FIRST BOOKS: Death Whispers - Joseph B. Carr

THE STORY:  Jennifer Crump, RN is hired to care for Roderick Myncheon who is recuperating from a car accident that has left him with a fractured skull and contusions. Within hours of starting her new job Myncheon is shot dead in his bedroom.  It's a somewhat impossible crime for there are two people near the victim's bed when the shot is fired yet neither could have fired the gun. And no gun is found in the room. It seems that someone from outside the house fired the gun then escaped by climbing down a tree near the bedroom window. But no one is seen when they look for the shooter. And no footprints are found below the tree. Almost instantly Oceola Archer, private detective, appears on the scene. He has been hired to look into some missing money and he fortuitously steps in to investigate the murder. Before Archer can unmask the sly killer one of the Myncheons will disappear, an attempted murder will take place, and one more death will occur.

THE CHARACTERS:  Death Whispers (1933) is the debut of Joseph B. Carr's "gargantuan gourmand" Oceloa Archer, a private detective clearly modeled on Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale.  The DJ blurb describes him as Falstaffian and that is no hyperbole. Archer is tall and obese, and is indulgent in several areas of his life other than eating and drinking. He is sly, witty, and ironically genteel in spite of his tendency to be flippant and irreverent. He has an assistant named Bagshot (affectionately nicknamed Baggy by his employer) who tries his best to beat Archer to the solution early in the novel. But Bagshot is no match for Archer who whips up a surprising early solution of his own. Turns out to be a practical joke  intended to embarrass his assistant and put him in his place.

The Myncheon household is composed of a gaggle of oddball relatives and servants all of whom seem eager for Roderick to die from his wounds. But one of them seems to have been impatient and sent him to a quick grave with the aid of a well aimed bullet to his head. Was it his daughter Patricia, nephew Ralph, niece Elise, family lawyer Cunningham, great aunt Ankerett, the butler Barton, estranged daughter Eunice or her weak-minded husband the Honorable Richard Whittlesey? Or perhaps someone altogether unknown who has managed to infiltrate the house and is hiding out in some hidden area of Lichen House. Archer and Miss Crump end up working together alongside the manipulative policeman Inspector Trask.

In addition to a murder prowling around Lichen house some burglars are roaming in the area. Carr livens the proceedings with Archer's utterly unorthodox techniques in detection and his tendency to belittle everyone. Like so many fictional detectives he has a wide and arcane knowledge. He shows off about cigar tobacco, ballistics, gun manufacturing, and poisonous medications. 

Miss Crump is interestingly made the primary character from whose point of view we experience everything. If Miss Crump is not in the scene we know nothing. So when Archer is away with Bagshot digging into everyone's past and their belongings we follow Miss Crump who has her own indulgence -- she is an eavesdropper. The first time it occurs by accident but she picks up such provocative conversational tidbits that she is compelled to try again purposefully when she hides in a curtained alcove to listen in on some of the suspects' private exchanges.

ATMOSPHERE:  Carr not only seems to have been inspired by John Dickson Carr's detectives he has imbued his mystery novel with a gloomy and creepy Gothic atmosphere highly reminiscent of his namesake's mystery novels. The Myncheon house is dubbed Lichen House, almost a near parody of a Gothic mansion. In the final third of the book the Old Dark House vibe definitely kicks in with the discovery of architectural anomalies, secret passages, and other Gothic trappings. And with character names like Ankerett and Eldered, and surnames of Byx, Fream and Myncheon it is clear that Carr wants this world to be unusual if not thoroughly weird. At one point the ancient great aunt Ankerett Myncheon threatens Archer with a perfume atomizer filled with prussic acid. Definitely a weirdly Gothic touch!

QUOTES:  "I do call myself a poet, and as long as I do, I am. Why I knew a man who mixed up one night when he was tiddly, and said that God was a perfectly working piece of machinery. The next morning he began calling himself a philosopher, and has ever since."

"To tell you the truth"--Archer wore an air of humility-- "I'm sort of a slap-bang worker. My usual method is to come round after the murder and play a few practical jokes. The person who shows no surprise--that's the murderer. Or at least he's been up to something."

As she herself would have admitted, Miss Crump's talents were few; but her qualities were sterling, and well to the fore among them was an indomitable courage. 

The scene was not one calculated to inspire courage. The little chamber seemed filled with writhing cobwebs and floating particles, set in motion by the first passage of air in a generation. The odor was that of a myriad scavenging rats. The walls seemed to bear down on them from every side, things of form without color, having all the unreality and grotesquerie of an old woodcut. 

Feb 1, 1932 issue

THINGS I LEARNED: Lichen House was at one time featured in Spur as "one of the most genuinely beautiful places in New England."  I figured this was some sort of magazine. I was right. The Spur (to give its accurate name) was founded in the United States in 1904 as an equestrian culture and hunting magazine before it eventually evolved into a luxury lifestyle photojournal. Certainly not to be confused with contemporary similarly named magazines like a fashion magazine based in Japan or the Australian university magazine, The Spur covered everything considered highbrow. One issue from February 1932 I found for sale online includes features on polo, yachting, hunting dogs, European travel, art museums and theater. In the late 1930s the magazine had the tagline "A Magazine of the Good Things in Life".  The journal merged into Arts & Decoration in August 1940 and continued into early 1941 before it ceased publication entirely.

When Ralph Fream is questioned by Inspector Trask as to his whereabouts when the shot was fired he replies, "I was playing piquet in the butler's pantry."  Some kind of card game, I thought. Indeed it is! Piquet is a trick-taking card game for two players that dates back to the 16th century and became highly popular during the mid-19th century. The game uses a 32 card deck comprised of all suits with 7, 8, 9, 10, J, K, Q, and Aces only. Each player is dealt 12 cards and the remaining eight are placed face down on the table. Goal is to gain highest score by making card combinations and winning tricks. Any player with no face cards in their initial hand can declare Carte Blanche and win 10 points instantly.  Full rules are outlined here.

EASY TO FIND?  A handful of copies of Death Whispers turn up for sale from online dealers, a mix of Viking Press editions (the 1st US) and Grosset & Dunlap reprints. Remarkably, nearly all of them are priced at $45 or less. Some are G&D reprints with a DJ that is a duplicate of the 1st US edition DJ.  Only one true 1st US edition is offered and not surprisingly is priced at $300. Happy hunting!

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: Mandrake - Oliver Sherry

THE STORY:  Research student of the arcane arts, and sometime occult detective, Tom Annesley has traveled from America at the request of some friends in London to search for their missing friend Hilda Brown. His search takes him to the town of Haddeston where he encounters a powerful sorcerer who has penetrated the darkest secrets of alchemy and Black Magic and discovered how to create and prolong life with the aid of a mandrake root. A series of hair-raising adventures ensues as Tom and his new found friends, Ethel Derrington and Rev. Hamilton Sturt, set out to put an end to Baron Habdymos and his rampant evil.

THE CHARACTERS: Mandrake (1929) is modeled on both early 19th century fairy tales and Victorian era "penny dreadful" shockers. Baron Habdymos, a thoroughly venal and evil sorcerer bent on dominating all mortal men, outdoes anything Dr. Nikola or Fu Manchu accomplished in any of their occult thrillers. In creating this master of the Black Arts Oliver Sherry has added one of the most horribly memorable villains in early 20th century supernatural fiction. Not only can he create life using ingredients that are more disgusting and flesh-creeping than those employed by the Weird Sisters at work with their double-bubbling troublesome cauldron he has the ability to shapeshift into any human of his choosing (as long as he has murdered them) and transmogrify into animals. Just like Fantomas with his many disguises one never knows when the evil Baron will be appearing in any given scene in some other form -- either human or animal -- which only adds to the spinechilling surprises.

