Secret Worship (audio drama)

On the advice of his friend, Dr. John Silence (Malcolm Hayes), Stephen Hubbard (Fraser Kerr) heads off to Germany on a convalescent holiday to the monastery where he studied as a child only to discover things are very different from how he remembers.

One of the more pulpy of the Silence stories this breathless adaptation of Algernon Blackwood's 'Secret Worship', one of his John Silence stories, was one of several made for BBC Radio in 1975 by Sheila Hodgson.

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Ancient Sorceries

Algernon Blackwood's 'Ancient Sorceries' was first published in 'John Silence' the 1908 collection of five stories featuring Blackwood's titular occult detective.  The story revolves around the tale of meek and mousey Arthur Vezin who after impetuously disembarking from a train somewhere in France finds himself curiously disinclined to leave the sleepy little village of surreptitiously watchful people.  With Silence sidelined for the majority of the story we get is a fabulous, slowly unfolding story of a man entangled in history.

This adaptation was made for the BBC in 2005 and is, for the most part, beautifully read by Philip Madoc although his French accent has a distinct whiff of 'Allo 'Allo about it.

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The Ghost Slayers: Thrilling Tales of Occult Detection

Mike Ashley (ed)
British Library Tales of the Weird

Occult or psychic detective tales have been chilling readers for almost as long as there have been ghost stories. This beguiling subgenre follows specialists in occult lore – often with years of arcane training – investigating strange supernatural occurrences and pitting their wits against the bizarre and inexplicable.

I absolutely love an occult detective story.  It was my gateway drug into all the wyrd wonderfulness that I feature on the Wyrd Britain blog.  I get that for some people they make for both an unsatisfying detective story and an ineffective supernatural one and I occasionally agree but equally I just adore the central idea of a crusading occultist vanquishing malign forces preferably while dressed in a frock coat and weilding a swordstick.  This newest release in the British Library's Tales of the Weird imprint celebrates that figure with stories from some of the key writers alongside several more obscure ones.

The book opens with one of Kate and Hesketh Prichard's 'Flaxman Low' stories, 'The Story of Moor Road' which features an attack of an earth elemental.  It's an entertainingly pulpy tale that keeps Low on the back foot as he attempts to thwart the creatures vampiric attacks.

The next two stories feature perhaps the two most recognisable names with Algernon Blackwood's 'Dr Silence' and William Hope Hodgson's 'Thomas Carnacki'.  The former is represented by perhaps one of his most hands on cases as he attempts to exorcise a haunted house in 'A Psychical Invasion' whilst Carnacki does something similar in 'The Searcher of the End House'.  Both are strong tales but neither are my favourites from their various casebooks with the Carnacki having a particularly muddled Scooby-Doo ending.

I read the various 'Aylmer Vance' stories by Claude & Alice Askew in the Wordsworth Edition a few years back and enjoyed them immensely yet I don't really remember this story, 'The Fear',  featuring yet another haunted house which surprises me as it's an enjoyably creepy tale with a nicely open ending.  Bertram Atkey on the other hand is a new name to me and his occultist detective, 'Mesmer Milan' is an intriguing prospect with his astral travelling and intense personality and the story plays an interesting contrast by placing Milan in some decidedly frivolous company in a winningly different love story.  The following 'Dr. Taverner' tale 'The Death Hound' is one of the more pulpy of occultist Dion Fortune's 'Taverner' stories and again probably wouldn't have been my choice but it works here especially in the company of the preceeding story.

Happily for me I'm on fresh ground for the rest of the book and Moray Dalton's fabulously named 'Cosmo Thor' is a vague sort of character in a story that too closely resembles the 'Aylmer Vance' to particularly satisfy but as a - yet another - haunted house story would perhaps have worked better if I'd not read the that other one earlier the same day.

For the last two stories we travel across the ocean and meet two American investigators both of whom conform - as do most here - to the well trodden path of detective and chronicler.  Gordon Hillman's 'Cranshawe' is all action, racing to investigate strange goings on at a lighthouse whereas Joseph Payne Brennan's 'Lucius Leffing' has a much more sedate and deductive manner.  The former is breathless and a touch inconsequential whereas the latter is thoughtful and more satisfying with a slightly jarring pulp moment in the middle.

With Ashley at the helm I was always fairly confident that this was going to be an rock solid collection coming on the back of his mammoth 'Fighters of Fear' collection of a couple of years ago which it absolutely is but I do have a slight quibble with the number of haunted houses but don't let that put you off. If you've an interest in the idea of the occult detective this should prove a worthwhile read for novice and devotee both.

