Death Awaits Thee - Maria Lang

A warning before you proceed: If you've read the work of Maria Lang, recently made available to mystery fans one more time in the trio of English translations, and enjoyed her work prepare for a minor diatribe. Lang has been touted as the "Agatha Christie of Sweden" among other laudatory and hyperbolic sobriquets. I always take those marketing and critical assessments with a grain of salt if I don't entirely disregard them while rolling my eyes. But it usually indicates to me a slight understanding that the writer being compared to the Grand Master herself has a grasp on the traditions of the pure detective novel. My first sampling of Lang's work showed me she loves a mystery and aspires to greatness but falls short by a long shot. She understands narrative formula, detective novel conventions and motifs, and the quirkiness of bizarre puzzling murders and we get a lot of that in Death Awaits Thee (1955), originally published in Swedish as Se döden på dig väntar. Yet it all leads to a muddle and ends with a whimper, not the bang of surprise we all want from a detective novel.

First off, and granted this spoiled my enjoyment of the book as a whole, was the choice of translator Joan Tate to Anglicize the entire book.  Death Awaits Thee takes place in a thoroughly Swedish locale -- the very real Drottningholm Theater built in 1766, a marvel of Swedish architecture and European history and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  It's one of the only theaters in all of Europe that still retains original 18th century scenery pieces and restored hand-operated theatrical machinery of that era.  Photographs of the theater flood the internet, stories of visits to this historic place also appear by the hundreds in all languages.  It's worth trawling the internet and reading some of the better posts and articles if you have time.  With a murder mystery redolent of Swedish history and atmosphere one would hope that the book would stay thoroughly Swedish. But it hasn't.

1.  All references to Swedish currency have been changed to pounds. What a hassle it must have been to convert the money amounts. Or did she even bother with that?  An amount of 800 pounds is missing during the story and is somewhat crucial to the plot. But is it actually 800 pounds?  Or was it 800 krona and the translator simply substituted pounds without bothering to calculate the British equivalent?

2.  The character names -- with the exception of Puck Bure, Lang's female protagonist and not-so-good amateur sleuth, and an opera singer named Jill Hassel -- have all been changed to easily comprehended British names.  This infuriated me.  For those interested the English names are Teresa, Diana, Stephen, George Geraldson (whose surname is also changed), Richard, Matthew and Edwin.  See the photo below for the real names Maria Lang gave her cast of characters. I found an online version of the original text from which I took several illustrations for this post. You can match the names to see how Tate robbed them of their real identity. I've typed the British substitutes above in the order they appear in the list below.

3. And this is the most upsetting part -- the translation itself is a pretentious Anglicization of awkward syntax, heavy use of British idioms and vernacular in the dialogue, and other elements that take you out of the Land of Lingonberries and Pancakes and transport you to the Land of Bangers and Mash.

In the long run Joan Tate and the editorial staff of Hodder & Stoughton have fairly ruined the book by wringing nearly all that is Swedish from its admittedly thin pages.

The thunder machine as depicted
on rear cover of Swedish edition

As for Lang's story it starts off rather intriguingly with a prologue resembling a mantra-like monologue in Puck's voice in which she looks back on the violence and mystery in a rather heavy-handed poetic style.  Then we are introduced to the characters who seem a lively bunch and reminded me of the kind of quirky types you'd encounter in a Ngaio Marsh theater mystery or the witty detective novels of Christianna Brand.  Christie didn't come to mind at all at actually.  The characters, however, become increasingly one note relying on a lone personality trait  to distinguish them from each other (raging jealous lover, foppish gay boy, tart tongued bitch, etc.). Most were entirely lacking in complexity or depth. Only a handful ever felt like real people rather than puppets being manipulated for the sake of the plot alone.

The plot concerning a production of Cosi Fan Tutte and a murdered opera singer, her body found crushed and disfigured in special effects device known as the "thunder machine," offers the reader a smattering of mysteries not the least of which is how was she actually killed and why was she carried up to the machinery-laden attic and shoved through the small opening of the effects device.  Motives are aplenty and tend to revolve around the impassioned and egocentric actors we find in theater mysteries. Jealousy, envy, hatred -- you name it, it's here.

But as for clues? Or the fair play aspect that one would think would be present given Lang's comparison's to her heroine and the writer she attempts to imitate?  Few and far between.  I can only recall two real clues!