Our trio of heroes Tom, Ethel and Mr. Sturt -- are the heroic, pure of heart and intelligent.  A fourth hero is added to this trio when Mr. Sturt's servant Dunsmore selflessly risks his life to pursue the Baron in one of his many disguises. Dunsmore views himself a stoic and less spiritual than the others thinking this will be beneficial in dealing with such an other-worldly adversary. However he, like the other three, underestimates the range of the Baron's arcane skills. 

Unlike other fictional occult detectives like Carnacki, Miles Pennoyer, Jules De Grandin and John Silence, Tom does not consider himself a master of the supernatural lore. He confesses he is still a student and sees his dearth of knowledge, ironically, to be his greatest asset. He glibly remarks to Sturt: "A student is rather too inclined to value knowledge apart from its use.  It is a kind of foolishness one is compelled to admire and imitate if one can."

Mr.  Sturt is the perfect foil for Tom. He has more common sense and coupled with his deep religious faith he is a voice of both reason and goodness. The two men also share a belief in amulets and talismans.  Tom wrote a book on the subject and Sturt read the work with great interest. He talks about a cross of gold and rubies that was stolen from him by the sinister Dr. Demos, one of the Baron's many alter egos, and we learn from Tom that artifact was most likely one of the hundreds of "rosy crosses" created by the Rosicrucians to protect them from evil.

Amulets and magical artifacts play a large part in the story.  Tom gives an iron ring to Ethel that he tells her is a powerful amulet that will protect her from the Baron.  Later it becomes an engagement ring when inevitably Tom falls in love with the young woman. Their almost instantaneous romance is one of the glaringly obvious fairy tale motifs Sherry includes.  There is even an almost unintentional comical moment when Ethel under an evil hypnotic spell is saved from the Baron's telepathic clutches when Tom out of love gives her a meaningful tender kiss. Ah, the course of true love saves the day!

INNOVATIONS:  The strongest aspects and the most thrilling parts of Mandrake are the Gothic excesses, the sheer number of supernatural incidents and the manner in which Sherry constructs his tale to end all of these action sequences with cliff hanger endings at the close of each chapter.  Even within each chapter there are cliffhangers and sudden shifts to other locales.  At times it seems as if Mandrake was modeled on a Saturday morning silent movie serial. The book certainly has enough moments that would work extremely well on screen. There is even one sequence when the townspeople of Haddeston rise up in revolt against the evil Baron and storm his usually shunned fortress of a house armed with torches, pitchforks, crowbars and other tools of the angry rural mob. It's right out of a Universal Pictures 1930s monster movie -- except it was written a couple of years before any of them were ever made.

In addition to fairy tale elements like magic rings, a magic mirror that foretells the future, transformations, and the power of true love's kiss, the book is teeming with "penny dreadful" grotesquerie and macabre set pieces.  Each chapter is packed with supernatural manifestation that surprise and shock both the characters and the reader.  The Baron works his evil magic in bizarre and unusual manners not often encountered in supernatural fiction.  Learning about the use of the mandrake root to create a homunculus then transforming it into a full size humanoid creature was eye-opening.  This may be used in contemporary horror but I've not come across a similar folk horror touch in any of the books I've read in this genre. The variety of identities that the Mandrake inhabits at the command of the Baron is sort of mind-boggling.

The constant shifting of scenes also creates a great deal of suspense for the reader knows so much more than many of the characters do. We can only hold our breath hoping against hope that none of our heroes fall into the many traps we know are being laid for them. Tom, the perennial student, has a foolhardy manner. His desire to know as much as he can leads him to more than his fair share of mortal danger and near deathtraps.

As the story progresses it becomes wilder and more fantastic as if Sherry was trying to outdo himself with every passing page. Whether the book was first published as a serial has never been determined, but it seems likely for it certainly reads as if it was designed to be read that way.  Even as I thought nothing could be more outlandish that the previous scene Sherry continues to impress with his lurid and macabre imagination. The most grotesque and shocking scene occurs late in the book when Tom is nearly run over twice by a madman in a sports car and he seeks refuge in the home of a miserly old man.  The house turns out to be no haven, but rather a literal house of horrors. I not only gasped, I actually cried out "Oh my God!" at one point while tearing through the paragraphs of this scene.

THE AUTHOR:  Oliver Sherry was the pseudonym of Irish poet and writer George Edmund Lobo (1894-1971).  In the limited edition reissue of Mandrake (Medusa Press, 2010) Richard Dalby, noted supernatural fiction scholar, has written a brief biography of the man. Dalby notes that while Mandrake was Lobo's first novel of the supernatural he supposedly wrote a second thriller called Brood of Death which was listed in Lobo's Who's Who in Literature (1930) entry.  However, no publication of that title is recorded in any reference books or newspapers.

EASY TO FIND? Mandrake has been an elusive collector's book for several decades now. There is exactly one copy of the 1929 Jarrold's edition of Mandrake for sale from noted sci fi/fantasy/supernatural fiction bookseller L. W. Curry.  And it's got a hefty price tag. I recommend you purchase a copy of the reprint from Medusa Press.  There are no used copies of this reissue for sale primarily because the book is 1. so scarce anyone will want to keep their copy and 2. it's beautifully designed and typeset. The photographs in this post are all of the Medusa Press edition.  There were only 350 copies printed and I have no idea how many are left now that 16 years have passed since it was published. But I got mine only two and half weeks ago. There may still be some copies for sale. And good news! The original price has been reduced by 25%, only $30 now.  Order directly from the publisher.  Here's a shortcut link for you.  

 

FRIGHT FEST #6: The Black Cat - Robert Poe

Whaddya know? Another distant relation to Edgar Allan Poe cropped up. This time it's Robert Poe who wrote two mystery novels inspired by two short stories by the Master of the Macabre.  I found his second one first and because it's titled The Black Cat (1997) and drawn from that nasty story of ax murder, a body walled up in a cellar, and a vengeful cat, I thought I'd tackle this one for Halloween.  It also promised a storyline about a witch and how her practicing Wicca affects the town of Crowley Creek, Virginia.

Our narrator is John Charles Poe who, just like the author, is also descended from the great Edgar. He has been entrusted with a box of documents and letters written by EAP, handed down to the eldest Poe over the past five or so generations. Occasionally John Charles turns to this box and pores over what ol' Edgar wrote. It was fun to read these letters as the author tells us in a footnote that they are taken directly from known letters and essays Poe wrote himself. But they have little to do with the story other than reminding us that the book is supposed to be an exploration of the inescapable concept of doing evil for its own sake.

The novel is basically nothing more than a re-telling of "The Black Cat." There is a woman who disappears and is feared to be dead by the more superstitious members of the town. Her husband, the local veterinarian, is sure she simply left him and will show up at her relatives in Charlottesville. John Charles Poe, a reporter, at the urging of his research assistant Edith starts looking into this disappearance. Anyone familiar with Poe's short story knows that Margaret Cully is never coming back.

The vet has hired Julie Noir, a young girl who John Charles says can be anywhere between seventeen and twenty-four. She alternately acts like a wise old woman and a naive teen making it all the more difficult to pin down her age.  Julie is also a practicing Wiccan. She has an exceptional skill at healing the sick animals at Dr. Lawrence Cully's clinic. She gathers special herbs at night in the light of the moon (preferably a full moon, of course) and concocts all sorts of unique potions and poultices. An old Irish Setter named Gomer suffering from a GI illness was treated by Dr. Cully but had a relapse. As soon as Julie applies her special herb treatment to the dog he recovers within hours. Does she have magical powers? Or is it arcane science? We never really know. The townspeople begin to freak out, in particular the zealot Rev. Rowland Fairchild who accuses Julie of witchcraft and dealing with Lucifer. He starts a campaign to oust her from Crowley Creek. But Dr. Cully is unwilling to fire his assistant. You see, he is lusting for her wants to possess her. It's no surprise when he confesses he has had a sexual relationship with her. 