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Baffled!

After leaving the cast of 'Mission Impossible' Leonard Nimoy spent several years racking up various special guest appearences along with a starring role in this pilot episode for a never made occult detective series from ITC, the home of such shows as The Saint, The Champions, The Prisoner, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Space 1999 and many more.

Nimoy plays racing car driver Tom Kovack who starts experiencing visions of death at an English country house.  Teaming up with rare book dealer and amateur occultist Michelle Brent (Susan Hampshire) they head to the clifftop house on the English coast where they find American actress Andrea Glenn (Vera Miles) and her daughter Jennifer (Jewel Blanch) caught up in an elaborate(ish), occult(ish) ,Agatha Christie(ish) scheme.

Truthfully it's no surprise it didn't go to series as it's just not great and it has a terrible name.  There's some nice chemistry between the two leads with Hampshire effortlessly affable in her role, Nimoy as cool as ever but he was always better when acting without emotions and there's a solid Wyrd Britain cast around them including Ray Brooks (the voice of 'Mr Benn'), Christopher Benjamin ('Henry Gordon Jago' in 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang' and various Big Finish spin offs) and Milton Johns ('The Invasion of Time').  It's far too long though and despite obviously having a moderately healthy budget, some fun dialogue and a good bratty performance from Blanch it never really gets going but if - like me - you've a love of an occult detective romp and you've ever wanted to see Spock wrestling an old lady then this is for you.



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The Master of the Macabre

Russell Thorndike
Valancourt Books

Tayler Kent flees London in a blinding snowstorm, hoping to escape the ghosts that haunt his home. Instead, he finds things may have gone from bad to worse when he crashes his car, breaks his ankle, and is forced to take refuge at a medieval monastery now inhabited by the eccentric Charles Hogarth, known as “The Master of the Macabre.” As Kent’s ankle heals, Hogarth entertains him with fine food, brandy, and a series of gruesome stories connected with an odd assortment of old relics on display in a curio cabinet. But the terrors are not confined to Hogarth’s tales: the monastery is haunted by the evil spirit of an apostate monk and besieged by more corporeal foes, who will stop at nothing to get their hands on one of the Master’s treasures. . . .
Best known for his series of novels featuring the smuggler Dr. Syn, Russell Thorndike (1885-1972) in The Master of the Macabre (1947) delivers an irresistible mix of horror, adventure, and black humour that is certain to please fans of classic ghost stories and supernatural fiction. This first-ever republication of the novel includes the original jacket art and a new introduction by Mark Valentine.

Russell Thorndike (1885 - 1972) was an actor and author of the popular 'Dr Syn' books, the tales of the swashbuckling pirate turned vicar turned smuggler, which he started writing before enlisting to serve in WWI where he was severely wounded at Gallipoli.

Written in 1946 'The Master of the Macabre' is Thorndike's entry into the occult detective genre.  All the usual tropes are present; an enigmatic lead relating stories of his escapades to an eager biographer / acolyte which in this case is the result of a series of possibly supernaturally influenced incidents, accidents and illnesses that leave author Tayler Kent collapsed with a broken ankle on the doorstep of Charles Hogarth, collector of macabre mysteries.

There are echoes of occult detectives past and Mark Valentine points out several of these in his introduction but for most of his tales Hogarth is an observer or chronicler rather than active participant.  Outside of these fireside tales (and in the manner to become so beloved of the portmanteau movies of the late 1960s and early 1970s) there's an overarching storyline that weaves itself around the stories which in this case involves ancient ghosts of a diabolical monk and a beautiful young woman and a troupe of murderous Muslim mountain men questing for a religious artefact they believe to be in Hogarth's possession.

Thorndike's writing is entertainingly melodramatic and the stories are enjoyably lurid.  There's a queasy colonialism inherent in the attitudes of the protagonists that makes for occasionally uncomfortable reading but equally often just as laughably absurd.

'The Master of the Macabre' is another in the line of Valancourt reissues of neglected and forgotten gems of supernatural fiction and as with the others I've written about in Wyrd Britain (and some I haven't because they don't fit with the blog's remit like Forrest Reid's fabulous 'The Spring Song' (UK / US)) a very enjoyable one.

Buy it here - UK / US.

