NEW STUFF: The Stranger Diaries - Elly Griffiths

Finally, I can pay back a frequent plugger of my posts. Having read a review of
The Stranger Diaries (2018) on the highly entertaining and often eye-opening blog Clothes in Books by blogosphere pal, Edgar Award banquet dinner mate, and one time theater companion Moira Redmond I reserved a copy from my local library. We had to wait until February 2019 for a US edition and it took about a month after its release before one of the 15 copies in our library system came my way. When I got my hands on the the book I read it fairly quickly and enjoyed it immensely. I have only a minor quibble with the less than dazzling ending.

In a nutshell this is the story of a murdered English teacher, the relationships she had with her staff, a secret in the past that occurred at a creative writing workshop, and the eerie ghost story "The Stranger" that has become an obsession with the killer.  Clare Cassady, the protagonist and a co-worker of the victim, happens to be working on a biography of R. M. Holland, the author of the ghost story. The police find that fact a little too suspicious to be mere coincidence.

Elly Griffith's first stand-alone mystery novel is most notable for its literary tricks. She alternates between three different first person narratives plus Clare’s diary, and Georgie’s diary (Clare’s daughter). And of course Holland's “The Stranger” broken up into pieces throughout the novel and then appearing in one continuous narrative including its O. Henry like finale as the closing section of the book.

I liked the frequent literary allusions to detective and ghost story fiction. Clare is an English teacher and a devotee of Victorian novels, notably Wilkie Collins. Georgie has been influenced by her mother’s tastes, one of the consequences is her unhealthy obsession with “The Stranger” which she reads every Halloween night in a ritual that includes lighted candles and a smoking pot of burning herbs.

I found Detective Sgt. Harbinder Kaur’s narrative sections amusing. It always makes me smile when a writer creates literally-minded police (either male or female) who cannot wrap their heads around what makes creative people tick. Harbinder doesn’t understand keeping a journal or a diary, she tends not to find anything related to imaginative thinking useful, and has little sympathy or use for dreamers. She is also absurdly judgmental and prejudiced against beautiful or attractive people. Such a snarky cynic! Her narration is peppered with juvenile digs at Clare’s height, her curvaceous physique, her clothes and her “posh” manner. I imagine that Harbinder doesn’t think much of herself. I think there’s a section where she looks at herself in a mirror and is generally displeased with what she sees. I didn’t mark the page though and I’m not going back to hunt for it. She lives with her parents and has mixed feelings about how she ended up where she is.  An interesting angle to the plot is that she is a graduate of the secondary school where the murder victim taught English. So the murder investigation for her is tainted with unpleasant memories of her teen years and unexpected reminders of her past like discovering that her first boyfriend (a failure of an attempt to be straight) is now a teacher at the school they both attended.

For the most part I thought the young people were spot on in their characterizations. Georgie’s narration tends to be a bit too mature at times, but I started to see where it was supposed to be consciously pretentious in the manner most teens can get when they think they’re being literary on paper. The speech and attitudes of the rest of the teens were pretty accurate and didn’t trouble me at all as unrealistically precocious or cartoonishly immature teens do when I encounter them in fiction.

There is a slight puzzle related to the identity of Mariana, believed to be R. M. Holland’s daughter who supposedly died very young and whether or not he believed her ghost to be haunting him. I figured out that little puzzle instantly because Griffiths plants the one clue for that rather blatantly in the very first chapter.

The identity of the murderer is slightly surprising but I was hoping it was going to be someone different, the truly least likely suspect that would’ve made the novel truly brilliant. As written I sort of went, “Oh, of course!” It’s the only way it could possible make sense what with all the various plot tricks and machinations. But for me the story ended like a 1990s Lifetime channel romantic suspense movie and reminded me also of the worst of Phyllis Whitney and Mary Higgins Clark books. Not as potent as it could have been and fairly obvious if you well acquainted with the conventions of this subgenre that features so many permutations of obsessive-compulsive love/lust.

