FFB: Thirteen Stannergate - G. M. Wilson

THE STORY:  Someone asks Kate Wheeler for directions to 13 Stannergate and though Kate has never been in this town before she somehow knows exactly where the house is and what it will look like. She can even describe the way house looked decades ago, long before she was born -- from the ivy on the outer walls to the wallpaper in the previously locked and shuttered attic. It's that attic that Kate is drawn to, it's been renovated and waiting for a new lodger. She is compelled to rent the room for her new home. But Kate seems to remember something about the window that she dare not go near, let alone touch. And who was Miss Joanna she seems to think was in the room? Is Kate the reincarnation of a former occupant of the room -- a maidservant from the 19th century who committed suicide by throwing herself out the window?

THE CHARACTERS: Thirteen Stannergate (1958) is the third book in a series of supernaturally tinged detective novels featuring G.M. Wilson's pair of policemen -- John Crawford (a prototype of Fox Mulder) and Inspector Lovick (the skeptical Dana Scully of the duo) -- who have an uncanny knack of uncovering weird crimes with seemingly paranormal events surrounding them. "More spooks!" Lovick scoffs yet again. Not at all what he needs ever since he dealt with a haunted mansion and a cursed fireplace poker that killed without any human agency (Bury That Poker, 1957). Lovick is not at all convinced that Kate has some psychic connection with the past occupants of the house and is sure she has seen photographs of the place or visited it before despite all her protestations to the contrary. When Kate has a near fatal accident falling out the same window in the attic she dare not go near. A mere fall or was she pushed? Richard Clare, who bears a striking resemblance to his ancestor Charles, was in the room with Kate when she fell. Witnesses claim he pushed her while he says he was trying to pull her away from the window. The story enters the realm of the eerie when we slowly learn the story of Charles, the maid Alice, and Miss Joanna and the love triangle that led to Alice's death. Charles apparently was responsible. Kate is not only convinced she is the reincarnation of Alice but that Richard is the new form of Charles and that they are doomed to repeat the past.

The house at Stannergate is packed to the roof with oddballs and suspicious types. There's Mr. Geddes the self professed "pedigree hunter" whose obsession with genealogical leads to his uncovering the complicated past of the Clare clan. Ancient Mrs. Clare, the invalid owner of the house has developed a maternal liking to Kate and may be changing her will in Kate's favor, but is wary of the girl's eerie powers and knowledge of the past.  Lee and Lucille Burney are a caustic married couple. He's a portrait painter and she's a direct descendant of the Clare family with an interest in keeping the house in her name. Kindly Miss Doveland is a spinsterish ex-schoolteacher who becomes Kate's guardian and confidante in her time of trouble. Lil Webster is the manager of the house who along with the usual cadre of gossipy servants provide all sorts of juicy tales about the boarders at 13 Stannergate. One of these people is a would be murderer who is determined to end Kate's life. Greed, jealousy or revenge - which of these is the murderer's motive? Will the police uncover the killer and prevent a second and fatal attempt on Kate's life?

INNOVATIONS: Wilson is masterful at creating tension and developing a creepy atmosphere in her detective novels. This has a very Gothic feel in the true sense of the word, absent of any HIBK trappings that could ruin the tone. Kate is only 19 years old but never comes across vapid like most of the ninny heroines one finds in neo-Gothic suspense novels. John Crawford is aware that Kate is unusual, that she may indeed have a sensitivity to the house's history, an extraordinary way of picking up cues from the past if not possessing an actual paranormal ability. He says anyone would be stupid not to admit that aspect of Kate's fragile mindset and her ability to drift in and out of the past and present so easily. Some of the characters, however, exploit this fact by managing to slyly manipulate the truth in order to make it appear that Kate is mentally ill. Lucille Burney, in particular, comes across as the most sinister of the boarders. For many chapters Wilson builds up a good case of Lucile being the guilty party. But it could never be that obvious ...or could it?