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The Secrets of Doctor Taverner

Dion Fortune
Weiser Books

Dr. Taverner runs a nursing home -- but it is not by any means a conventional one. It is a hospital for all manner of unorthodox mental disturbances, ranging from psychic attack and disruptions in group minds to vampirism. These are cases that conventional psychology cannot cure. Only the secret knowledge of Taverner, based on esoteric training, is enough to unravel the solutions.Each story in this collection is a complete case, as gripping and as entertaining as the stories of Sherlock Holmes. They take you into the inner worlds of the human mind -- a world full of strange twists and unexpected happenings!

Dion Fortune was an occultist, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the founder of the Fraternity of the Inner Light and she is still regarded as one of the most influential and important figures in that field.  Alongside the books she wrote on those topics she also wrote six books of fiction including this collection of short stories detailing the escapades of psychiatrist and magician Dr. Taverner.

I love an occult detective tale so despite it's awful cover art jumped at this as soon as I discovered its existence.  In the grand tradition of these things we have a detective and chronicler set up with the twist being perhaps that Dr Tavener is perhaps far more occult than detective.  In the pages of this chronicle we find Taverner and his Watson, Dr Rhodes, encounter vampires, rogue magicians, devil dogs, astral projections, greedy relatives and more in a series of sprightly tales.

Fortune was no particular wordsmith and, especially in the earlier stories, one often feels like she is trying to recruit the reader into her Fraternity and perhaps engaging in a sort of wish fulfilment.  However, when she gets into her swing on the later tales such as the excellent 'A Daughter of Pan', 'The Sea Lure' and 'A Son of the Night' she shows she can spin a very entertaining yarn and seems far more comfortable with more earthy mysteries than those dealing with more 'traditional' horrors and by the end I was fully invested in the lives of the two leads.

Buy it here - UK / US.

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Spectre

In 1977 Gene Roddenberry co-wrote (with Samuel A. Peeples) and produced this pilot episode for an unrealised TV series about an American criminologist and occult detective called William Sebastian (Robert Culp) who, with his colleague Dr. "Ham" Hamilton (Gig Young), comes to the UK at the request of Anitra Cyon (Ann Bell) who worries that her brother has come under the influence of malign forces.  Unfortunately for them the gloriously pompous Sir Geoffrey (James Villiers) is quite happy as he is having surounded himself with a coterie of glamorous beauties to attend his every whim and who seems quite determined - for some unfathomable reason - to foil their investigation.

Rounding out a strong cast are luminaries such as 'the First Lady of Star Trek' Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, a very young looking John Hurt fresh from playing Caligula in 'I, Claudius', and Gordon Jackson who was to take on the role of George Cowley in The Professionals that same year.

Directed by Clive Donner it's got the look of a US TV show to it and whilst it makes a valiant attempt at evoking the glory days of British gothic horror it all looks far too bright and clean and 'made for TV' to really succeed and the bacchanalian black mass at the finale - to which they added plenty of bare breasts once they knew it wasn't getting picked up - is (unintentionally) very funny indeed.

I am though a real sucker for an occult detective yarn and combined with some fabulous incidental music by the wonderful John Cameron ('Psychomania' and 'Kes') this is always going to attract my attention.  Truthfully it's not up to much and it's not hard to see why it never made it to series but it does have it's charms and if nothing else is a fun way to while away 90 minutes.

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Herald of the Hidden

Mark Valentine
Tartarus Press

What is the secret of the house of days? Who are the shadowy figures gathered along an old green road? What is the winged thing seen flitting from an ancient church?

Herald of the Hidden collects ten adventures of the occult detective Ralph Tyler, inspired by William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence, and Arthur Machen’s Mr Dyson of The Three Impostors.

But Ralph Tyler is different. He is without private means, or any special esoteric knowledge. Sometimes he doesn’t play fair with his clients or his friend, the narrator. He smokes foul cigarettes, slumps in his chair, and wears a threadbare jacket. And he’s from an obscure shire in the darkest heart of England . . .

Mark Valentine’s Ralph Tyler stories first appeared in hard-to-find small press publications. Three of the stories in this volume are previously unpublished, including two newly written for this collection. Along with six further supernatural tales, all the stories are previously uncollected in book form.

The bulk of this collection consists of Mark's early experiments with the supernatural detective genre.  I'm a huge fan of Mark's other detective tales (written with John Howard) featuring the Connoisseur which are intense, artful and gloriously inventive and I've gone back to them several times over the years.  These earlier stories follow the standard setup of a chronicler and a detective, here called Ralph Tyler, a shambolic everyman who lives in scruffy digs and smokes foul smelling cigarettes.  He's a deliberate shift away from the gentleman adventurer type of sleuth, the man of means that can afford to go off spook hunting such as Algernon Blackwood's 'Dr John Silence', William Hope Hodgson's 'Carnacki' or even Arthur Machen's 'Mr Dyson'.  Tyler works for hire but does so in a way that satisfies his own conscience.