But there’s no denying that the novel up to its less than startling ending is exciting, full of bizarre mysteries and populated with complex, intriguing and life-like characters. They are some effectively creepy scenes, some genuinely frightening, and I can imagine that The Stranger Diaries has the capacity to scare the daylights out of a lot of readers who have not devoured rooms full of thrillers with similar plots as I have.

FFB: My Bones and My Flute - Edgar Mittelholzer

THE STORY: An artist accompanies his employer on an excursion into the jungles of British Guiana. Guided by an 18th century manuscript they hope to locate the author's skeletal remains and a buried flute and restore both to their proper grave in order to break a curse plaguing the Nevinson family. The arduous journey is hampered by an invasion of other-worldly manifestations, eerie flute music, and demonic possession.

THE CHARACTERS: My Bones and My Flute (1955) is set in 1933 in a remote portion of Guiana still haunted by the bloody slave rebellion of centuries past. Milton Woodsley, a painter hired to provide landscapes for a lumber company's head office which is currently being renovated, is our narrator. Ralph Nevinson, is the lumber magnate who suggests that Milton travel with him through the jungle to see the lumber mill but he has an ulterior motive. One night Nevinson relates the story of a manuscript he came to own. It was written by a plantation owner whose family was slaughtered in a slave rebellion long ago. The manuscript's author, a Dutch man, swore vengeance on all who read his story and cursed anyone who touches the pages he wrote. The curse will continue until his remains and his flute are found and buried together. Nevinson warns Milton not to handle the manuscript lest he too hear the music of the flute nightly and endure horrible visions. In defiance Milton places his hands on the manuscript. Days later he too is under the curse and is haunted by the flute music and the demons that Jan de Voortman somehow managed to summon in his dark dealings with the occult world.

The rest of the cast is made up of Nevinson's daughter Jessie, a rebellious young woman who taunts Milton and his conservative manner and Nevinson's wife Nell, a shallow pseudo-sophisticate. Each of the women also succumb to the curse -- one willingly and the other inadvertently in her attempt to destroy the ancient papers. The women begin as supporting players in the drama and slowly move to the foreground eventually becoming the focus of the tale when the grey shapes summoned by the flute invade the jungle and attempt to possess the women bodily in order to stop the men from their task.

Rounding out the story is Rayburn, a faithful servant the group picks up along the way. He serves as a reminder of the superstitious Indians of the island and the shameful slave culture of days gone by. Despite his clinging to native superstitions in a ironic touch Rayburn will ultimately turn out to be the most heroic of the group.

ATMOSPHERE: Mittelholzer must have been well versed in supernatural fiction. He alludes directly to Poe as well as the stories of M.R. James. The entire plot of My Bones and My Flute seems to have been inspired by James' love of antiquarian objects, ancient manuscripts, cursed objects and terrifying vengeful creatures. The curse manifests itself in all manner of apparitions and involves all the senses. Beginning with the ominous flute music, our group of four haunted travellers will be later subjected to a menacing grey thing covered in fur, a fog-like mass that invades their shelter, all of which are signaled by a musky stench entirely separate from the smells of jungle vegetation.

The claustrophobic setting of the jungle is enhanced by Mittelholzer's frequent use of animal and insect imagery. Buzzing flies and omnipresent chirruping tree frogs become terrifying sound effects and act as a wildlife accompaniment to the ghostly melody that follows the group to their final destination. It's a remarkable effect, almost like radio theater. Mittelholzer often achieves a creepy cinéma vérité of the imagination in his evocative descriptive technique.

QUOTES: "The right spell? Boy, you are talking like one of these medieval alchemists you read of in old books," chuckled Mrs. Nevinson.

[W]e could sense the quality of eternity threatening us as though it might actually have been a wavering, tangible swathe of silk that kept brushing our cheeks at intervals.

[W]e might as well consider ourselves already as lost creatures who had stumbled off irrevocably into slush and blackness -- into some cul-de-sac, perhaps, existent amid the unexplored dimensions of our cosmos.

...we had moved within range of forces that had nothing to do with the forces with which men are familiar, and we were about to dodge out of reach of normal laws and be gone forever into a new and slitheringly revolting sphere of intelligence.

