the creation for Malcolm Stacey, and within nearly 400 pages, he re-visits the sinister themes and creepy atmospheres of the best Victorian novelists and brings them up to date in Tenby.

Malcolm - a former investigative journalist with BBC tv and Radio Four - has made his home in Tenby since 2000. He has written eight non-fiction books, including best-sellers Armchair Tycoon and SuperScrooge, and currently writes on stocks and shares on shareprophets.com, where he has up to 80,000 readers a week.

But Black Snow is his first literary venture into the shadowy world of horror, ghosts and crime and he proudly describes the result as ‘Dan Brown meets Stephen King’.

Black Snow features an arch-villain with his unearthly gang of strange helpers and his plans to destroy Tenby. A difficult woman with a mysterious past recruits local residents to thwart his evil scheme If they don’t, then the town is doomed.

Said Malcolm: “Behind the holiday fun, Tenby has always seemed to me a rather spooky place. It’s crammed with old buildings, narrow passageways and sits on a network of hidden tunnels.

“It’s a town full of unsolved mysteries and so is an ideal setting for a tale of the supernatural.”

There is, revealed Malcolm, “a high body count” in Black Snow - one of the unfortunates being Saundersfoot landscape gardener and builder Geoff Allport, who meets death by a mysterious drowning.

Geoff was one of the first people to read the book. He said: “The book is very atmospheric and imaginative. It was a strange experience to read it and suddenly find myself there in the story. Luckily I’d been warned by Malcom I was going to meet a sticky end.”

No real-life characters in the book are put in an unflattering light, assured the author.

He added: “Though their correct names are used, their thoughts and actions are, of course, pure fiction.

“That’s a good job, too, as only the brave would want to read Black Snow at bedtime. I’ve certainly tried to make it frightening.”

l Black Snow by Malcolm Stacey is now on Amazon Kindle for £1.99, with the print version on sale everywhere from between £7 and £12.