Death Goes Native - Max Long

THE STORY:  Hastings Hoyt is eager to escape his "murder jinx" after his adventures recorded in the first two books by Max Long. In Death Goes Native (1941), the final mystery in Long's trilogy, Hoyt sets sail to the remote, nearly inaccessible Valley of Waimaka, a little visited Eden away from Big Island. When he arrives he is surprised to find a colony of 12 mainlanders who have set up a private village and have "gone native" dressing in Hawaiian clothes, taking up Hawaiian art of weaving, and eating almost exclusively native foods. When one of the colony is found murdered on Hoyt's boat with a weapon that has Hoyt's initials on it he covers up evidence before reporting the death. then when he brings the self-proclaimed leader of the village to the boat they discover a thoroughly cleaned up crime scene and no sign of the body.

THE CHARACTERS:  Hastings Hoyt usually acts as the Watson to Long's series detective plantation cop Komako Koa.  While he does narrate, like a true Watson, he is usually much in the background. In Death Goes Native, however, he takes center stage as it appears someone is exploiting his presence on Waimaka. He is seen as an intruder and scapegoat rather than a humble visitor.  Several crimes occur, not just the murder of the playwright who was killed on his boat and then mysteriously disposed of.  Each time Hoyt is implicated in some way - initials on weapons, being the last person to see someone alive.  He has no luck and is seemingly at the mercy of someone who clearly want shim blamed and arrested for all the deaths and crimes.  Almost miraculously Komako shows up just in time to take over before policemen from Big Island can arrive to begin an official murder investigation. The suspects are numerous and all of them seem to be have some kind of secret they are harboring.

Bronson Delmar  - first victim of murder. A playwright who has bragged about his current manuscript recently completed while living on the island. The plot deals with crime and his inspiration for some of the characters comes from recent headlines

Bessie Delmar - The playwright's wife and co-writer of the play. When her husband dies she show little grief and is more worried about the location of the manuscript and getting proper credit for the plot. A notebook with newspaper clippings that serve as inspiration for the play's story turns up among Bessie's belongings and gives Komako a major clue as to the motivation of the killer

Elaine - being cared for by the local physician. She is suffering from amnesia and does not even know her name. Her caretakers gave her the name of Elaine. On two nights she is seen sleepwalking and talking about someone named Peter.  

Dr. Latham - While caring for Elaine Dr Latham has fallen in love with her. He fears if she recovers her memory and she learns about her life --possibly she is married -- that he will lose her. And who is Peter?  It's not him. His first name is .

Mrs. Latham - The doctor's imperious mother who seems almost a peripheral character. Until she has a private conversation with Komako and Hoyt about her suspicons of their so-called village leader...

Mr. Budd - the village chief, so to speak. He organized the colony and seems to be in charge of everything. Why did he want to set up this private idyll far away form the mainland? Is he hiding from his past? 

Turva Massic - Hoyt is struck by Turva's exotic appearance despite the long scar that runs down the side of her face. Of all the people she seems to be transforming into a true native. Her fascination with weaving keeps her occupied. But she is wary of Hoyt who she thinks has a dangerous side. 

Mary & Henry - two Hawaiians who act as servants for the villagers.  They are in love and also become key witnesses 

Mokino - another Hawaiian and Mary's father. He is the kahuna of the area, a shaman of sorts, who spends much of his time taking care of a shark that visits the lagoon near a local swimming spot. Komako tells Hoyt that the shark is a reincarnation of a dead boy and thus Mokino treats the shark as if it is his own child, feeding it and making sure no one molests the creature.

The Wests - Josephine and Thornton, married couple having some domestic difficulty. Thornton, am musician and composer, spends too much time working on a symphony. Josephine feels ignored and so she has been flirting with some of the men -- one of them being Delmar.

Herb - the manager/handyman of the village. Though most of his duties are confined to repair work Herb has taken it upon himself to micromanage the activities of the villagers. For instance, he rings a bell to remind everyone that its time for exercise and swimming. Needless to say many of the villagers find this laughable and many ignore his schedules and regulations.

Inscription with Max Long's signature
"with Aloha Nui Oe"is his greeting

INNOVATIONS:  More than the other two mystery novels Long wrote with Komako Koa and Hasting Hoyt Death Goes Native is the most accomplished and satisfying as a detective novel. He does well with trying to plant clues. More importantly he improves in building suspense in this final novel by focusing the story on the "wrong man" motif so familiar to crime novel devotees. With Hoyt discovering the crime and then foolishly covering up the crime the reader is eager to see how he will get out of the mess Hoyt creates for himself. When the body vanishes he and Komako must then re-examine the crime scene to figure out what was done with the corpse. Hoyt fears that is was fed to the roaming shark, but Komako tells him that is unlikely. This is when we learn the truth of the shark and why it is revered and cared for by Mokino. 