Unlike her previous two books (Bury the Hatchet and I Was Murdered) the element of supernatural in Thirteen Stannergate is not overt. The ambiguity surrounding Kate's apparently psychic powers and knowledge of events from the long past are always open to rational explanation. Until, that is, two uncanny events happen unexpectedly.

Unfortunately, Wilson has a tendency to have her detectives talk about the conventions of mystery novels in her books. I wish she didn't have Lovick say one sentence in this novel. Had he not uttered those words I would never have suspected one character. Because of that one stupid line the ending is fairly ruined. It's an act of self-sabotage that Wilson was probably unaware of. Or maybe she thought she was being clever with a double bluff. It didn't work with me, if that was her intent.

QUOTES:  "...one never knows what may be of use till one has uncovered it. That's one of the fascinations of [genealogical] research, the most enthralling by-ways to be explored at every turn with who can tell what treasure lying at the end of them."

Lucille Burney was a dangerous woman. Jealousy and spite lay very near that over-painted, over-powdered surface...

If Alice Dobson had committed suicide, then the impulse, the "badness" remaining in this room, had been directed towards self-destruction, and it was more than possible that Kate had been driven to attempt death in the same way. But if Alice had been murdered--

Murder waiting here in the hours of darkness... Murder perhaps not by a human hand, not even by a dead hand, but by an influence so powerful that it had created the physical sensations as well as the emotions of that [previous] tragedy. Once the borderline of normality was crossed, anything was possible.

EASY TO FIND? Sometimes I feel I should just skip this section. That's right. Another extremely scarce book. Apparently I bought one of only two copies available in the past two years. That second copy -- the one with the DJ shown above-- is now gone. Someone shelled out a lot of cash for that book, if I recall the listing properly. So sadly there are zero copies for sale from the usual online bookselling sites as of this writing. I suggest hitting up Worldcat.org and checking out library holdings.  Most of Wilson's books are not only difficult to find in used bookstores they seem to have vanished off the face of the Earth. I'd like to see all of them reprinted and would like to get a word out to Dean Street Press. Are you reading this, DSP?

A-Haunting We Will Go: Supernatural Elements in G. M. Wilson's Detective Novels

I have ghosts on my mind lately, as many of you probably can guess, so I thought I'd take the time to write up two effective examples of the use of ghosts and the supernatural in murder mysteries. G. M. Wilson, whose work I've discussed before, wrote books I find to be of striking originality. Her fascination for occult and eerie events shows up frequently -- sometimes ingeniously -- in her detective novels.

Through sheer luck I managed to come across a copy of Wilson's first attempt at a supernatural detective novel, an extremely scarce book to come by no matter where you live. Bury That Poker (1957) is not only her debut as a mystery novelist it is one of the rare examples of a detective novel that incorporates genuine supernatural content rather than a rationalized explanation of the ghost activity and hauntings. Quite aptly Wilson subtitles her book "A Detective Story in a Haunted House" and from the very first paragraph she sets up an ominous atmosphere:

It hung by the living-room fireplace, an ordinary domestic iron poker. Well, not ordinary, perhaps; its age alone lifted it out of the commonplace. [...] It's chief claim to distinction was the handle, which the maker--a grim Puritan craftsman with analogies of hell-fire on his mind--had hammered into the likeness of a grinning Satanic face.

How can you stop reading, right? A diabolic fireplace poker with a handle carved to resemble the face of Satan? Give me more, I say.

We then learn of the history of the poker and the horrible fate that befell the Venner family. A cursed object, the poker was used as a weapon in three murders, one of which was dubbed the "Cain and Abel" murder because the victim was named Abel and the killer was his brother. The poker continuess to hold power over anyone who comes in contact with it it. An old woman dying in prison summons inspector John Crawford in order to make a deathbed confession and mumbles something to him about a poker.  A painter named Paul who claims to have "psychometric ability" has flashbacks to the 17th century when he handles the poker.  Knowing all this about the poker the title begins to make a lot of sense. No one should have that horrible thing around their house.