From a French 1948 edition
artwork by Albert Dubout

And where is The Black Cat in all of this?  Julie has a pet cat called Asmodeus, of course.  A cat named after a demon can't be a good sign.  Asmodeus is almost always seen on Julie's shoulder watching everyone.  The cat is always ready to protect Julie.  It has taken a liking to John Charles and has an antipathy towards Dr. Cully.  Again, anyone familiar with Poe's classic short story will have figured the entire plot once Asmodeus appears. And sure enough the story fulfills it promise of echoing all that occurs in "The Black Cat."  Though the characters notice the eerie similarities to the short story and the events taking place in town it takes John Charles way too long to think of going into Dr. Cully's cellar and exposing him for the killer he most obviously is.

As the so-called mystery of Margaret's disappearance and the revelations of her murder slowly unfolds there are three or four subplots going on. John Charles is a reporter and he has an antagonistic relationship with his editor Mrs. Boynton. We have generational criticism of lost teenage misfits, how easy it is for teens to be exploited when vulnerable. The author attempts to satirize the small-mindedness of small towns that want everything to stay the same, and attacks their intolerance of counterculture types. Finally, there is a very strange 17th century, fire and brimstone, backlash in response to a young woman practicing Wicca. The "us against them" mentality got to be annoying and I got the feeling that the author had a big hang-up against punk rock and death metal and its insidious influence on young people. Late in the novel a disturbing sequence occurs when John Charles and Edith attend a death metal concert for a band called The Dead Souls. Ironically, in a story including an ax murder and entombment, this is the most gruesome and bizarre incident in the book and it most definitely serves as the author's big message of the book.

From a French 1933 edition,
artwork by Auguste Leroux

The most off-putting aspect was Fairchild's over-the-top reaction to Wicca rituals. His insane ranting and quoting Old Testament passages from the Bible was utterly anachronistic. He is introduced as an Episcopalian priest with a church that has a small parish and with little influence in a town of Christians who attend other churches. By the end of the book he has become the only religious figure speaking out against Julie and for some reason everyone is listening to him. I don't know why because he comes across as a lunatic. When he's practically foaming at the mouth about witches being the Devil's handmaidens, quoting the Book of Leviticus, and mentioning a moonlight ritual he witnessed during which Julie prayed to the Goddess and calls it blasphemy it all seems ridiculous.  I always thought that Episcopalians are just American versions of Church of England followers and therefore similar to Catholics minus the Pope and leadership from the Vatican. I would think like Catholics the message of an Episcopalian is the teachings of Jesus and not an obsession with obscure passages from the Old Testament, a preoccupation of fundamentalist Christians. Reverend Fairchild seems more like a Calvinist or a Puritan rather than a late 20th century Episcopalian. It was all very strange and sort of insulting to read those passages. It could have been handled with less hysteria and ludicrous zealotry.

For the Halloween season The Black Cat was an OK read.  I did find a copy of Poe's first book Return to the House of Usher (1997) but I'm unsure if I will bother with it knowing what's he's done with this re-telling of EAP's short story.  Ultimately, the mystery was hardly mysterious since it completely echoed "The Black Cat." The religious zealotry was absurd, the teen cliques (punks vs. the straights) were overplayed, the bullying and violence among the teens also seemed over-the-top in reaction to something as innocuous as a girl who heals sick animals with herbs. Even the supernatural element seemed nebulous. The true mystery of the book is Julie Noir. Is she a good witch or a bad witch?  Though everything seems to wrap up neatly -- the villain's evil is exposed, our hero is redeemed -- that ultimate question about Julie is never really answered.

For the curious who feel compelled to read this book you may buy my copy. It's listed for sale here. 

FRIGHT FEST #5: The Night of the Wolf - Frank Belknap Long

So far in this Fright Fest of supernatural mystery reviews we've had ghosts, demons, vampires and zombie kittens (sort of ), haunted houses, animated skeletons, and macabre murders.  It was only a matter of time before I found a werewolf novel.  This one comes from the pen of Lovecraft acolyte and Arkham House refugee Frank Belknap Long.  Last time I reviewed a novel by Long it was Journey into Darkness that I whipped through while I was waiting for my panel to be called for jury duty back in 2011. That book is a weird, rambling, science fiction/horror novel that spent several pages discussing Jungian archetypes and the collective unconsciousness as well as the work of psychoanalyst and sexologist Wilhelm Reich.  So I was prepared for yet another rambling book from Long that would no doubt be filled with tangential or superfluous passages.  I was pleasantly surprised that it is a straightforward B movie on paper. The incident-filled story takes place within a single day (beginning around noon and ending in the hours after midnight) and easily could have served as the treatment for a 1970s TV movie.

The Night of the Wolf (1972)  opens with an over-the-top depiction of the slaughter of nearly an entire household.  Someone or some thing has beaten and clawed Margrave (no first name ever given), an archeologist colleague of our narrator John (no last name given). Later four more victims are found in various places around Margrave's home. Anne the maid, one of the victims, manages to utter a few bone-chilling sentences before succumbing to her gruesome wounds: "It was --it was not human.  I saw--it.  It  was--some kind of animal..."

The survivors --two men and two women-- band together to find this "some kind of animal" and kill it.  In the meantime the sheriff is called to start a murder investigation and gather up all the corpses. His police department is too small of staff to handle several grisly murders that he is sure are the work of an escaped madman. Therefore, he promises to deputize as many men as he can and set up a dragnet surrounding Margrave's home. This of course will provide Long with more victims to be mauled with gallons of blood sure to spill before the final pages.

As the back cover blurb already gives away one of the surprises I'll mention that Margrave and John are responsible for unleashing this beast.  Margrave is in possession of an artifact that John was unaware of his bringing back from their dig at a Bulgarian cave several months ago. Doris Margrave, the dead archeologist's daughter, tells of a visit from a mystery man who claims to have known her father. Two days prior to her father's murder this visitor had a heated argument with her father. The visitor named Ruschna vowed that the house will go up in flames and all will perish if the artifact which belongs to him is not returned. One of the women then spends much of the book (offstage and we only learn of this second hand in the final chapter) tearing apart the house looking for this artifact. You'd think John and Dan Shields, a house guest of Margrave's, would immediately look for the artifact and return it to prevent further violence and death, but they have to rescue Doris who is abducted by the wolf-like creature.

Before the climax involving the rescue of Doris from a cave by the seashore, there will be a near drowning, two more beast attacks, the recovery of a wolf-headed staff most likely used as a murder weapon, an arson attempt, a road accident involving a weasel, and several sightings of a half man/half wolf creature whose lower body resembles a dwarfish human. It sounds like an action oriented thriller, but sadly most of the book consists of long dull passages of talk, talk, talk. John enjoys ruminating about everything from his love of Doris (often) to the psychic manifestations of Eastern Europeans. Exchanges between Dan and John are often inexplicably repetitive. This I ascribe to Long's past life as a penny-a-word "fictioneer." Old habits dies hard, for sure. Those pulp writers learned to drag out their stories with overly descriptive passages and circuitous dialogue just to pad out the story in order to make more money.

The Night of The Wolf is part of a series of nine paperback originals published by Popular Library between 1972 and 1973 that supposedly pay homage to the Universal Pictures classic monster movies of the 1930s and early 1940s. Populated with vampires, reanimated corpses, Central American mummies, witches, she-demons and other supernatural creatures the "Frankenstein Horror Series" books are cult collectibles now. Many of them are incredibly hard to find. Those that are available for sale from online dealers tend to be exorbitantly priced. But if you dig deep you may find a handful of these titles for under $15 which is the only sane price for any of these somewhat mediocre 70s horror novels.