Long seems to have modeled this mystery novel on those of his contemporaries making use of other familiar conventions such as crimes in the past and impersonation. The play the Delmars wrote is the Macguffin of the piece - everyone wants to find it, especially Koa and Hoyt. They believe it will reveal the motive for all the murders. But has it been destroyed? If so, how will they expose the killer who they are sure is one of the villagers pretending to be someone else? Impostors will turn up over the course of the novel and more than one character will have a secret exposed. Long also dares to flaunt some of the assumed rules of detective fiction by having multiple villains having a hand in the various crimes other than murder. The plot is filled with incident as well as some intriguing insight into Hawaiian culture and superstition. These aspects are blended well into the story rather than being didactic intrusions as in the case of the volcano lectures in The Lava Flow Murders (1940), the second of the Komako Koa books.

THE AUTHOR:  Max Freedom Long (1890 - 1971) was born in Colorado and then moved to California where he was raised, schooled and eventually graduated from Los Angeles State Normal School with an associates degree.  In 1917 he moved to Hawaii and taught school there for several years.  While living and working in Hawaii Long became fascinated with local culture, folklore and what he called Hawaiian magic. These would lead to his developing a philosophy he called Huna. In the 1930s he left Hawaii and set up home again in California. By August 1941 he was living in Laguna Beach based on an inscription I have in my copy of Death Goes Native.

He wrote three detective novels with Komako Koa. I am surmising that the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, four months after the publication of his third novel, put an end to his writing anymore mystery novels set in Hawaii. Long is better known for his books on Huna, his personal philosophy that incorporates Hawaiian "magic" and culture into a kind of New Age worldview. Three of these Huna books are apparently still in print while his detective novels have been basically forgotten.

FOR SALE!  I've listed all three copies of Komako Koa mystery novels and they are currently available for purchase. Click here. This morning I checked and already The Lava Flow Murders is sold, but the other two are still eager for someone to purchase them.  Happy hunting! 

Komako Koa Trilogy
Murder Between Dark and Dark (1939)
The Lava Flow Murders (1940)
Death Goes Native (1941)

The Croaking Raven - Gladys Mitchell

THE STORY: Despite its gruesome deaths by falling and crushing in a Norman castle The Croaking Raven (1966) is very much like a 21st century mystery. You know the kind:  tea parties and bakeries and gossipy characters, one of whom has an unusual profession. Like a tour guide of a castle who turns into an amateur sleuth when someone falls down a flight of stairs and dies.

It's Hamish Gavin's tenth birthday and for his present he has demanded that his family rent a castle in the advertisement he found in a local newspaper.  They do so and off they all go along with Dame Beatrice Bradley in tow.  Part of the lease requires the renters to open the grounds to visitors twice a week for four or five hours. Hamish can't wait to turn their rental property into a tourist trap. He mans the card table and collects the admission fee of a half crown, charges another shilling for parking cars in the courtyard and persuades his policeman father Robert Gavin, also a talented sketch artist, to whip up some souvenir drawings for yet another money making opportunity. All goes well until they start getting requests to see the bloodstains and are pestered with jokey queries about the ghost.

Bloodstains? Ghost? Did someone die in the castle? And how long ago was that?

Yes, indeed there was a death. Tom Dysey fell down the stairs the evening following a dreary party two years ago. And the rumors of a ghost are not just stories when the renters hear singing at night coming from within the walls and Hamish sees a white clothed figure appear in the dining room then slowly shrink and disappear into the floor. Is the castle truly haunted?  Hamish, his mother Laura, and Dame Beatrice turn sleuthing ghostbusters to find out what exactly is going on in the Dysey estate. Not much later after they settle in another person falls to his death.

CHARACTERS:  There's quite a large cast here and nearly everyone is a Dysey forcing Dame Beatrice and the others to refer to nearly everyone by their first name. There's Tom, the first victim of death by falling, and his brothers Eustace and Cyril.  Cyril's wife whose first name I don't even recall because she's always referred to as "Cyril's wife" nearly every time in order to avoid confusion with the other Mrs. Dysey (widow of Tom) whose first name is Henrietta. She goes by Etta but she's rarely called Mrs. Dysey because another Henrietta turns up and she also claims to be a Mrs. Dysey.  Who exactly is she supposed to be married to?  Tom?  Eustace?  We never find out the truth about this other Henrietta until the final third of the book. This other Henrietta appears only once in the story as a comic figure. She is a tourist who claims to be psychic and refuses to pay admission to the castle as she is a member of the historical society and she should be exempt.  This second Henrietta may appear only once but her persona hovers over all the proceedings.