The stories flirt with themes that would come to define Mark's later work with the intrusion of other realms and the hidden histories of the countries of Britain.  The stories here are a little more overt and perhaps muscular than I was expecting but that's perhaps down to youthful verve and whilst many of these stories could be  - crassly - defined as folk horror Mark is - and apparently always was - too good a writer to fall down that particular rabbit hole and his stories embrace a far wider palette of influence than is often the case.

The book ends with several non Rex Tyler stories that date from a similar time.  They are a more delicate affair showing Mark's love of Edwardian ghostly and weird fiction with ghostly cricket matches, artistic vision, dark magic and pastoral pagan traditions.

As can probably be inferred from his repeated appearances in these pages I adore Mark's writing.  He draws from a heritage of writers that I find fascinating and marries it with a lively imagination, a curious nature and a writing style that embraces both the then and the now to produce stories that feel timeless.

Buy it here - Herald of the Hidden

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In A Glass Darkly

J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Wordsworth Editions

This remarkable collection of stories, first published in 1872, includes Green Tea, The Familiar, Mr. Justice Harbottle, The Room in le Dragon Volant, and Carmilla. The five stories are purported to be cases by Dr. Hesselius, a 'metaphysical' doctor, who is willing to consider the ghosts both as real and as hallucinatory obsessions. The reader's doubtful anxiety mimics that of the protagonist, and each story thus creates that atmosphere of mystery which is the supernatural experience. 

This is my first time digging into a book full of Le Fanu's stories and I found it to be a bit of a pick 'n' mix.

The book tells 5 stories from the files of Dr. Hesselius, an occult detective of sorts, although he himself appears only in one of tales with the 5 being presented as being posthumously selected from his archives.

It's the final story here that's undeniably the most renowned and justifiably so.  'Carmilla' is an unsettling tale of vampirism which while lacking in suspense due to the delivery method (it's told by the 'victim') it manages to hold a tantalising level of menace.

At the other end of the scale is 'The Room in Le Dragon Volant' a frankly risible locked room mystery that was a chore to plough through.

The opening two stories, 'Green Tea' and 'The Familiar' are odd little tales of manifestations induced by overindulgence and guilt and neither tale really sparkles although the latter has the edge but it's the fourth story, 'Mr. Justice Harbottle', that was probably the great surprise of the book with it's deliciously macabre tale of a corrupt judge and his unearthly comeuppance.

I have to admit I struggled a little with this book; mostly with Le Fanu's now quite dated prose style - which had never previously been an issue when encountering his stories in various anthologies - but also because I just didn't think all that much of the opening story, 'Green Tea', ground to a halt and put the book down for a while.  When I returned to it more prepared for it's idiosyncrasies I got more out of it and with the exception of that lousy crime story it proved to be an enjoyable read.

Buy it here - In A Glass Darkly (Wordsworth Mystery & Supernatural) (Tales of Mystery & the Supernatural) by Sheridan Le Fanu ( 2007 )

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Prince Zaleski

M.P. Shiel
Tartarus Press

Arguably the most decadent of all fictional sleuths, Prince Zaleski relies upon the methods of ratiocination so beloved of Sherlock Holmes. But unlike his deer-stalkered colleague, Zaleski rarely needs even to leave his divan to solve the perplexing mysteries that Shiel brings before him. Rather than give crude chase to the perpetrators of these sophisticated crimes, Zaleski reclines elegantly in his semi-ruined abbey, ‘a bizarrerie of half-weird sheen and gloom,’ smoking hashish and fashioning solutions from his encyclopedic knowledge of the esoteric. Although he is in this respect akin to Edgar Allan Poe’s detective, Auguste Dupin, Zaleski is primarily an up-to-the-minute 1890s aesthete, prompting one critic to suggest that he is based on that tragically extravagant poet of death, Count Eric Stenbock.

 My fascination with psychic / supernatural / occult detectives continues unabated and I've finally got my hands on one I've been coveting for some time.    As it turns out my understanding of it as being of that particular genre is somewhat in error as there are no supernatural elements here although within the world of the character there are a number of spiritual or mystic aspects.

Zaleski is a decadent savant who lives  hermit-like existence removed from society with only his servant, Ham, and his occasional visitor, Shiel, for company - at least in the three canonical stories; the other two and a bit stories introduce another character as a friend and frequent visitor.