FRIGHT FEST #4: The Shadow Guest - Hillary Waugh

In the 1970s there was an explosion of Gothic suspense novels mostly appearing in mass market paperbacks. You didn't have to go to a bookstore to find any of them, you could buy these book in Woolworth's, local drug stores, newsstands and train station book stalls. They were ubiquitous. To some extent they still are as I find them by the dozens at library fundraising sales, used bookstores and estate sales.  The stories were even more formulaic than traditional detective novels with the exception of the addition of supernatural or quasi-supernatural incidents. In the better neo-Gothics the supernatural events are genuine but in the majority of them they are always rationalized.  The formula can be summed up in a quip that is attributed to Donald E. Westlake (or was it Elmore Leonard? or Mike Avallone? or who?) that goes like this: "A gothic is a book where the girl gets the house."

In The Shadow Guest (1971) Hillary Waugh inverts the entire formula by first making the lead character and narrator a man. Howard Whelan, a successful architect, finds himself in charge of a large building project in England. He takes his new bride Angela with him to London. He hopes her odd depressive persona will come to life in a new setting. Back in New York she was under the care of a psychiatrist who approves of a new setting as part of her recuperation. Angela is the woman in peril of the novel, but as she is not the narrator  and we see her only through her husband’s eyes the story is unusual and rises above the standard neo-Gothic.

Waugh even starts his book with an homage to a HIBK narrator. Many sentences in the opening paragraph start "If only I had..." The terrible things we are about to read about might never have occurred if Howard had seen everything the way it really was. I smiled at this opening paragraph and dismissed it as a semi-parody of the entire genre. Big mistake. Howard was telling the truth and the reader really should be paying attention to how the story unfold.

Cliffside home reminiscent 
of the Whelan's house
(© William Dax/SWNS)

Shortly after they arrive in England Howard has a heart attack. His doctor tells him he has been working too hard and stress led to his attack. He loses leadership over his project, is told to take a hiatus from work. It is even suggested that he leave London and find a home far away from hectic urban life. Angela is excited to look for a new home and she finds one in a lonely house built by a forlorn seacoast. With much cajoling and prodding Howard gives in to her desire to move in to Heather Cottage. The girl gets the house, just as we expect, and very early on. But not without a load of trouble.

Because -- of course -- Heather Cottage is a house with a past. Soon Angela is seeing visions, hearing horrible sounds, and is drawn to a ghostly apparition that appears in the yard outside. But Howard also sees the apparition and hears the terrible sounds. He does his best to assuage her fears.  But if he is also seeing and hearing these supposed hallucinations is there a real ghost at work? One night they hear what sounds like a car crash but when they go out to explore they find no sign of a car wreck.  All the more disturbing because they know that a few years ago a car came careening down the hill above their house and smashed through a guardrail plummeting over the cliff and ending in a fiery crash on the rocky shore below. Are the Whelans being haunted by that crash and is the apparition a ghost of one of the crash victims?

Waugh tells a creepily effective and engaging story loaded with suspense.  Nearly everyone they meet has some inside dope on Heather Cottage's previous occupants or something about the horrible car crash. Slowly but surely we are provided with just enough information to keep reading in order to find out what actually happened. Questions were flooding my mind as I tore through this book. Did someone survive that crash? Is there a bizarre vendetta taking place? And why?

Added to the weird haunting and the riddle of the car crash is Beverly Gaines, the Whelan's young housekeeper, who may have a psychic power. The first day at Heather Cottage she is frightened by a vision in the sitting room and flees in terror. It takes some time to calm her down and when she re-enters the house it's as if nothing ever happened. She has no memory of being frightened or seeing anything strange. When Howard questions some of the locals about Beverly he discovers she is shunned because of her deadly premonitions. She had a similar vision on the road where the car crash happened. Howard is warned that if Beverly saw something in their house they should be careful because it is a sure sign that someone will die there soon.

Then there is the mysterious painter who lives in a house on the hill above the Whelan’s new home. He is reclusive, distrustful of almost everyone, and won't allow anyone in his home. Howard meets him in an odd scene that leaves the reader thinking something very strange is up with the hermit-like artist.

The rear cover of my paperback edition of The Shadow Guest  quotes a newspaper review that states "...At no point does the enthralled reader have the slightest suspicion about the horrendous climax." For once, that's no exaggeration. When the utterly unexpected twist occurred I shouted aloud, "WHAT?!" It is a near brilliant achievement.  Although the ending seems rushed and overloaded with twists and double twists, all is explained cleverly and succinctly. It was all there if we -- like Howard -- had only been paying attention to what was actually happening.

As the only example I know of a neo-Gothic told from a male viewpoint that simultaneously subverts and pays homage to all the conventions and motifs of this genre The Shadow Guest succeeds magnificently. I was truly impressed with this book. Waugh was so successful with this book he went on to write a small batch of true Gothic novels that were published under his female pseudonym "Elissa Grandower."  I also read The Secret Room of Morgate House (1977) to see if he was as innovative with the genre. Sadly, it's too much of a clone of the hundreds of books that cling to the Gothic suspense formula. The Shadow Guest because it basically is an inversion of a neo-Gothic is far more original, innovative and --dare I say it?-- ingenious in its conception.

FRIGHT FEST #3: House Party Murders - Edgar Allan Poe, Jr.

THE STORY:  Wayne Schofield is planning a house party for his friends at his estate in Wilmington, Delaware. But business takes precedence and he heads to Philadephia leaving his friends to set up and instruct the servants on what to do. Little does Wayne know that two of the servants hired are imposters, thieves looking to rob the guests when time is appropriate. Also, among his closest friends two marriages are on the rocks and philandering lovers are in attendance providing ample opportunity for jealous rages to be unleashed.  When Jack Skinner, Wayne's business partner, gets the feeling that the butler who speaks like an extra from a gangster movie is not the real McCoy he confronts the imposter and violence erupts.  Soon the house party guests are not only dealing with flowing champagne and high spirits but exploding bullets and flying knives.

THE CHARACTERS:  The first few chapters are overloaded with detailed exposition about the bed hopping quintet of main suspects. Hope and Jack Skinner are having marital difficulties. Hope is spending a lot of time with handsome, much younger, Ed Fitzhugh who is dreaming that Hope will divorce her husband and marry him.  Hope previously was with Sam Davis, Ed's best friend, who quickly tired of her and passed her off to Ed. Jack in the meantime has taken up with Rose Whitcombe who previously was with Sam.  Rose bizarrely is jealous of Hope who is now with Ed. Oh! and Ed and Jack look amazingly alike. They could be twin brothers. This of course will come into to play later on.

It was dizzying trying to keep all of this straight in my head. And while all this was being related Poe Junior decided to add another level of libido gone wild in the person of Carmen Yakatchie, a barmaid at The Black Cat Tavern. Carmen is described as the daughter of Romanian immigrants with gypsy blood. This un-PC term should signal to the reader Carmen is saddled with fraught emotions like easily triggered anger and jealousy. She vows to kill Ed and even fires a rifle at his car as he leaves the Black Cat after formally ending his affair with Carmen. If this sounds like a ridiculous soap opera that's because it is!  But have no fear the mystery elements are cleverly inserted into the storyline in several unexpected inverted detective novel styled narrative sections.

For the bulk of the novel the reader is in on lots of shifty goings-on, Poe Junior's way of creating suspense while also adding layers of deception and guilt to the busy storyline. We know about the two thieves who abduct the servants, tie them up, and assume their identities in order to rob the Schofiled home.  We know about Rose breaking into Wayne's study looking for an incriminating and embarrassing letter that she fears he will use to blackmail her. We know about Jack confronting the phony butler called "Bull" Bogart.  And we watch as Jack fires a gun at Bogart who was attacking him while at the same time another gun goes off followed shortly by a knife whizzing through an open second story window barely missing Jack's neck and sticking into the wall behind him.  [Knife throwing! Three characters are found to have this carnival skill.  For more about my favorite crime novel plot motif see this post.]