Then there are the Carters who we also learn late in the book are related to the Dyseys because the grandmother was born Charlotte Dysey and is the great aunt of all the other Dyseys. And did I forget Bonnamy Dysey?  Henrietta Dysey (Tom's widow, that is) had a memorial plaque in his name placed on the outer walls of the castle and everyone assumes he's dead. But is he really?

Chillingham Castle courtyard,
supposedly the most haunted
castle in the UK

The tangled web of Dyseys and Carters, two mysterious deaths and an absent relative make up only a small sample of the many unanswered riddles. Dame Beatrice wants to make sense of it all but it will take a lot of intense questioning and probing to unravel the skeins of ambiguity. Not many people are willing to cooperate until the second, in some cases third, confrontation with the formidable Beatrice Lestrange Bradley.

We get a cameo from Jonathan Bradley (the Dame's younger son) and his cipher of a wife Deborah, too.  Jonathan helps explain the mystery of the ghost and in so doing uncovers a secret passage. Not a real spoiler as this happens very early in the book. The secret passage plays a very large part in the story.

The best characters in any Gladys Mitchell mystery are the supporting players.  I will mention Percy Bellairs, the gardener at the castle and Mrs. Dysey (Cyril's wife) as two of the most interesting and intriguing of this rather large cast.  And Hamish is an utter delight. Precocious to be sure, as most of Mitchell's child characters usually are, but delightful nonetheless.  Mitchell was a former schoolteacher and you can tell her love of children whenever they appear in her books.  They are almost all infectiously affable.  Sadly, he disappears with his father for the bulk of the book. Robert and Hamish both return at the end and luckily mother Laura (secretarial assistant/business associate to Mrs. Beadley for many of the novels) has a surprise for him when she reveals the secret of the ghost in the final paragraphs. It's a tidy and heartwarming way to end the novel.

Tom Dysey falls down a newel stairway
or spiral staircase to modern readers

INNOVATIONS:  Detection occurs in The Croaking Raven but much of it take place offstage, peripherally mentioned and then discussed after the fact at length in wordy dialogue laden passages. For example: Why don't we follow Dame Beatrice into the priest's hole and watch her train her flashlight as she explores the space and then lands her light on the second corpse that dies by falling? Instead we get these two sentences: "So saying, she ducked under the low doorway and made for the steps. It was a long time before she reappeared." Considering Mitchell's predilection for outré plot elements, legends, ghosts, and hauntings this was a huge missed opportunity for added creepiness. Nearly all of the book is devoted to lengthy Q&A sessions that are often interrupted forcing Dame Beatrice to seek out individuals two or three times to pester them again for the questions still unanswered.

I must mention one thing that I marvel at when I read a Gladys Mitchell mystery novel. She is a master at rendering regional dialects. Never does she ridicule speech patterns or odd vocabulary, it is always done with authenticity and respect. No other writer of crime fiction is as skilled at this as Gladys Mitchell. Truly! I've read hundred of books with phonetic dialects and 90% are just wretchedly mimicked (revealing more about the author's sense of hearing than accurate vocal inflections) or an utter mockery of the dialect. Mitchell loves the rhythm, the elisions, and the rich and unusual vocabulary and slang. Reading the dialogue of Bellairs, the gossipy gardener and Cyril's wife, an angry woman whose speech always reveals her tone and hidden frustrations, were for me the best parts of this novel. I could definitely hear their voices as I read those passages.

Only the final third of the novel really delivers the goods. Much of the detective work is surmising about primogeniture, birthright, birth order in the Dysey family and trying to secure a motive for the two deaths of the Dysey brothers.  Is it a greedy fortune hunter?  Is it revenge for the "bastard" child Henry whose parentage is never really known until the final pages? All the familial rehash, genealogy and talk of who will inherit got to be dreary. Only when the Raven's Hoard is mentioned do things finally pick up. This is a legend about a hidden treasure stowed away by Jesuits during the late 18th century. Then a bible is stolen, and returned mysteriously, rudely dumped in a pig sty. Soon Dame Beatrice is off on another puzzle solving adventure that will involve a strange code found in underlined passages in a text book on household care.  All these odd plot maneuvers are typical of Gladys Mitchell, reminding me again of the strange gimmicks in contemporary cozy mystery novels.