Wilson manages to incorporate her usual crime in the past to complicate matters, all sorts of family secrets are dredged up, and a young girl who is triggering poltergeist activity figures in the intriguing plot. The detective aspects are very well done with some nicely imagined fair play clueing like the alarm clock in the attic business. Still as a first book it is not without some minor faults the most telling is her indecision about which of her policemen characters (Crawford and Lovick) she wants to be her leading man.

She wavers between the two as primary sleuths - Crawford acting as the Fox Mulder half of this duo being more willing to accept paranormal activity than the skeptical Lovick who can't be bothered with ghosts and poltergeist and cursed objects. Oddly, though Crawford is Lovick's equal he is treated almost like the brilliant amateur whose theories are dismissed if not entirely ignored. The strengths of the story lie in the intensity of Wilson's treatment of the supernatural sequences which are genuine and not fraudulent. The denouement of Bury That Poker is rather spinetingling. This is one book I'd like to see turned into a movie.

It Rained That Friday (1960) was her fifth detective novel and it is much more accomplished.  This time Wilson turns to the world of psychic phenomena rather than ghosts as the springboard for one of her more original and well thought plots. In the middle of a blistering summer Rose Todd sees and feels rain, autumnal weather and remembers a specific afternoon in October. Once again the opening paragraph sets the tone perfectly:

It was the name that did it. When you're looking for a quiet cottage to retire to, and you find one for sale on an island called Todd's island, and your own name happens -- quite fortuitously -- to be Todd, too, why then you can be excused for looking on it as the finger of Fate.

Rose and her sister Charlotte end up buying Todd House where fifty years ago Mary Todd ran away and was never seen again. The strange thing is that Mary disappeared in July. Why then is Rose having visions of a rainy Friday in October? Is Rose having delusional hallucinations? Can she really see into the past? Or is she having visions of events yet to come?

A few weeks after moving into their new home their neighbor and Mary's sister, Louise, is found stabbed to death in a glade. Lovick and Crawford are on the case again and almost immediately they turn up a puzzling piece of information: there is no official record of Rose Todd being a sister of Charlotte. As the investigation continues there are a number of accidental deaths and the uncovering of more secrets in the past, a favorite Wilson plot device. The key to understanding the motive for all the killings is hidden among all those secrets. Crawford and Lovick ferret out the truth with a little help from Rose and her psychic skills.

The characters in It Rained that Friday are just as well drawn and individual as those in Bury that Poker. Wilson tends to be fond of populating her books with eccentric spinsters though Jem Roker, the troubled groundskeeper of Todd House, is one of her better fully dimensional male characters. The Norfolk settings in both novels are always a highlight with all the sights, scents and sounds that make for an immersive reading experience. Like P. M. Hubbard, whose books feature settings so alive they become integral characters, Wilson has a similar talent in evoking places that are as vital and breathing as any human.

G. M. Wilson's Mystery & Detective Novels
(Books with known supernatural or occult content are marked with *.  Books reviewed on this blog have hyperlinks.)

*Bury That Poker (1957)
*I Was Murdered (1957)
*Thirteen Stannergate (1958)
*Shadows on the Landing (1959)
*It Rained That Friday (1960)
*Witchwater (1961)
Three Fingered Death (1961)
Roberta Died (1962)
*Nightmare Cottage (1963)
*Murder on Monday (1963)
Shot at Dawn (1964)
The Devil's Skull (1965)
*The Headless Man (1967)
Cake for Caroline (1967)
Do Not Sleep (1968)
Death Is Buttercups (1969)
*A Deal Of Death Caps (1970)
The Bus Ran Late (1971)
She Kept on Dying (1972)
Gipsies Don't Have Them (1974)
She Sees Things (1975)
*Death on a Broomstick (1977)

IN BRIEF: Witchwater - G. M. Wilson

Witchwater, 1st UK paperback (Digit, 1963)

"It's easy to scoff at devil worship, and blood pacts, broomstick riding and other sorceries when you're safe at home in broad daylight, within easy reach of human companionship; not so easy when you're alone in the cold and darkness with only a strip of Stygian, mist haunted water between you and the so-called witch's cottage."