But wait -- there's more! Bogart is shot dead and Jack hides the body and dreams up an excuse for the missing servant. We watch him do all of this too. But his plan never really is carried out as he imagined. Someone interrupts him and later another character literally stumbles onto Jack's body outside in a remote part of the estate. He's been stabbed with a knife that Rose found in the study but which we know she put back into the top drawer of the desk. And right next to Jack is Bogart's body. What? Inspector Grimes must discover how Bogart was shot then dumped beside Jack. We know (and eventually Grimes will figure it out) that Jack hid Bogart's body in a clothes closet in Wayne's study where he shot the fake butler.  This is also the same study where Rose was looking for the letter and found the weird knife with a handle shaped like a woman's leg that is found in Jack's back. Who got into the study, took the knife and stabbed Jack? And how did Bogart's body get from the closet inside to outside the house next to Jack?

Whew! All this in only 63 pages. It's up to Inspector Grimes and his small cadre of diligrnt policemen to make sense of all the chaos.

INNOVATIONS: What I found most intriguing is how Poe Junior blended together the techniques of an author omniscient, inverted crime novel with the traditional narrative elements of a whodunit.  The first half is teeming with criminal behavior -- characters covering up crime scenes, moving corpses and what have you -- and as soon as Grimes appears on the scene the entire book shifts into a traditional detective novel. It's been several years since I've read such a clever tightly plotted book which at first seems chaotic and convoluted but turns out to be rather straightforward.  Close reading will allow the prominent clues to rise to the surface while the red herrings sink down into the murk. There is a lot of deception as you might imagine and the reader needs to watch for who is lying about their actions and whereabouts.

Artwork by Dean Spencer ©2022

As the author is supposedly related to the Master of the Macabre I expected this story to have some kind of homage to The Real E.A.P.  I guess including a bar called The Black Cat Tavern was a wink-wink kind of allusion.  I was ready to give up hoping for something more suited for a Poe story when around the halfway mark there is indeed a weird vignette. Turns out Wayne has devised a Halloween-like prank and hidden it in an abandoned well.  This is near a gazebo where he plans to escort all the guests for a late night meal and drinks.  I won't go into detail about this as it comes as a real surprise, but rest assured it is utterly bizarre and gruesome. Ultimately it is also utterly superfluous as it has nothing to do with the main story! When the machinery of the prank is engaged the bodies of the murdered characters are discovered and the prank is practically forgotten about. Prior to this happening the party approaches something like the hedonistic revelry in "Hop-Frog" and "The Masque of the Red Death.” But perhaps I was reaching for as many Poe allusions as I could.  Still, the requisite grotesquerie does appear. Poe would, I think, approve.

The House Party Murders (1940) is very much informed of action thrillers and at times has some ingeniously devised cinematic scenes.  I particularly liked a Hitchcockian bit. When Rose is finishing up her rifling of the desk she is interrupted by a knock at the door. She ducks down under the desk. The door we know from a few paragraphs previous has a lock that jams and the person who knocked tries to enter but can't get in due to the door knob malfunctioning. Then Rose look up and sees a face reflected in the glass of a framed photograph. There is someone outside looking into the study. She thinks she recognizes the face, but it quickly fades from view. It was like a screenplay moment.  Brilliant touch! Poe Junior has several other similarly concocted scenes that are almost like tightly framed and edited movie shots.

THE DJ: Took me a while to realize that the details in the DJ illustration are 100% accurate to a scene in the book where one of the woman characters also finds Jack's body. I added a close-up photo to show that the artist actually made the knife have a leg shaped handle.  A shoe is superfluously added, I think, to underscore the leg shape idea. But it is a naked woman's leg as described in the text, with no shoe. Also I'm sure the leg should be the other way around -- with the foot facing outward not meeting the blade.

EASY TO FIND?  A handful of copies turn up for sale on various bookselling sites, many with the intriguing dust jacket. My copy was for sale…sold within a single day after this post appeared. Happy hunting!

FRIGHT FEST #2: Veils of Fear - Vivian Meik

The "Creeps" series of books published by Phillip Allan during the 1930s are legendary books among supernatural fiction collectors, all are highly elusive and consequently exorbitantly priced if one is lucky to come across one in the antiquarian book trade. Comprised of short story anthologies by lesser known pulp magazine writers, sporting one word titles like Nightmares, Shudders and Terrors to name a few, they were compiled mostly by Charles Birkin who included his own work under the pseudonym Charles Lloyd in nearly every volume. A select few supernatural novels published by Philip Allan have also come to be included in the "Creeps" series as they were published contemporaneously with the short story collections.  Three novels by Vivian Meik have been deemed to be part of this series among them Veils of Fear (1934), a sequel of sorts to his first novel (actually a series of linked short stories) Devils' Drums.

Meik's second novel like Devils' Drums features Colonel Geoffrey Aylett and Father Jan Vaneken who have done battle with other worldly forces having teamed together in Africa where they learned the superstitions and primitive rituals of the local people.  In Veils of Fear reporter Neil Martyn is sent to Aylett to capture a story that will increase circulation in his struggling newspaper.  When Martyn reports back to his editor he is told the story cannot be published because it is too fantastic to be believed as fact. Martyn then produces a photograph of the subject of the story, an Indian mystic called Ashraf Daiye, and the sinister visage within the photograph begins to animate. The photograph shivers and shudders and the face seems to bulge out of the film as if the subject was trying to escape from a photographic prison.  Martyn's editor succumbs to a fatal hypnotic force and within minutes is dead.

The reporter feels compelled to return to Aylett and demands an explanation.  Soon he finds himself recruited in a international adventure that will take him from England to India to remote regions of Java and Bali. Accompanying him are a trio of occult detectives of sorts -- Aylett, his wife Joan, and the Dutch priest Vaneken. Together all four try to break through the three veils that separate this world from a demonic world controlled by a superhuman force personified as an evil Portuguese mage.

The novel is an odd mix of macabre incidents incorporating a vividly macabre imagination and intellectual lectures on everything from religion to the history of prehistoric weapons.  The supernatural incidents of course are the highlights of the novel and consist of weird manifestations, inter-dimensional travel, astral projection, and terrifying encounters with powerful mind controlling entities both human and non-human.  All of these adventures culminate in a climax of horribly tortuous murder, dismemberment and cannibalism. Meik uses his knowledge (gathered from his many world travels) of Indian, Tibetan and South Pacific Island cults that practice black magic rites to give the novel a verisimilitude not often found in similar supernatural works of this era.

Detail from a Balinese folk painting
showing mythic figures

I did find some comparisons with the work of Sax Rohmer whose fascination with the sinister Orient of pre- and post-WW1 eras turns up repeatedly in his supernatural fiction. Many of Rohmer's villains are powerful sorcerers whose greatest talent is the ability to control human minds, a recurrent motif in Veils of Fear.

Also worth mentioning are similarities to Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos tales populated with fastastical non-human beings from the Elder World and other dimensions that invade our reality with the intent to replace mankind with their own presence.  In one sequence an amorphous non-human thing attacks the quartet of adventurers drawn to some spilled blood but bizarrely ends up caught in mosquito netting and miraculously is trapped within its mesh.  Previous to this scene Father Vaneken had delivered a lecture of the superiority of nets as one of the finest inventions of weaponry and entrapment.  It beggars belief, but is done with such conviction it is almost convincing.

Father Vaneken, the most skilled in doing battle with these forces and creatures, has one final weapon at his disposal which he saves for their ultimate battle with Da Souza, the superhuman demonic force.  Ironically, it is a simple sliver of wood with which he managed to capture the spirit of Khalil Pasha, an evil dwarf who turns out to be one the guardians of the veils.  It is the source of the wood that gives the sliver its power over all the entities they encounter.  For the sliver has come from the cross upon which Jesus Christ was crucified. 