In character the Prince seems most to resemble Mycroft Holmes as he is able, in the three stories, to deduce the causes and perpetrators of the conundrums Shiel lays before him, almost, without rising from his daybed or relinquishing his hookah although the third, and most esoteric, case does require subsequent actions that leave him exhausted.  Transplant his secluded home to the Diogenes Club and he'd be the heart of the British intelligence but Zaleski has no interest in the world outside his doors other than as a source of intellectual stimulation.

The final two and a sliver stories are purportedly written by Shiel but reworked by John Gawsworth and they present a very different character.  Written some many years after the initial trio the language and indeed the character are much changed.  Gone are the verbose, flowery monologues and the decadent ennui and in their place is a faster, almost pulpish, style with a Zaleski who is keen to not only abandon his seclusion but engage in physical confrontation which in neither case rings true of the man we've previously become acquainted with.

Aside from my slight disappointment at not encountering any supernatural shenanigans I was most pleasantly enamoured of the initial three stories - less so the others - and once I got into the rhythm of the dialogue I was happily drawn along by the mysteries.

As a side note, one of the things in particular that struck me was the ways in which Shiel's creation has impacted on one of our favourite writers here at Wyrd Britain, Mark Valentine, and his own supernatural sleuth, 'The Connoisseur'; in his manners and particularly by the mystery at the heart of the third story, 'The S.S.' (no, not them) which resonates with the DNA of Valentine's creation and serves to provide and extra smidgen of heritage to the younger creation and ancestral gravitas to the elder.

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The Occult Files of Francis Chard

A.M. Burrage
Burrage Publishing

Alfred McLelland Burrage was born in 1889. His father and uncle were both writers, primarily of boy's fiction, and by age 16 AM Burrage had joined them and quickly became a master of the market publishing his stories regularly across a number of publications. By the start of the Great War Burrage was well established but in 1916 he was conscripted to fight on the Western Front, his experiences becoming the classic book War is War by Ex-Private X. For the remainder of his life Burrage was rarely printed in book form but continued to write and be published on a prodigious scale in magazines and newspapers. His supernatural stories are, by common consent, some of the best ever written. Succinct yet full of character each reveals a twist and a flavour that is unsettling.....sometimes menacing....always disturbing. In this volume we bring you - The Hiding Hole, The Pit In The Garden, The Affair At Penbillo, The Third Visitation, The Woman With Three Eyes, The Soldier, The Tryst, The Bungalow At Shammerton, The Protector & The Girl In Blue.

I've been on a real detective trip of late but I managed to hold off for a fortnight before it was time to indulge myself in some more supernatural sleuthing with a selection from the author of my favourite ghost story, 'Playmates'.  It took me a while to cough up the readies for this slim volume, number 6 in a series of reprints of Burrage's work, which features the escapades of his detective character Francis Chard and his companion Torrance as the pair investigate a series of unearthly, chilling and unpleasant supernatural episodes but in the end desire overcame thrift.

As is ever the case with these sort of things Chard is a veritable font of knowledge regarding all things supernatural whilst Torrance is suitably dim enough to allow us some semblance of a clue as to what's going on as things are explained to him. There's a satisfying humanity to the pair and they seem a comfortable partnership with each coming to the others aid as they often struggle through their adventures occasionally coming a bit of a cropper or finding themselves scared witless.

I've encountered a few of Burrage's stories before (the above mentioned 'Playmates' and 'Smee' are both regular in spooky anthologies) and have always found him to be very readable which proved to be the case here.  The stories are inventive and adventurous with a unexpectedly violent streak and his characters are believable and engaging.

As I said I initially balked at paying the asking price for this tiny little booklet but I have to admit, in the end, I'm glad I paid it.

Buy it here - The Occult Files Of Francis Chard: Volume 6 (A.M. Burrage Classic Collection)

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John Silence

Algernon Blackwood
John Baker Publishers

One of the foremost British writers of supernatural tales in the twentieth century, Algernon Blackwood (1869–1951) wrote stories in which the slow accumulation of telling details produced a foreboding atmosphere of almost unendurable tension. Blackwood's literary renown began in 1908 with the publication of a highly successful collection of stories, John Silence — Physician Extraordinary, featuring a "psychic doctor."
This volume contains all five of the John Silence stories from the 1908 edition. The stories include "A Psychical Invasion," in which Silence is summoned to a house apparently haunted by former tenants. In "Ancient Sorceries," he encounters a man who tells of strange experiences in a small French town; and in "Secret Worship," an ill-starred character is rescued from spiritual and perhaps physical death. "The Nemesis of Fire," and "The Camp of the Dog," conclude this collection of spellbinding tales, which will delight any devotee of "weird" literature. 