A few supremely terrifying moments have loomed into being in the course of the lives of most of us -- moments which have produced such a stunning impact that when reflecting on them afterwards we are inclined to wonder whether they were not of deliberate and perverse invention. It was such a moment we experienced now.

THINGS I LEARNED: Two Caribbean mythical creatures are mentioned. The jumbie (also jumbee) is a catch-all word used in Caribbean folklore and superstition to describe all malevolent spirits and demons. The kanaima is an evil jungle spirit who can possess a human soul and drive it to murderous rampages.

I stumbled over many real creatures among the supernatural ones. For the most part they were animals I'd never heard of, but there was one error. Much is made about the terrifying cry of a baboon in the jungle. But that had to be wrong and so I went a-Googling as I usually do. As I thought there are no baboons in Guiana, the Caribbean islands, or anywhere in South America. Mittelholzer meant a howler monkey whose cry sometimes sounds like the better known African baboon. For that reason locals apparently use baboon as a slang term for that monkey species as confusing to wildlife enthusiasts as it might be.

As for the real native fauna: He mentions a strange bird called the hoatzin (also known as the "stink bird") which is indigenous to Peru and Amazonian South America but apparently migrates to the Caribbean islands at times. Candle flies are something like fireflies but look completely different according to Mittelholzer's detailed descriptions. One that gave me some trouble was salempenter. That spelling is archaic and I found it under salipenter when I finally added "lizard" to the search terms. Looks like it's a medium sized reptile resembling an iguana and it's apparently very fast. Salipenter seems to be local patois according to a herpetologist's lecture I watched on YouTube. The real name of this lizard species is tegu. It's also sometimes colloquially referred to as a "bush motorbike". There is also a salipenter snake indigenous to Guiana.

THE AUTHOR: Just because you may never have heard of Edgar Mittelholzer (which I will confess in my ignorance of world Literature) doesn't mean he's obscure. There are multiple websites and pages of information on his life and works. He is well-respected and a noteworthy figure among Caribbean writers though not generally known for supernatural fiction. The bulk of his novels and stories are devoted to explorations of sex, religion and race. His only other novel with supernatural content, Eltonsbrody (1960), has been reprinted by Valancourt Books and I hope to get to it later this year. Those interested in learning more about Mittelholzer's troubled life and his important works should read Caribbean Beat's essay and a brief bio at Peepal Tree Press.

EASY TO FIND? There are multiple paperback reprints of My Bones and My Flute all of them from UK publishers. The most recent one from Peepal Tree Press (2015), a publisher specializing in works by "Caribbean and Black British writers," is probably your best bet. You can definitely get a new copy of that particular edition. For all others you will have to resort to the used book market and some of them are a bit pricey. I found a copy of the Longman Caribbean Writers reissue (1986) because I was drawn to its attractively eerie cover illustration depicting the Nevinsons and Milton trapped in the shack in the jungle (second scan from the top). A first edition (Secker & Warburg, 1955) seems to be genuinely rare as I could find no copies available for sale.

Drawing on the Past #10: GILBERT JAMES

Work: The Five Jars by M.R. James
(Edward Arnold & Co., 1922)

Artist: Gilbert James

The Five Jars is subtitled "Being More or Less of a Fairy Tale Contained in a Letter to a Young Person." Its author M.R. James is better known as a writer of ghost stories for adults. Whether or not the story is truly intended for young people is a matter of opinion. The whimsical drawings by Gilbert James seem to imply that it is. A mix of the fanciful, the creepy, and the bizarre the story would appeal to any reader who appreciates the outre and the supernatural in fiction.

Once available only in its original rare 1st edition or the somewhat scarcer 1927 reprint (a copy of which I own and is pictured above) The Five Jars has been extensively reprinted in a variety of hardback and paperback editions. Numerous POD and eBooks make it even easier for anyone interested in reading the light and fanciful tale.

Below a sampling of the seven illustrations by James.  I found little on the artist other than that he illustrated in full color an edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (L. C. Page, 1899).

Click to enlarge any of the pictures below for better viewing.