I thought that all of Wilson's books had the team of Miss Purdy, mystery writer "of a certain age" and apparently no first name, and Inspector Lovick. But this early entry in Wilson's bibliography reveals that Miss Purdy was not in every book. There is another policeman who often works in tandem with Lovick by the name of John Crawford. In Witchwater (1961) Crawford calls upon Lovick's help in the case of a questionable death of young girl and a series of attacks on some women in a Norfolk village still haunted by the legend of Mother Daw, a 17th century witch executed in the broads and marshes on the outlying edge of the town.

Against his better judgment Dr. Patrick Mallard approaches Inspector Crawford and pleads with him to look into the recent death of a little girl Nelly Pizey who died suddenly supposedly of natural causes. Dr. Mallard thinks otherwise. Her shivering, her inability to speak, and refusal to eat he ascribes to one cause -- she received the fright of her life and succumbed. In other words, she was scared to death. After asking a few questions of her parents and siblings he discovers she had been sneaking outside to visit a friend and upon her return home must have encountered something terrifying, perhaps the Devil himself. Crawford scoffs at this superstitious explanation. Mallard goes on to report the Mr. Pizey's story of a strange black cat with a silver collar that has been seen around the marshes near the Pizey home. Mallard is certain the cat is connected to legend of Mother Daw, ancient witch, and urges Crawford to investigate the supposedly abandoned cottage known as Witchwater.

Begrudgingly Crawford decides to look into the matter. He has enough on his plate with the recent escape of George Brown, a young man arrested for a string of smash-and-grab robberies in which nothing but frivolous women's clothing and jewelry was taken. A woman is involved, Crawford tells his policemen crew, perhaps even the instigator and accomplice in the robberies.  Still Mallard's story is so strange and the doctor's concern so genuine Crawford feels obligated to make at least one visit to the site of Nelly's run-in with the cat.

Norfolk broads

Two more reports of cat attacks then follow in quick succession, this time with adult women as victims of the feline menace.  And then the wife of the temperamental sculptor Steve Anderson is found drowned in the marsh with cat scratches on her hands and face.  The superstitious townspeople begin gossiping. Mother Daw is back and witchcraft is being done. Crawford, Lovick and their team need to find the cat, its owner, and put an end to the rash of accidents and injuries before the townfolk turn into a lynch mob and take matters into their own hands.

Witchwater surpasses Nightmare Cottage (previously reviewed here) in terms of creepy atmosphere and suspense. Wilson has a genuine talent for building up tension and ending her chapters with cliffhangers that keep you turning the pages at a rapid pace. The detection is sound with some cleverly placed clues that earn her major points on the detective novel scorecard. While the identity of the criminal may not be as surprising as one would hope certainly the telling of the story is exciting and moody. Though less complicated in plot than some of her later books Wilson should also be credited for the seamless connection of the two storylines -- the robberies ultimately intersect with the story of Jessica Daw, the last of the Daws who fancies herself a junior sorceress.

For a long time Wilson manages to create a series of impossible situations that appear to have occurred only through magical intervention as in the manner in which the sinister cat gains entry to locked houses. Her knowledge of witchcraft trials, the Malleus Maleficarum, and the history of witchcraft in Eastern England all add to the authenticity of the plot. In fact, the cat's weird name Elemauzer -- taken from one of the ancient witch's familiars written down in The Discovery of Witches, Matthew Hopkins' famed witch trial handbook -- will serve as the major clue in solving the string of accidents, two murders and an act of arson. Witchwater is one of the better detective novels of the mid twentieth century dealing with seemingly supernatural events and the malicious exploitation of superstitious beliefs.

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Reading Challenge update: I'm using this to knock off space S3 "Book with a crime other than murder". Theft, arson and other crimes are featured. This gives me my first (and perhaps only) Bingo on the Silver Age card.