Over the last few years and in various anthologies I've read a few of Blackwood's stories concerning his occult investigator Dr John Silence, and they were a real treat.  I've been been hunting a nice old copy of this collection of most of the Silence stories for a while but as all the modern editions have pretty dreadful cover designs it took a while to find an older edition that I both liked and could afford.

Blackwood only wrote 6 John Silence stories, 5  of which were published together in 1908 (as is the case with this volume) with the 6th - 'A Victim of Higher Space' - not included because Blackwood felt it wasn't up to the mark.  It's actually my personal favourite although I do think it makes for a strange fit with the other 5 but if you buy a modern edition it is included.

John Silence is a medical doctor of independent wealth who uses his skills, both physical and psychical to help with and investigate interesting problems.  Over the course of the collection we find him in turn investigating a haunted house, listening to and commenting on a story of feline witchery, battling a mummies curse, rescuing an unsuspecting traveller from devil worshippers and match making for a lovesick puppy.

In each case he is both an enigmatic and powerful presence although in two of the stories he is very much a bit player.  In the other three - particularly the first - we get to see him in action and he is such a steely and knowledgeable character that he would, I think, be a rather tiresome presence to have always centre stage and so Blackwood uses him sparingly even in his own adventures and they are all the better for it.

As I mentioned above, I've been on the look out for a nice old copy for a few years now and this one turned up at just the right time to help sate my psychic detective hankering and even with only the one story that I hadn't previously read it was a welcome and very enjoyable read.

Buy it here -  John Silence: The Complete Adventures

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The Incredible Robert Baldick - Never Come Night

Originally screened in 1972 as part of the BBCs Drama Playhouse series 'The Incredible Robert Baldick' marked the return to the BBC of Dalek creator Terry Nation after some 7 years working for the rival ITV network. Drama Playhouse was a series of one off pilots created to test the water for a possible series, it didn't happen here which is a real shame.

Robert Hardy plays the eponymous hero, an occult detective who travels around in a lavish, bulletproof locomotive called 'The Tsar'.  He, along with his assistants Thomas and Caleb (Julian Holloway and a magnificently bewhiskered John Rhys-Davies) is called in by the local bigwigs (James Cossins & Reginald Marsh) to investigate the latest in a series of brutal deaths at a desolate abbey.

There are definite shades of Nigel Kneale in the story, of ancient horror inhabiting the stones of a place and the gothic glory of Hammer Studios is definitely brought to mind.  Hardy and the rest of the cast are all in fine form and the script is a solid and thoroughly enjoyable slice of gothic sci-fi of the sort that Doctor Who would explore to great effect a few years later under Philip Hinchcliffe's guidance, indeed Hardy's character is called Doctor by his assistants throughout.  As I said, a real shame this never made it to series but it's a great little taste of what might have been.

Enjoy.



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Haunted

James Herbert
Pan Books

Three nights of terror in a house called Edbrook. Three nights in which David Ash, there to investigate a haunting, will be the victim of horrifying and maleficent games. Three nights in which he will face the enigma of his own past. Three nights before Edbrook's dreadful secret will be revealed - and the true nightmare will begin.

Another in the avalanche of occult detective stories to come my way lately is this little ditty from Herbert.

To the best of my knowledge I've only ever read one other James Herbert book (although there's a good chance I read some as a teen and have forgotten) and that was the exhausting zombie / nazi book '48' which was without doubt the most hectic read of my life.  Haunted is a little more sedate.

David Ash is an investigator for the 'Psychical Research Institute' and it's most famous sceptic - although through the course of the story we discover he believes in pretty much everything except ghosts - which is a funny sort of sceptic - and he's also psychic.

The investigation he's conducting is of a haunting at an old manor house called Edbrock where the Mariell family of 2 brothers, a sister and an elderly aunt are seeing ghosts.  Over the course of 3 nights Ash is confronted by a host of visions, terrors and inexplicable events before the final revelation that you can see coming from about a third of the way in.

It's not that it's a bad book as such, it's got a nicely creepy atmosphere and the story moves along briskly but it feels superficial.  There's no real depth or texture to the goings on.  It kind of feels like a one off TV special, a pilot for an uncommissioned series.  Apparently there are 2 more Ash stories which I'll grab if I see them on a charity shop shelf but they aren't something I'll be hunting down with eager anticipation.