Vivian Meik, circa 1940s

Thus, the novel reminds us of the perennial battle between the forces of good and evil. In fact, at one point Father Vaneken says: "But listen we are not interested in [generic immorality].  That is a symptom -- we seek the cause. Greater than this immorality--mostly drink-sodden animalism grossly misapplied--is the real evil. [...] Intrinsic evil as opposed to inherent good." Also we are reminded that sacrifices must be made in these life or death battles. Someone pays the ultimate price, of course.  Because someone must always pay.

Veils of Fear is a notoriously scarce book though remarkably there are currently three copies for sale from various online bookselling sites. None of them come with the ultra rare dust jacket shown at the top of this post.  I owned a copy of this book (with a fully intact DJ) for over two decades and finally read it three days ago.  Then I sold it over this past weekend and was amazed that the individual paid the full asking price without making an offer for a lower priced deal. I have a feeling it may soon be reprinted based on the information I culled about the purchaser.  There's hope for fans of long lost supernatural fiction. Soon you all may be able to read this unique and thoroughly nightmarish work. 

FRIGHT FEST #1: The Death Fire - Lilian Bennet-Thompson & George Hubbard

This month I'll be reviewing a small batch of supernatural mysteries and thrillers as part of this Halloween season. Usually I do one single post tagged Halloween Special (sometimes two), but I pulled a bunch of books to sell, read them prior to listing them, and coincidentally they all had Halloween themes of sorts. To start this Fright Fest off I've chosen what I think is the epitome of the weird menace mystery novel.

"Was there to be no end to the fantastic horror of this thing? Like those of some giant octopus, the tentacles of mystery kept whipping out first in one direction, then in another, clinging and tightening their hold with every effort that was made to loosen them!" - from Chapter 24,"The Fiend"

The Death Fire (1929) not only is the earliest of this small batch of thrillers it also exemplifies a type of story that became a staple of pulp magazines in the 1930s. In fact, there were a slew of magazines that specialized in the "weird menace" story like Dime Detective, Ten Detective Aces and Strange Detective Stories. Weird menace stories deal with ostensibly supernatural events and bizarre crimes that may or may not also feature supernatural creatures and legends. Excessive violence and scenes of torture often were also conventions of these stories. Almost always the supernatural events and creatures will turn out to be rationalized. Many of these stories can be likened to the ghostbusting tales and novels about occult detectives who do battle with otherworldly phenomena and creatures who often have a knowledge of arcane lore. I guess you might also draw analogies to the popular Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? cartoons of the 1970s in which the ghosts and weird creatures always turn out to be elaborate fakes with mechanical ingenuity accompanying the supposed hauntings. Real estate greed or fraud almost always turned out to be the motive of the haunting in the Scooby-Doo cartoons.

Bennet & Thompson, a writing duo who mostly specialized in westerns and western romances, wrote three weird menace detective serials (The Beak of Death and The Golden Ball are the other two) for Detective Story Magazine in the late 1920s which eventually were all published as books by Chelsea House, the book publishing arm of Street & Smith magazines. The Death Fire, originally serialized in 1927, became a book in 1929. It's the grandest of Grand Guignol novels they wrote and features a house haunted by a ghostly presence known as The Lady of the Mist.  She appears on the grounds of a cliffside home near the eastern coast of New York and her manifestations occur just after the appearance of an eerie blue light emanating from the foggy coastline.  Jimmy Clyde, a detective, and his friend Dr. Meredith travel to Cragwood to investigate. Cragwood is the mansion built by David Courtney, a psychic researcher who spent his lifetime investigating real and fraudulent supernatural events. Though long dead Courtney's influence and fascination with psychic phenomena have infected the household. Even the butler has become a true believer for he has seen things he cannot explain.

At the start of the novel Courtney's son Douglas is bedridden with a strange ulcer on his throat. Dr. Meredith has been consulted as he has an expertise in cancers, though everyone hopes that Douglas' wound is not so serious. Douglas refuses to leave his bedroom or the estate as he is fearful for his life and that of his sister Alice, who he bears a close resemblance to. Alice has also grown fearful of the weird events surrounding their home. Her fiance Tony was distracted by the vision of the Lady of the Mist one evening weeks ago and ended up driving his car off the cliff and died in a fiery crash. So already there is one death ascribed to the haunting.

The book is filled with incidents, they pile up on one another quickly until Clyde and Meredith are practically swimming in strange and eerie events. All of the dogs kept in a kennel for hunting have mysteriously died, a swarm of rats invaded Douglas' bedroom (the possible cause of his throat injury), a pool of blood weirdly manifests itself on the floor at the base of the grand staircase though no one seems to have been anywhere around, a black cat that was harassing Alice is poisoned but suddenly reappears after it was killed and buried, and finally Alice has been attacked in her sleep. Two puncture marks are found on her throat. Uh oh...  Everyone knows what that means.

The sheer number of manifestations and weird phenomena is to be marveled at.  Clyde and Meredith may initially be puzzled, but each of them is determined to discover what human agency is responsible for the haunting of Cragwood.  Meredith with his medical science background learns that Douglas' wound despite routine treatment with antibiotics and careful dressing is getting worse and seems to be a horrible skin cancer not the result of an animal attack.  Clyde refuses to accept ghosts and manifestations and suspects only human hands at work.  That is, until one night when the peculiar secretary Varlam, a Russian immigrant known to wander the grounds at night even during a thunderstorm, is discovered in a tomb with an apparently sleepwalking Douglas.  The two of them are armed with a pickaxe, wooden mallets and a sharpened stake, even a gun with silver tipped bullets. Clyde tells Meredith that the two truly believed that a vampire was after Alice. The word nosferatu is tossed around puzzling everyone but Clyde. He has knowledge of Eastern European legends which I'm sure he learned by going to the silent cinema. Or at least the authors must have been silent movie fans. No coincidence that Murnau's movie with its English translated intertitles was popular in theaters around the time this story was first published. 

Eventually all is explained in a very lengthy revelation scene. It should come as no surprise that Cragwood is riddled with secret passages. After all, the owner and builder David Courtney needed special hidden rooms in which to spy on the mediums he invited to his home in order to unmask them as frauds.  After discovering a secret panel the detective team follow some labyrinthine corridors into the basement of Cragwood where they discover all the machinery and equipment that created each and every manifestation.  At this point I got a major Scooby-Doo vibe. Still, this was the template for weird menace decades before that cartoon was even a figment in the animators' minds. Bennet-Thomspon and Hubbard get gold stars for their elaborately designed ghostly machinery. 

Even now The Death Fire with its abundance of incident dominated by freakishly weird events make for a helluva read. Clearly inspired by 19th century sensation fiction and Gothic masterpieces of the same era Bennet-Thompson and Hubbard have left us with the quintessential weird menace thriller of the 20th century.  It's definitely worth seeking out. For if you read this novel as an example of weird menace, then I guarantee that you've read them all.

Anyone interested in savoring this phantasmagorical pulp novel can buy my copy which is listed here.  Three other copies are for sale at other online bookselling sites and all of them are extremely affordable ranging in price from $15 - $25. 

FIRST BOOKS: Madam Will Not Dine Tonight - Hillary Waugh

THE STORY: Valerie King is having a dinner party. She's invited eight guests, among them Sheridan Keith Wesley, a private detective. Included in Wesley's invitation is a $100 retainer.  He's being hired to attend the party...and do what, he wonders?  When he arrives he discovers a motley group of people none of whom claim to know one another.  But although all the guests showed up, their hostess did not.  Wesley and his wife Diane decide to do a tour of the grounds and they find Valerie's naked body in a remote forested area, her clothing torn and shredded all around her. She has been brutally stabbed and is very dead.

THE CHARACTERS: Madam Will Not Dine Tonight (1947) ultimately is the story of a blackmailer.  This is no real spoiler for it's discovered rather quickly that Valerie King gathered all her guests at the dinner party to reveal all their secrets. Shortly after the discovery of Valerie's body Wesley and the police open up a safe in her study and find all sorts of thing one wouldn't ordinarily stow away in a locked safe. Among the items are a framed photograph of two young men dating back to the late 1920s, a pile of letters, and a marriage license. Wesley figures that he was hired to make sure Valerie was protected from harm at the party. But someone caught onto to her plans much more quickly than she had thought out.