Overall,  The Croaking Raven is kind of a mixed bag. As usual, Mitchellesque epigraphs head each chapter. This time she selects passages from a variety of obscure Scottish folk songs to hint at the content of each chapter. Even with these atmospheric touches, attempting to inject eerie frissons with their allusions to ghosts and violent death, The Croaking Raven meanders along with intermittent thrills and a few surprises until its somewhat predictable end. The villains are not a surprise, some of the mysteries fizzle out, others never fully explained, and the finale seems too pat. I'd recommend this only to those who are Mitchell completists.

EASY TO FIND? Not really. I bought my copy decades ago and I've not seen one since. There is no US edition and I know of no paperback reprint since it was first published in 1966. But! I'm offering mine for sale online and just lowered the price. It's the only copy currently for sale.

Murder Up the Glen - Colin Campbell

THE STORY:  Lorin Weir is on a walking tour of the West Highlands. He is warned to stay away from his intended hiking paths because of the dangerous  poorly maintained trails that proved deadly to a couple of young men on recent unsuccessful climbs. But the terrain is not the only danger. Lorin learns of the legend of the Black Walker, ghost of a Spanish invader to Scotland, that appears in the area on Beltane (May 1) and Midsummer -- two nights favored by witches, warlocks and haunts.  Lorin dismisses the superstitious warning and camps in the forbidden area.  He witnesses a murder an d sees a black caped figure fleeing into the night.  Lorin also flees but in doing so he dsrops his monogrammed knife. Uh oh! Now he'll be implicated.

CHARACTERS:  Initially, Lorie Weir appears to t be the protagonist detective in Murder Up the Glen (1933), but the novel is structured in an unusual manner. In Part One Lorin and the villagers are featured as they all search for Duncan Grant, a gameskeeper who has gone missing then turns out to be the murder victim Lorin found in the highlands.  In Part Two a writer, Martin Loan, and his colleague Dr. Lawrence Neal, an Irish physician interested in crime and supernatural, take over as narrator and detective respectively.  As the story gets more complex and detailed Loan adds several letters and diary entries to his "manuscript" to offer up alternate points of view and provide eyewitness testimony that he was unable to provide himself.  Loan and Dr. Neal take an arduous journey to Fantassich Lodge where they set up temporary headquarters to help the Neil family (distant cousins of the physician) make sense of the murder and  clear up whether the ghost might be involved or not. 

The Neil family is headed up by Colonel Evan Neil. The others -- Cynthia, a 17 year old preparing for university, and John 14 years-old -- are joined by Neil's two stepchildren Alan and Mary, both under 10 years old. All these supporting characters have their own special scenes with Cynthia eventually taking on a major role as she becomes more and more attracted to Lorin Weir and determined to clear his name. In fact, the youngest boy Alan serves to be crucial to the investigation when he stumbles on the incriminating knife with Lorin's initials in a burn (a large stream) while fishing.

The austere and grim setting with its foreboding landscape dominates the first half of the book. Descriptions of the craggy land, mountains and glens, burns and rivers provide substantial creepy atmosphere. The landscape and geography become like a character unto itself.  The inclusion of a gorgeously rendered map (see below & click to enlarge) that serves as the front endpapers in the first edition allows the reader to realize more fully the all-important landscape.

The Neil's maid Mairag and Dugald Cameron, her boyfriend of sorts, will also emerge from the background and take up a majority of the story when Lorin focuses his efforts on proving that Dugald killed Duncan Grant. The comely Mairag was the object of many of the local men's attentions including Grant, the murder victim. Lorin is sure jealousy is the motive. Mairag, of course, denies Duglad had anything to do with the crime pointing out his relatively good nature, despite his temper, he would never kill anyone. However, Dugald becomes surly and often violent in his own denials. The two seem to be protecting each other.  Or are their actually protecting someone entirely different?  Cynthia is puzzling out all the seeming jealousies and cover-ups and tries to help Lorin see the truth.

Meanwhile, Dr. Neil is out to prove that the ghost is real and that the legends and stories surrounding  The Black Walker have some legitimacy.  Is it possible that this caped figure is an actual ghost? And what of Daft Jimmy who has been seen wandering the mountainous terrain in his own black cape? This local "half-wit" who spends much of his time herding sheep seems to be part of a crime. Lorin suggests that Daft Jimmy is being exploited and manipulated by an angry, more intelligent man in order to carry out violence and is doing so in a Black Walker get-up.