Buy it here -  Haunted (David Ash)

Dark Detectives: An Anthology of Supernatural Mysteries

Stephen Jones (ed)
Titan Books

Eighteen stories of supernatural detective fiction, featuring sleuths who investigate fantastic and horrific cases, protecting the world from the forces of darkness. Each writer offers a tale of a great fictional detective, including Neil Gaiman’s Lawrence Talbot, Clive Barker’s Harry D’Amour, and the eight-part “Seven Stars” adventure by Kim Newman (Anno Dracula).

I do love a psychic / supernatural detective.  whether it be Van Helsing, John Constantine, Carnacki or even the Doctor back when they were having fun with gothic escapades back in the mid 1970s.  I've always liked that sort of stepping outside of the normal world that weird and macabre fiction gives but equally I love a good mystery and through the years have devoured Sherlock, Marlowe and, lately, Marple adventures with relish.  So the supernatural sleuth is one of my happy places.

Jones has assembled a thoroughly enjoyable assortment of variations on the theme although with the focus very much on work produced in the later part of the 20th century,  the exception to this being one of William Hope Hodgson's Thomas Carnacki tales, 'The Horse of the Invisible'.

Kim Newman

Interwoven through the book is a serial of shorts by Kim Newman featuring various of his creations such as Charles Beauregard, Edwin Winthrop & Genevieve Dieudonne most of whom are in some way connected to his Diogenes Club books (which thankfully Titan Books have begun to rescue from overpriced eBay hell having reissued the first).  The serial travels from ancient Egypt to the near future and traces the impact of a 'jewel' named the 'Seven Stars'.  Newman is always a fun read and never more so than when he's playing with his penny dreadful / pulp novel toys and twisting them into new shapes.  This serial alone makes the book worth the cover price and it's only 'one' of the many delights inside.

The book itself opens with a fabulously informative essay on the theme of the 'dark' detective by Jones and the prologue of the 'Seven Stars' serial before we are cast into the strange world of the uncanny, except we sort of...well...aren't.  Newman's scattered story aside, of the first three tales, and with the exception of the very end of the Carnacki story, all turn out to have mundane, if not essentially identical, denouements.  Peter Tremayne's Sister Fidelma story, 'Our Lady of Death' and Basil Copper's Solar Pons story 'The Adventure of the Crawling Horror' both confronted by the inexplicable only to unmask it Scooby Doo style, as does Carnacki but at least there we get a fleeting and murderous clopping of hooves.

Brian Lumley

So, it's up to the marvellously monickered Manly Wade Wellman to launch us into the supernatural sphere with his tale 'Rouse Him Not' featuring his sword cane wielding occultist John Thunstone.  It's a fairly light but fun affair taken straight from the Robert E. Howard school of brawn and brawling fantasy writing.  Much more interesting is Brian Lumley's Titus Crow story 'De Marigny's Clock' (which proves to be an enjoyable little tale of crooks, clocks and comeuppance.

Pausing only swivel around Mr Newman who by this point is romping through the groovy spy-fi of the 1970s we arrive at what, for me, was the revelation of the book, R. Chetwynd-Hayes' 'Someone is Dead'.  It's not so much the story, the plot is fun and lively but the utter joy of the two investigators,  Francis St. Clare & Frederica Masters, who just burst from the page in a riot of wit and sparkle.  I adored this and wanted to read it again as soon as I'd finished it.

Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes

Brian Mooney's 'The Vultures Gather' featuring his scruffy, immoderate and slightly lazy investigator, Reuben Calloway,. alongside his priestly compatriot, Roderick Shea.  the pair are drawn into the investigation of a rich man's death thanks to a postprandial promise made by Calloway some years previously.  It's entertaining but suffers from coming after the Chetwynd-Hayes story - anything would - as it just can't match it's predecessors joie-de-vivre although I suspect a re-read will prove it's merits.

There are a couple of authors whose popularity mystifies me as I find them almost entirely unreadable, Clive Barker is one of those and he's up next. I've tried reading him on and off for 20 something years now and have always had friends who are big fans but his stuff does nothing for me and a few years ago I swore off him for good.  Today though in the shape of a short Harry D'Amour story called 'Lost Souls' I broke my promise and I'm glad I did.  There's nothing here to make me want to read more but what is here is an enjoyable pulp noir, hard boiled detective story that maybe feels a little too much part of a larger story to entirely get the juices flowing but it's fun nonetheless.