 

Too much of the story comes far too late in the book.  Prior to the arrival of Christer Wijk (surname altered to Wick in this "translation"), who appears only in the final two chapters, we are treated to intensive back story among the theater troupe and the rambling fantasies of Puck who is tempted to have an affair with Matthias Lemming, the opera conductor. The murder investigation is conducted by a non-series detective and his team. Then when Wijk finally appears he interrogates the characters for a third time (!) recalling the work of Carolyn Wells.  I wonder if Lang read any of her books.  In the end this felt more like a Wells novel than any other woman mystery writer Lang has been compared to. The suspects lie and withhold information just like Wells' characters and are coerced or manipulated into finally telling the truth when Wijk shows up.  He does no real detective work at all.  He relies on what his predecessor and police team have already done, notices discrepancies in stories, then simply gets people to tell the truth.  And like Wells' "transcendental detective" Fleming Stone, Wijk subsequently intuits and guesses using "psychology" to ferret out the murderer.  In the end the killer delivers a long confessional monologue, once again just like the majority of Wells' mystery novels. It's all disappointing, a real let down with all this questioning and re-questioning.

To be fair there are elements that I admired like when conductor and production director Matthias Lemming tells the full story about his volatile relationship with his ex-wife Tova, the murder victim.  I also liked the characters of Ulrik and Jill who were the most lively out of the bunch of opera singers.  Ulrik is Lang's token gayboy character and Jill is the mean-spirited bitch of the opera company.  I guess it's always fun for writers to indulge themselves and let go of their reins when writing these types of characters.  Lang certainly enjoyed those two for their scenes always enliven the tone of the book.

Maria Lang, circa 1950s

One of Lang's very modern touches is her inclusion of sexuality in her stories. Death Awaits Thee is the story of a woman who loved life and sex and apparently indulged herself with anyone -- male or female, young or old -- who struck her fancy.  Gay and lesbian characters appear in many of Lang's books (a lesbian couple feature prominently in her first mystery published in 1949) and sexual relationships are key to an understanding of the motives behind many of the murders in her novels. In this regard she is one of the pioneers in bringing murder mysteries into modern times. Had she really had skill as a novelist she might have become the Swedish forerunner of Ruth Rendell or Minette Walters. At times I thought of both of them while reading this novel, especially when Lang's mystery got down and dirty in revealing Tova's rampant sexuality and her disturbing secret that led to her divorce from Lemming.

Death Awaits Thee is the seventh Christer Wijk murder mystery, so it comes fairly early in Lang's career which spanned from 1949 to 1990.  If Death Awaits Thee is any indication of Lang's work as a whole then I'm afraid I'm not interested in reading any more as much  as she has been recommended to me by a couple of people I've met at mystery conferences and in emails I've received.  Those of you who read Swedish, of course, have all 43 novels to choose from. Those of us who only read English, however, have just three translations.  The others are Wreath for a Bride, aka Kung Liljekonvalje av dungen (1957) and No More Murders, aka Inte flera mord (1951). The most recent editions of these three English translations released in 2014 are available only as digital books from Mulholland Books. Alternatively, you can spend half a lifetime as I did trying to track down older editions in paperback and hardcover. They seem to be disappearing as the years fly by. But if those too are the translated and Anglicized work of Joan Tate then it's further justification for avoiding the books.

She Let Him Continue - Stephen Geller

I’ve not read any JD pulp fiction, but I’m pretty sure that She Let Him Continue (1966) is a reaction to a subgenre of popular fiction that flooded the drugstore paperback racks during the 1950s and 1960s. There are no leather jacketed, motorcycle riding, juvenile delinquents in Stephen Geller’s novel but the rebellious youth attitude, the beat poet prose and the disregard for all adult authority are present in this high octane, reinvented version of a JD pulp novel.

She Let Him Continue is narrated by 22 year-old ex-convict Dennis Pitt who imagines himself to be a CIA operative. He works in a chemical factory in the aptly named New England town of Gravemoor where nearly everyone he meets is half dead or so bored with life any sort of diversion will entertain them. Take for instance Dennis’ quasi landlady Mrs. Bronson who along with her husband runs the motel where Dennis lives. When not discussing with Dennis the sensationalized crime stories of rape, child murder, and kidnapping in the local tabloid she’s showing an unusual interest in Dennis himself. Or is her Mrs. Robinson-like seductive posing only part of Dennis’ elaborately constructed delusions? Dennis spurns the attentions of Mrs. Bronson and focusses instead on recruiting 17 year-old Sue Ann Stepanek as comrade in his covert missions. And true to this JD pulp Sue Anne is more trouble than Dennis can handle.