The suspects are quite a bunch of oddballs with some of them rather reprehensible.  The guests at the party eventually become the prime suspects and include: James Godfrey, a criminal lawyer who loves to talk about classic painters and their work; Gloria Van Ryne, a contemptible young woman living in the fast lane with a rap sheet for public drunkenness and illegal gambling who thinks she's above everyone else in the world; Charley Cromwell,  described as a "22 year -old playboy and heir to millions"; Jimmy Burns, a gossip columnist with zero journalistic ethics who stops at nothing to get the story he wants; the Webbs, husband & wife servants, who claim to know nothing of their employer Valerie King; the Webb’s suicidal son in love with Valerie; and a middle-aged couple, the Hammits — the husband in "big steel",  the wife a complacent theater fan recently having seen Harvey — seem to be completely innocuous until Wesley finds an incriminating photo that uncovers deep dark secrets

Wesley and his wife are a likeable duo and it's clear they are yet another married couple in a long line of cocktail loving, smart aleck husband & wife teams all of whom descend from the movie versions of Nick and Nora Charles.  I couldn't get Myrna Loy out of my head every time Diana was in a scene with her husband. Her obsession with mixing drinks and cracking wise only underscored the Nora Charles analogy. Thankfully, by the midpoint all this nonsense disappears. It's fun and light-hearted to be sure, and Waugh's sense of humor is often bitingly witty, but it's hardly original. By the mid-1940s nearly every husband and wife sleuthing team from Pam and Jerry North to Jeff and Haila Troy to the suburban dullards created by Theodora DuBois (can't even remember their names) were all like this. It was only the final chapter during which Sheridan Wesley shows his intensely creative and thoroughly underhanded ingenuity that rescued this novel from being only mildly entertaining with a handful of interesting scenes.

INNOVATIONS: The most exciting part of this mystery novel can't be discussed in a review. Well, not in too much detail. Waugh inserted one of his most obvious clues early in the novel, but never returns to it until the final chapter.  He drops this clue in a casual manner but the action described is so obvious to any diehard mystery fan that it sticks out blatantly. This casual action of Sheridan Wesley's while he is examining the murdered woman's study clearly signifies an oft-used mystery novel plot motif.  I made a note of it immediately and kept waiting for the bomb to drop.  It never does until the final chapter.

The plot motif was already a cliche by the time Waugh's novel was published having turned up multiple times throughout the 1920s and 1930s in now classic mystery novels by such people as Ellery Queen (several times in both novels and stories), John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh.  I'm sure there are dozens of books by obscure writers that employed this plot gimmick, too. What makes Waugh's usage of such a cliche so innovative is the sly manner in which he has Wesley broach the topic while he is questioning all the suspects. Without ever once mentioning this aspect (basically a personality trait) he manages through clever questions to eliminate all but one person as the culprit. In the final chapter Wesley explains how he managed to bring up the topic and do it uniquely and subtly in each of his shared interrogations with Captain Slocum. I was flabbergasted at how this was accomplished using the "fair play" technique, completely unaware that Wesley, throughout the entire book, was very busy rooting out the one person with this trait. Waugh deserves a standing ovation for this aspect alone. For a writer's first detective novel it displays a truly stunning example of clever detective work.

THE AUTHOR:  Hillary Waugh (1920-2008) was born in Connecticut where he lived for most of his life. He graduated from Yale with a degree in art and upon graduation served in the Naval Air Corps during the final three years of WW2. While in the Navy he wrote and published Madam Will Not Dine Tonight. He went on to write two more private eye mystery novels featuring Sheridan Wesley then slowly moved away from standard P.I. mystery novels to suspense and police procedurals usually set in the suburbs of Connecticut, New York and other East Coast states. All of his books employ fair play techniques and some are stunningly plotted. His other best known series detective is Fred Fellows, a chief of police in a mythical Connecticut town, who appeared in eleven mystery novels. Waugh’s stand-alone detective novel Last Seen Wearing is considered a cornerstone in 20th century detective fiction.  It has been named as #12 of the best police procedurals ever written by the Crime Writer's Association and #6 in best police procedurals by the Mystery Writers of America (MWA). Last Seen Wearing was recently reprinted in the Library of Congress Crime Classics imprint series. While his fiction was never once nominated for an Edgar nevertheless Waugh received an Edgar nomination for non-fiction writing in 1991 for his textbook Hillary Waugh's Guide to Mysteries and Mystery Writing. He won the Grand Master Award from the MWA in 1989. Waugh was also the President of the MWA during 1969. And from 1971-1973 he served as First Selectman in his chosen hometown of Guilford, CT.  

MOONLIGHTERS - Lesley Frost, the Poet's Daughter

Part of discovering so-called forgotten writers and their books is that the discovery is actually more of a recovery. These books already exist and the people who wrote them may have been forgotten by the mystery reading public but often they are actually renowned. Witness Lesley Frost, whose only foray into adult mystery writing is Murder at Large. At the time of the book's publication she was known as a former employee of the Publisher's Association, an airplane factory worker during the summer and fall of 1918, and spent six months in the Hampshire Bookshop in Northampton, Massachusetts. All this according to an author bio sketch on the rear flap of the DJ for her first novel.  She also mentions that she opened her own bookstore in Pittsfield (also in Massachusetts) in 1924.  Her only book prior to the murder mystery was Come Christmas (1929), "a delightful anthology of Christmas songs, carols, poetry, prose and drama." But I don't think she was ever forgotten to many.  She was, after all, the eldest surviving child of America's renowned Poet Laureate, four time Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry, the one and only Robert Frost.

But let's get to this rather remarkable and utterly forgotten detective novel. Murder at Large (1932) is first and foremost noteworthy for it's eerie similarities to a novel that would not appear for another seven years, one that would dominate mysterydom as a rule breaking, seminal work. Often imitated but never surpassed that book is And Then There Were None (1939).  I was astounded by the similarities in Frost's archly satiric and sophisticated murder mystery which in addition to an innovative plot is chockful of literary allusions from Shakespeare to Kipling, from Euripedes to S. S. Van Dine. She seemed to have prophesied Christie's novel in a completely different fashion as the skeletal framework of Bristow & Manning's The Invisible Host (1930) seemed to prophesy Christie's story of ten murderers who escaped justice and are doomed to be executed while they struggle to survive on a remote island.

Though Frost's host is hardly an anonymous voice imparting doom from a record player there is nevertheless a Judge present in the story. He is, in fact, the host of a similar dinner party. Bertrand Whittaker plans to expose a group of murderers by publishing his private diary in which he details the identities of seven different criminals and the murders they got away with. Shortly after reading out a passage in which he embarrasses one guest by pointing out his connections to gangsters the lights go out and the diary is stolen. Only hours later, someone is found stabbed to death. But surprisingly it is not Judge Whittaker. It is one of the guests. That one murder sets in motion a decimation plot as one by one guests begin to vanish or turn up dead, all done in by an efficient and clever murderer who uses a variety of brutal methods.

Though these guests are not housebound they are on an island -- Long Island, NY to be specific. As the bodies are discovered all over the house and grounds the level of fear and paranoia is handled almost as deftly and frighteningly as the Grand Dame did herself in her own version of a now overused plot motif. Two of the women characters have intriguingly presented solo chapters in which we get to see their nervous breakdowns and the aftermath of dealing with the exposure of their crimes. One of the women spends much of the book regretting her crime (she shot her fiancé because he wouldn't marry her even though she was pregnant), reliving her past and dwelling on it all morbidly.  It's all very similar to the way Vera Claythorne is plagued with guilt over the boy she let drown. 