A quick leapfrog over Mr Newman as his endearing but slightly hapless Sally Rhodes investigates a missing person brings us to a rather inconsequential story about John Wayne's transvestite proclivities by Jay Russell about which I'm going to say it's brief, it's not terrible but it is brief.

Neil Gaiman

The book closes with two Newman's sandwiching a Gaiman.  In 'Bad Wolf' the eminent Neil provides a prose poem about a lycanthropic investigator named Lawrence Talbot who is hired to rid a beach of an unwelcome visitor.  Truthfully it isn't classic Gaiman but even off form he's always well worth reading.

The final two Newman's are in many ways a single piece that sees many of the story's previous characters re-united in a final climactic assault on the malevolent jewel in a cyberpunk near-future wasteland.

Jones is an anthologist with an impressive history and it shows.  With only a couple of moments where I felt his choices were a little off topic this proved to be a terrifically readable collection that had me hooked from the off and has given me lots of pointers for where to go next for more of the same.

Buy it here - Dark Detectives: An Anthology of Supernatural Mysteries

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Pagan Triptych

Ron Weighell, John Howard & Mark Valentine
Sarob Press

In a recent email conversation with Mark Valentine I mentioned that when I broke my tibia last year I did so with an Algernon Blackwood paperback in my back pocket.  This led him to tell of a Blackwood inspired short story he was writing for a new anthology to be published soon by Sarob Press and that he would arrange for a review copy to be sent my way for Wyrd Britain.  Yes dear readers he is a lovely fella and I am a lucky sod.

Well, if it appeases your jealousy in any way my copy arrived the day after I got home from hospital after breaking my hip this time;  same leg, almost exactly 11 months on from the last time so maybe not so lucky after all.

'Pagan Triptych' is a set of 3 stories using some of Blackwood's characteristic themes - the occult detective, ritual magic, nature worship & reincarnation - each followed by an afterword from each author regarding their connection with the man and his work.

The book begins with an author I am otherwise unfamiliar with, Ron Weighell, whose story of magical sleuthing featuring his very intriguing occult detective, academic and magician, Doctor Andrew Northwoode, 'The Letter Killeth' is a fiery and intriguing sort of read.  With it's academic setting within the campus, libraries and lodgings of Belden College, Oxford it has a flavour of M.R. James' 'The Tractate Middoth' but is very much it's own thing as Northwoode, with the aide of a number of other magicians from diverse magical traditions, investigates and combats the magical affliction that has overcome his librarian friend.

The story is fast paced and wonderfully inventive with Weighell throwing around magical traditions and rites with seeming abandon as his crew of investigators hunt for their cure.  I'm an absolute sucker for a good occult investigator especially of the professorial type and I took Northwoode to my heart immediately.  Apparently he has featured in several other stories but a cursory eBay search reveals Weighell's other books to be price in eye-watering amounts amounts but he is going on my list of writers to watch out for.

Holding the middle ground in the anthology is John Howard who I'd previously encountered via his and Mark Valentine's collaboration on 'The Collected Connossieur'.  It would take better eyes than mine to separate the two in the previous volume so it was a nice opportunity to get to experience his solo work.

'In the Clearing' is a delicately subtle tale of a man cast adrift from his life and finding not just himself but also finding another person and another place.

It's a story of a man being expelled from the life he has created, of his meeting another who is entirely in his and of his desire to join him in his serenity and to find his own acceptance amongst the tangled pathways of the woods.

It's a lovely little piece that feels both supernatural and utterly real at the same time.  Daniel's relationship with the woods is so intrinsic that he wears it (or it him) yet for Nick it's a fearsome entity, the antithesis of all he knows and something that he, in his fear and in his loss, tries to claim.

It's a rather lovely piece that has sat with me for the week between reading it and writing this and I think perhaps for a lot longer yet.

Closing the book is Mark Valentine's tale of alternative worlds, reincarnation, destiny and fig trees.  The story follows a young man from ritualised childhood games in a figgery (such a lovely word) to the comradeship of like-minded people who have, like him, experienced unusual connections with certain places , a feeling of otherness and an echo of elsewhere.  It's a rumination on other lives, other places, other times, other existences and is every bit as intriguing as it is beguiling.

Along with three short ruminations on Blackwood by the authors this book proved to be the most wonderful fun.  The three have produced stories that whilst distinct and individual feel very much at home together which I think speaks volumes for both their skills and the rampant creativity of Mr. Blackwood himself.