Stephen Geller writes the book in a sort of hipster Beat Lit style shunning chapter divisions and the use of quotation marks in all the dialogue. The result is like reading the transcript of an uninterrupted drug induced hallucination. Pill popping is one of Dennis' hobbies along with his baroque fantasy life and he and Sue Anne freely take drugs as they turn into thrill-seeking daring adventurers as part of Dennis’ strange plan to sabotage the chemical plant. Dennis is fully aware of his pretense as a CIA agent and lets us in on that big lie fairly soon. But we believe along with him that Sue Ann is just a naïve teenage girl he’s exploiting for companionship and eventually sex.

As this hallucinatory journey continues each of Dennis’ encounters with the mostly ineffectual adult characters reveal a frustrated troubled young man orphaned at an early age, corralled into his aunt's house, bullied by teenage girls, abandoned by peers, and eventually turning to arson as his ultimate rage-filled teenage response. Upon release from prison he is badgered by his exacting parole officer and harrassed by his boss at the factory. He is coping with indifference and lack of empathy on a grand scale which he collectively labels “the pressure.” The chemical plant is a symbol of all that is corrupt in the world as Dennis watches it pour out filthy sewage, sinister “red dye” and stinking pollution into Gravemoor’s river. Blowing up the sewage chutes is an act of revenge on the world that turned its back on him, led him to commit a selfish crime and robbed him of five years of his adolescence in prison. We begin to feel an odd empathy for the young man as he dreamily riffs on "the pressure", the polluted river and everything promised to him that was spoiled or taken from him.

With Sue Ann as his sergeant he plans to battle the world. Under Dennis’ mentorship Sue Ann is given a test to prove her worthiness as a CIA agent. She surrenders to Dennis’ will and with the help of some pills to loosen her inhibitions we watch her unleash her inner demons in a violent climax. All too quickly we realize Sue Ann was not at all the naïve waif she was first presented as. The pills are not to blame. It’s clear that she and Dennis have a lot more in common than misfit sexual attraction. And Sue Ann actually turns out to be much more dangerous than the fantasy plagued Dennis.

Geller’s novel served as the inspiration for two movies. The first retitled Pretty Poison (1968) is something of a cult sensation among exploitation and psycho-thriller fans. Unsurprisingly, Anthony Perkins plays Dennis though he was three years shy of his fortieth birthday when he made the movie. Tuesday Weld is Sue Ann whose part is substantially rewritten to hint at a vixen in training just as aware of her capacity to corrupt as Dennis is aware of his CIA fantasy world. I’m not so sure I like this change but Weld carries it off with a sinister subtlety ultimately exploding into a kind of bloodthirsty teenage version of Bonnie Parker that another immature or less intelligent actress might overplay into a tired caricature.

The movie was remade for TV in a boring revamp updated to 1996. Grant Show, best known as one of the bland hunks on "Melrose Place", plays Dennis with an unattractive boyish haircut and as Sue Ann we get the uninspired Wendy Benson who went on to play supporting roles in a string of forgettable TV series throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Much of the TV movie is just a copy of the far more interesting original. The changes in storyline like Dennis’ aggressive sexual nature don’t add to a better understanding of what Geller was really after in his portraits of two furious young people of the 1960s. As acted by Show and Benson we get vapidness personified not deeply troubled frustrated souls caught in a world they want desperately to control but cannot.

More on the first Pretty Poison movie coming in a post in a few days.

Death Takes an Editor - Nigel Morland

For one reason or another in the world of popular fiction some publishers and agents suggest prolific authors resort to using pseudonyms, especially if they are trying out new characters or writing books that veer away from their usual fare. This was a trend that dates back to the Golden Age and carried on into the 1970s.  I guess there are still a few prolific writers who have multiple identities, as it were (I can think of a few male thriller writers still active under several pen names), but it was more common decades ago. Nigel Morland was one of those prolific writers with a schizoid writing career.

Morland's Palmyra Pym police procedural mysteries were his mainstay and were published in the UK and the US by two top-line publishers.  When he chose to write outside of the series, usually under a pen name, his crime novels often tackled unusually technical and scientific concepts in a mystery novel and I guess he had to shop them around. Surefire sellers with recognizable series characters are easier to accept for a publisher while risky or controversial subject matter may not at all be attractive when it comes to selling books. It wasn't altogether clear to me why Death Takes an Editor (1949) wasn't released by his regular publisher in the UK. It seemed fairly straightforward with its newspaper setting, formulaic cast of characters, and an eccentric consulting detective with a background in abnormal psychology. Why did Morland hand over his book to the obscure and long gone publisher Aldus Publications Ltd.? At the halfway mark the book's content makes a startling turn into a lurid world and the answer to that question was made perfectly clear. In 1949 there weren't too many mystery novels that dealt with sadomasochistic sex so candidly.