 
One difference in Frost's book is that the police are summoned and descend upon the house. As they sort out who killed three guests in one hour and try to prevent further deaths (they don't -- three more die and one escapes death through sheer luck by the book's finale) the amateur sleuth Ordway Belknap does his best to guide the seemingly inept policemen headed by Lt. Det. Silas Berry and Sgt. Stebbins to the truth. Belknap is another Philo Vance clone, one of many who pop up in mystery fiction throughout the 1930s when Vance was the dominating amateur sleuth in popular culture. Erudite, condescending and inappropriately flippant in the face of violent death we are told in the very first sentence that Belknap is himself a former judge. Well, actually an ex-magistrate. He and Whitakker have not only a history in and out of the courtrooms they have a couple of secrets that several of the accused murderers are trying to uncover.

Though it may come across as a nightmarish thriller Murder at Large really does turn out to be a detective novel. Some fair play clueing turns up in some cleverly done passages and the book ends with a requisite twist in the finale, one perhaps that may not be too difficult to figure out by diehard detective novel fans.  Still, Frost manages to pull off the finale with panache and sardonic wit. The ultimate similarity to And Then There Were None will be found in the final pages which just like Christie's book comes from the writing of the judge character.  It is uncanny how much this book has in common with Agatha Christie's masterpiece. While not exactly on the same par for there are a couple of histrionic scenes, some stilted dialogue, and hand-wringing melodrama from the more hysterical characters, Murder at Large ought to be read by anyone who considers oneself a devotee of the Golden Age. I think it ought to be recognized for being more of a forerunner to Christie's seminal mystery than all the attention lavished on The Invisible Host which only has the anonymous host's voice on the record and several bizarre murders in common.  It's possible that Agatha read both books and took bits and pieces from both to come up with her own inimitable version.

Lesley Frost Francis Ballantine (1899-1983) was the oldest daughter of Robert Frost. Of his five children Lesley lived the longest. After the publication of her Christmas anthology and this murder mystery she turned to writing children's books and often lectured on English literature. Among her children's books are Digging Down to China, Not Really, and Going on Two. In 1969 she also published a memoir entitled New Hampshire's Child: The Derry Journals of Lesley Frost.  During WW2 she was named head of the U.S. Information Library in Madrid and 20 years later founded a Spanish language and culture school in La Granja where she had a home.  Most interestingly, in 1952 she co-founded a third national political party, the American Women's Party, meant to get women elected into policy-making positions in federal government. That same year she married her second husband Joseph Ballantine who was involved in foreign affairs in Asia. With her first husband she had two daughters: Elinor Wilber, a Connecticut state representative, and Dr. Lesley Francis. Lesley Frost died in Fairfield, CT at the age of 82.

EASY TO FIND?  There are several POD editions of Murder at Large offered for sale online.  I cannot vouch for any of these copies, most seem to be from Create Space, Amazon's POD service. One has an anime style illustration on the cover (rolling my eyes).  Three US 1st editions are offered online and priced a bit high despite the book's scarcity.

Listen, Please Listen - Naomi A. Hintze

Single mom Jo St. John is hiding from her past. Her real name is Darlene Heckart. Back in Missouri something happened when she was a teenager. Something bizarre and newsworthy. Books were written about her.  And her past pursued her to Chicago where she and her daughter were harassed. Nasty phone calls cam e almost nightly. Someone nailed a dead cat to their door. But now in Camelot, Connecticut with a new name and a second chance it seems she and Becca can start again. Will Jo's past catch up with her?

Listen, Please Listen (1973) begins as a domestic suspense novel with a heavy emphasis on the domestic side with detailed descriptions of daily routines, chit chat at the breakfast table, gossip about the daughter's friends, etc. etc. This is a typical novel of the 1970s overloaded with mundane minutiae and sprinkled with "hot topics" mentioned in passing to keep the book relevant, as they like to say these days. Among these side commentaries are passages about women's lib, male chauvinism, Native American abuses and retaliatory politics. The only really interesting aspect of the dull and plodding first half of the book is learning all about Jo's life as teenage Darlene and the dread secret she carries.

I have to mention this secret even though it came as something of a surprise despite the DJ blurb ineptly giving it all away in the first sentence. It has to be mentioned in order to discuss the book at all. And anyway that secret is revealed early on in a flashback. So here goes...

Darlene had telekinetic powers as a teen.

She was such a raging child that she consistently destroyed her home, both inside and out, with flying dishes and glasses, pelting stones, cracking windows and mirrors. Her religious zealot of a grandmother and her leering creepy uncle who were keeping her at home, basically imprisoned, because they would not have her attending a school that showed explicit sex education films, complained about the odd child and gossiped in town. Subsequently, the newspapers got a hold of the story and Darlene became headline news in her small Missouri town.

If this book actually had been about Darlene as a teen rather than Jo remembering her past via a flashback I think it would have been a lot more interesting. Certainly this entire flashback sequence which explains her powers, what happened to her house and her relatives, her meeting a 19 year-old newspaper reporter, her fleeing the house and subsequent shacking up with the reporter and eventual pregnancy are well written and often suspensefully told. But this amounts to a mere ten or so pages in a single chapter. 

I should have figured out that what Hintze was really after was a story of sins of the mother revisited on her child. Because --that's right -- the telekinetic disasters recur in her new Connecticut home.  At first Jo thinks this is her doing, but her landlady thinks that it's all Becca. She persuades Jo that her daughter has somehow inherited the mother's curse.

Simultaneously, Becca is going through a phase of teenage jealousy. Her friend Candy from her girl scout troop seems to be in competition with everyone. More disturbingly Candy flirts with Mr. Kenyon, the landlord of the boarding house where the St Johns live. Becca loves Mr K and sees him as a kindly grandfather figure. She can't stand Candy becoming overly familiar with the man. She sees Candy sitting in his lap and kissing him whenever he compliments or praises her. Is it possible that Becca is channeling her anger into telekinetic explosions with flying plates and glasses smashing against the walls?

The novel has one strength in that is is actually a cleverly disguised detective novel.  Jo cannot accept that Becca has inherited her curse.  She begins poking around and finds evidence that all of the phenomena were faked. Just as this plot point is beginning to resolve and Jo is planning to confront the culprit a shocking and violent death occurs.  I was totally unprepared for this in the final third of the book.  But I guess if I had been paying attention to subtle clues I would've been able to predict exactly who died so violently. And the entire book shifts focus, mood and intent. The two plot lines conveniently overlap and all is explained if a tad too contrived.

In the end the book is a mix of real and faked psychic phenomena and a unpalatable subplot (which I did manage to predict) that leads to the shocking death. The story resolves itself in a Grand Guignol fashion so common in books of this type published in the 1970s.  For all its piled on melodrama and shocks Listen, Please Listen fails to really carry off most of its intended thrills in our modern cynical times where such scandals and shameful secrets are commonplace.

Naomi A. Hintze (1909-1997) is best known for her debut suspense thriller which she does not seem ever to have topped. That book, You'll Like My Mother (1969), was nominated for an Edgar for Best Mystery.  It was also adapted into a claustrophobic and chilling movie starring Patty Duke, Richard Thomas and Rosemary Murphy. Another of her suspense novels Aloha Means Good-bye (1973) was also adapted into a TV movie in 1970s and starred Sally Struthers as a young woman pursued by a killer hired by an evil doctor who wants her heart for an organ transplant. Hintze's other four novels are a mix of occult, supernatural and suspense novels. After reading this book it was not surprising to learn that she was also a member of the American Society of Psychical Research and wrote a couple of non-fiction books on ESP and psychic phenomena. 

Of note, fans of Stephen King may be thinking this novel sounds like a rip-off of Carrie. A telekinetic teen living in a oppressive home with a religious zealot parental figure is too coincidental, right? However, Listen, Please Listen was published a full year before King's cult classic. Hintze ought to be congratulated for beating the soon-to-be multi-million bestselling author at his own game.