FFB: Nightmare Cottage - G. M. Wilson

UK 1st edition (Robert Hale, 1963)

"The chilling story of a house that harbored a grisly secret..." is the catch phrase used to market the only paperback edition (see scan below) of Nightmare Cottage (1963). Makes it sound like one of those woman in her nightie Gothic suspense novels. It's not. It's one of G. M. Wilson's many detective novels blending psychic and supernatural events in the context of a murder mystery.

Wilson's series character Miss Purdy (so far I haven't been able to discover her first name) is a mystery writer herself and has a habit of encountering bizarre and inexplicable events that usually end up with someone being murdered. This time she meets an eccentric old woman named Miss Bessiter while both are traveling on a bus tour making stops at the churches and old buildings in Norfolk. Miss Bessiter drops into a faint after looking out the bus window and seeing a house that she has been dreaming of repeatedly.

In her dreams Miss Bessiter enters the house and has made so many frequent tours that she has memorized the placement of each piece of furniture and knicknack on the fireplace mantel. She can describe the patterns in the carpets and wallpaper and  even remarks on the feel of the polished bannisters. She rhapsodizes about the house to Miss Purdy and confesses a desire to go back and visit it to see if it is the same house in her dreams. Miss Bessiter is sure the house holds the key to her cloudy past. Soon we learn she is an orphan and for all her life she has been trying to learn the identity of her real parents and any living relatives.

Pulls Ferry, Norwich
Probably the most famous tourist site in Norfolk

But the next day Miss Bessiter is found dead in her hotel room. The doctor rules it a natural death brought on by the shock of the previous day. Suspecting all is not right Miss Purdy begins asking questions. She starts with a visit to the troublesome cottage of Miss Bessiter's dreams. When she steps inside she finds it matches word for word the detailed descriptions Miss Bessiter gave her of the dream house interior. Can it be a coincidence? She further learns Miss Bessiter managed to visit the cottage as she had planned. But the current occupants are unwilling to discuss that visit. In her exploration of the house Miss Purdy discovers a cursed room, one that the current owners avoid for it was the scene of an accidental death by gas poisoning and it seems anyone who enters the room begins to suffer strange visions and is overcome with fear, not to mention a powerful nausea.

UK 1st paperback (Digit Books, 1964)

When it is determined that Miss Bessiter's death was due to an overdose of digitalis the police are brought in. Miss Purdy joins forces with her usual policeman cohort Inspector Lovick and together they uncover a trunkful of family secrets, learn the real identity of Miss Bessiter and her connection to Nightmare Cottage. They also uncover a devilish scheme to preserve a family's reputation and their fortune that leads one person to commit murder more than once.

The story unfolds with skillful potting, a good dose of fair play clueing and a handful of nifty tricks and twists. Wilson's love of the Norfolk countryside (her home for many years) plays out in colorful descriptions of the land and architecture as well as a few historical tidbits. Her talent for creating interesting often eccentric characters is put to good display in this strong entry in an often uneven series of detective novels featuring Purdy and Lovick. If you like a mix of the spooky and the gritty and don't mind a bit of ambiguity in the explanations of the uncanny events revealed at the story's end G.M. Wilson's mysteries are a smart alternative to the paranormal nonsense littered with vampires, werewolves and zombies found in contemporary supernatural mysteries.

Wilson's books are unfortunately rather hard to find in the US. Only three titles were published over here with the bulk of her books published only in her native England by Robert Hale Ltd. Added to the difficulty in finding used copies is the fact her books were rarely reprinted in paperback editions. Of those in paperback (all from Digit Books, an imprint of Brown & Watson) the three titles I've read are all worthy of your attention. She's one of the better mystery writers who blends supernatural and detection and makes it all work rather well. Her plotting can sometimes attain the exquisite simplicity coupled with baffling incidents found in the work of Christie or Brand or McCloy. More about Miss Purdy and Inspector Lovick coming soon when I discuss other books in the series.

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I'm picking off a handful of squares on my Silver Age Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge Bingo card this month. This book fulfills space L1, the "Spooky title" book.