At first I thought this was going to be one of Morland's strange forays into scientific detection because the police detective is Chief Inspector Jonathan Lamb. Under the pseudonym John Donavan Morland wrote a handful of complex and engaging detective novels with Johnny Lamb, a policeman with a background in chemistry who solves cases involving poisoning via an air conditioning system (Case of the Rusted Room), poisoning by iodine gas (Case of the Violet Smoke), and odd botanical toxins (Case of the Beckoning Dead). But this Lamb is of a completely different wool and he turns out to be the secondary detective.

The real sleuth in Death Takes an Editor is Professor Steven Malone, "the most brilliant medical jurist of his day." A former forensic professor at the University of Egypt Malone worked all over Europe and at the start of this novel he is employed in a "revolutionary Medico-Legal department...attached to Scotland Yard" where he acts as "part of a police organization without being subordinate to it." Malone, like his creator Nigel Morland, also happens to have an extensive knowledge of abnormal psychology and is well acquainted with some of the more sensational cases of the past as detailed in the numerous criminology textbooks he has devoured over his long career. This arcane information serves as the springboard to the solution of a series of murders all having their roots in possessive and controlling love.

The plot includes a few miracle problems like the vanishing of two men from a locked and guarded newspaper office as well as some odd red herrings like a box of poisoned chocolates and the appearance Bernard Ambrus, the mysterious "astropathologist" -- really nothing more than a glorified astrologist who claimed to treat disease. At first the case seems to focus on the puzzling personality of the murder victim Ernest Shipper. Each character presents a completely different perception of Shipper. At first a scold and office dictator disliked by all his co-workers, then a misunderstood quietly tolerant man, then a thrill-seeker slumming for sex in dive bars.

The more he thought about [Shipper] the more seemingly negative characters of the editor took on a full and amazing life. From being a minus sign in human form he was gradually emerging into the full flower of a thoroughly contradictory personality.

One of Morland's many true crime books

Malone however turns his attention on Jill Bethanny, Ernest Shippers wife who chooses not to use her husband's surname. This book is marketed salaciously on the DJ blurb as if Jill is some sort of femme fatale who weaves a spell over all the men in the story. This is not the case at all. She turns out to be a victim of the perverse sexual predilections of her husband. As Malone uncovers more dirty secrets in the Shippers' lives -- pornography in a secret drawer in Shipper's office, S&M paraphernalia hidden in the bedroom, signs that someone was lashed to a water heater -- the novel descends into a& world that Morland would like us to think is amoral and thoroughly evil.

Malone acts as Morland's voice here and it's hard to dismiss the misogyny that completely overtakes the story. Malone quotes from an ancient criminology book called The Female Criminal, gives examples of outdated Freudian psychology and tries to explain the difference between men and women who become criminals. It's all hogwash. Morland tries to shock his readers with a still misunderstood world of alternative sex practices but it just comes out embarrassing. His views (and the books he quotes from) are dated, chauvinistic and hateful. Additionally, these criminal facts color his moral worldview and for Malone (and presumably Morland) there is no room for forgiveness or redemption or a second chance when it comes to indulging in "perversity".

WARNING! ...SPOILERS A-COMIN'... I'm about to give away the biggest "shock" of the finale. Stop here if you don't want the book ruined. Not that it makes much of a difference, IMO.

Jill, we learn, was not only abused by her husband but as a result of succumbing to his will and participating in his hedonism she is doomed and cursed to a life of irredeemable amorality. She commits murder in order to free herself, but by then as far as Malone is concerned it is too late for her. She has become thoroughly corrupted. In the end he plants the idea in her head that she would be better off dead and she commits suicide. Nice, huh? There's some advanced twentieth century thinking for you!

...END OF SPOILER...

When Death Takes an Editor sticks to police procedure and forensics it makes for an intriguing detective novel. When Morland becomes a moralizing lecturer, however, the book fails disastrously. I'll be sure to avoid any of his other books published by the more obscure houses of the past like Aldus. It's clear to me that the mainline publishers saw some of his books as disguised treatises to espouse his personal beliefs and not as a novel meant to entertain.

* * *

I read this as part of Rich Westwood's "1949 Mystery Novel Challenge" for the month of May. But I so hated this book I decided to wait to write it up until after the challenge was over. I found a much better book -- Death Knocks Three Times by Anthony Gilbert -- to replace this one for that challenge.

FFB: The Fetish Murders - Avon Curry

And now for something completely different....

I've been reading a lot of early transgressive fiction as research for an essay to be included in a book slated for 2016. This has led me into a strange and fascinating world of crime novels with plots that touch on formerly taboo topics mostly to do with sexual preference and unusual sexual practices. So when I fortuitously came across a book called The Fetish Murders (1973), with that cover seen at left, I had to read it. It's not at all transgressive fiction as I thought it might be since it has at its core a respect for morality and normalcy and does not revel in all things rebellious or counterculture. Thankfully, it did not turn into a serial killer novel as the title seems to imply. It's an attempt to present what most people in the 1970s (and I guess quite a few these days, too) would view as a distasteful subject -- erotic fetishism -- in a humanistic compassionate setting. It succeeds to a degree, but it disappoints on a whole other level.

The Fetish Murders begins with a comical scene in which June Hissock, "Carnival Queen of East Ganford", storms into the police station to report being attacked. She is the latest victim of a scissors wielding maniac who has been cutting locks of hair from young blond women. June is incensed; her hairdo is ruined. And the attack occurred just before she was to award some prizes at a school in one of her many beauty queen publicity gigs. Smart aleck journalists have alternately dubbed this hair crazed phantom the Demon Barber and Jack the Snipper. The newspapers also make a lot of allusions to Pope's "Rape of the Lock". It's all tongue in cheek and ridiculing and all a bit wrong. For they have no idea just how dangerous this hair clipping creep will become.

No one has ever seen Jack the Snipper, not even the women whose hair he is collecting. Each young woman has been attacked from the rear, the hair quickly snipped from the nape of the neck and the attacker fleeing before the victim even knows what's been done. Sergeant Pinnett is a bit worried that the attacks seem to be on the rise. He has a daughter who also has blond hair. What if she should be next?

You can guess what follows. Not only is Marjorie Pinnett next on the list she is also fatally stabbed with the scissors in what appears to be an attempt to fight back. And now the Demon Barber is no longer just a creep but a murderer.

This is very bad news for reporter Peter Stack. He had just written an informative news feature on fetishism in which, quoting expert advice of psychoanalyst Dr. Luton-Bailey, he explained the harmlessness of the attacks. The article was to reassure the public and prevent hysteria and vigilantism. He's alarmed by the murder and even moreso when he learns the victim is the daughter of a police officer who he overheard vowing to seek revenge on the Demon Barber. Stack revisits Dr. Luton-Bailey to try to understand why the fetishist suddenly became violent. When the psychologist hears that this particular hair clipping attack happened from the front he comes to the conclusion that the Demon Barber must've been recognized by Marjorie. And in that moment he felt it necessary to kill.

Luton-Bailey is one of the better realized characters. His psychology is modern and sound, even sympathetic, but still a bit too Freudian. I was disappointed that here was yet another instance of a psychological suspense story that dealt with aberrant behavior that must be explained away by an absent father, a domineering mother, and a belittled and abused child who grows up to be a deeply disturbed adult living out "perversions" in order to deal with trauma. No attempt is made to discuss fetishism as a form of eroticism without the taint of mental illness. Not all sexual fetishism is about mommy and daddy issues. There's a lot more involved in the fetish world that Avon Curry didn't seem to want to explore.

Bringing us to the writer. That name is an obvious pseudonym and by page 20 I was sure that the androgynous sounding Avon Curry was probably a woman writer. The way that Marjorie and her friend Nancy are depicted, the detailed talk of women's clothes and hairstyling, the sensitive nature of so many of the male characters -- this seemed not to be a male writer at all. And I was right. After consulting The Dictionary of Pseudonyms I learned that Avon Curry was one of several pen names used by the prolific writer Jean Bowden.

Jean Bowden, retired at age 90

There is a lot about Bowden online these days after she formally announced at a 2009 SWWJ conference she was retiring from professional writing. She had a varied career beginning as an editorial assistant for a variety of British paperback houses including Panther and Four Square, moved on to become assistant fiction editor at Women's Own, and ended as editorial consultant for Mills & Boon. She has been credited with discovering Catherine Cookson and a few other bestselling writers. Concurrent with those publishing positions from 1958 to 2009 she used seven different pseudonyms to write over fifty novels consisting of romance, historical fiction, family sagas, crime and detective fiction and tie-in novels for the UK TV series The Brothers and Emmerdale. Her most recent incarnation as novelist is "Tessa Barclay". Using this name she wrote a series of crime/adventure thrillers featuring a series character, the ex-Crown Prince Gregory of Hirtenstein.

The Fetish Murders begins as a crime novel and slowly evolves into a psychosexual mystery but is never a true detective novel. Early in the novel Bowden reveals the identity of the killer and the existence of his mysterious girl friend Angela Good. The book alternates between Peter Stack's sleuthing -- both as a quasi psychological profiler with Luton-Bailey's assistance and a physical evidence gathering detective -- and the tortured behavior of Dennis Justinson determined along with Angela's help to shift the blame to an imaginary mad killer. There is one final twist Bowden adds towards the end of the book that is no real surprise to a modern crime fiction reader and sadly so ineptly handled that it fairly ruins the book. When the end comes it is violent as expected, tragic, a bit pathetic but wholly contrary to how the author led us to believe she felt about her antagonist. When Peter Stack calls Dennis "that thing" I was not just disappointed, I was pissed off.

*   *   *

Reading Challenge update: Silver Age card R5 -"Author who uses a pseudonym"

FFB: Twisted Clay - Frank Walford

Jean Deslines is worried about losing her identity.  Her father keeps talking about putting her away in a mental institution for her own safety. Jean has been bragging about her flirty seduction of the local clergyman in her Australian home of Katoomba. She's also been reading up on psychology books at the suggestion of her cousin Myrtle who knows a psychosexual aberration when she sees one. Now Jean's head is overloaded with Freudian psychoanalytical jargon and discussions of female hormones, the lack of which she believes is at the root of her troubles. She's also starting to have surreal dreams in which she envisions a female gladiator who takes the form of the goddess Minerva slaughtering her enemies. And every now and then she hears the sounds of bells and an ethereal voice giving her private instructions on carrying out the murderous events in her dreams. Is it any wonder her father is worried about her? Oh, I forgot to mention Jean is only fifteen years old.

To preserve her identity and prevent any tinkering with her mind and soul at the hands of interfering psychiatrists Jean is advised by that Voice to murder her father. And she does so in a lovingly savage way. It's the beginning of her descent into a surreal world of hallucinations, indulgent sexuality and violent murderous attacks. Imagine if you will a most bizarre mix of the selfish child murderess Rhoda Penmark, vindictive pathological liar Mary Tilford, and seductive teen age vixen Lolita and you have only a smidgen of an idea of what Frank Walford has created in Jean Deslines. It's difficult to believe that a fifteen year old girl is narrating this lurid tale of madness, pansexuality and brutal murder. Jean may very well be crime fiction's first bisexual serial killer.  Oh, I forgot to mention that Twisted Clay was published in 1933.

Frank Walford

This week Patti Abbot Asked us to read a book about a femme fatale. Though typically we don't find a femme fatale this young until the pulp writers of the 1950s in books by writers like Gil Brewer, Day Keene and Jonathan Craig and most of them aren't clinically insane Jean Deslines is about as fatal a femme as you can find in the genre fiction of the 1930s. So horrific are the events described in Walford's book it was banned almost immediately upon publication and remained out of print for decades. Modern readers will find so many of what is now considered formulaic in serial killer literature and yet no one was writing about such things in Walford's time. Even Lawrence Block didn't write about a serial killer prostitute until 2012's Getting Off and even then he used his lesbian erotica pseudonym Jill Emerson. Walford was way ahead of his time in creating his surreally intellectual, linguistically gifted and very dangerous teenager. Way, way ahead.

Twisted Clay has been reissued by Australian British indie press Salt Publishing under their horror imprint Remains Classics in a handsomely designed facsimile of the original first edition complete with replication of the original dust jacket. The book comes with a foreward by Remain's editor Johnny Mains as well as a biographical and literary introduction to Frank Walford by critic and supernatural fiction maven Jim Doig. It's a fine reissue of a landmark book in the genre. Highly recommended for literary connoisseurs, genre fiction addicts and anyone curious about those obscure books that sometimes reach legendary status due to their unavailability. This is one instance when the legend cannot even approach the actual content of the book.

For more wicked women, amoral temptresses, and literary femme fatales in forgotten books of the past visit Patti Abbot's blog.