INNOVATIONS:  What makes Murder up the Glen a bit remarkable is the manner in which Campbell manages to blend the real with the legendary.  The shifting between suspects is also well done. By the final third of the novel the plot becomes similar to a Christianna Brand detective novel with quickly shifting accusations arising and almost as quickly demolished as new facts come to light. Ultimately, Dr. Neal uncovers a Gothic surprise of sorts and disproves what seems to be the ultimate accusation. Neal offers up his own ideas which incorporate a hint at supernatural activity while others dismiss his claims and point the finger at the only mortal suspect left to have been accused. While the book is not actually open-ended in the finale, there is a oddly ephemeral suggestion that is left up to the reader to either believe or dismiss. This book is unique among detective novels in this regard.  I thought of The Burning Court (1937) and wondered if perhaps John Dickson Carr had read this book and tried his hand at a similar introduction of genuine supernatural content revealed in the novel's conclusion.

THE AUTHOR:  Colin Campbell was the pseudonym of Douglas Christie (1894-1935) who wrote novels under his own name, his Campbell alter ego and a second pen name, Lynn Durie. According to Hubin's Bibliography of Crime Fiction Dr. Larry Neal, is a series detective and appears in two other mystery novels. The first novel, a frustratingly rare book I am still in search of for over 20 years (!), Out of the Wild Hills (1932) is a mystery with genuine supernatural content.  The third and last of the Neal mysteries, Murder on the Moors (1934),  I managed to find in a scarce POD reprint edition and will review that one in March.

EASY TO FIND?  If you want a hardcover edition -- well, good luck.  I found a battered copy a few years ago but recently sold that in my online listings. However, if you don't mind eBooks or digital texts, then you are indeed in luck!  I suggest you click here and you will find three different digital versions of Murder Up the Glen, one for Kindle, one in Epub, and one full length PDF.  Happy reading!

Psst... Over Here!

Hello, there! Remember me? I think eight month’s hiatus is a little too long to have taken for what I thought was going to be “a little break”. What have I been up to? Oh, this and that…

I came to realize that like many collectors I had gradually turned into a monomaniac of sorts and I didn’t like it. My literary anecdotes were boring people and more importantly I was boring myself. I wanted to avoid vintage detective fiction for a while. It was long time that I returned to reading contemporary fiction of all types, reading non-fiction (!) that led me to seeking out the histories and memoirs that once upon a time I enjoyed even more than mystery novels. As I veered away from detective and crime fiction I rediscovered my passion for supernatural horror from all eras. In the process I learned that there has been a revival of “traditional” supernatural fiction in the past three years similar to the renaissance in detective fiction (both reissues and new writing). Quite an eye-opening surprise and a delightful one for someone like me who has always loved ghost stories, haunted house novels, and metaphoric treatments of the monster hiding under your bed.

And so after eight months I’ve come full circle and I’m ready to share with you some of the unusual and intriguing titles I’ve devoured since December 2022. Like this one…

Flowers for a Dead Witch by Michael Butterworth

Readers of this blog will know that I love a good mystery novel dripping with Gothic elements and accented with witchcraft, hexes, black magic, voodoo, hoodoo or whatever the author is calling it. Butterworth’s third mystery novel is a brilliant example of the first revival of traditional mystery writing that occurred back in the 1970s. In Flowers for a Dead Witch (1971) he gives us what at first seems to be yet another of those Gothic “romances” that filled bookstore shelves and drugstore spinners five decades ago. Polly Lestrange travels from Canada to Suffolk to visit her bedridden ailing great-aunt in a crumbling medieval manor complete with moat surrounding the entrance. She is greeted by Miss Chesham, the great-aunt’s over protective companion who refuses the Polly’s request to visit the old woman. Even the local physician caring for Great Aunt Granchester insists that Polly leave the old woman alone. Well, what Gothic heroine is going to listen to either person? Certainly not this one and Polly determinedly breaks into the old woman’s room one windy and rainy night (of course it rains a lot in this book. It has too!) to discover… Oh, but that would spoil it all. The old woman has a secret of course and it will only be revealed in the final pages.

Before the startling conclusion – which I confess really took me by surprise – our plucky heroine will encounter a ragtag group of rebellious teens, rumors of a witchcraft cult cavorting naked in the moonlight, an ancient cemetery home to a mausoleum containing the corpse of a woman executed for witchcraft 400+ years ago, and literally stumble upon what appears to be the charred remains of that executed witch. But how is that possible? A 400 year old corpse of a woman burned at the stake would be nothing but rotting bones if not a pile of dust in 1971. The body found in the coffin in the mausoleum is freshly dead, and burned beyond recognition. When both the local reverend and his wife go missing whispers of foul play mix with the rumors of witchcraft.

This was the first book I’ve read by Michael Butterworth (1924 – 1986) who prior to turning his hand to bizarre crime and mystery novels was primarily known as a writer of comic books. Oh! A warning: Don’t confuse him with another (still living) writer of the same name who wrote science fiction novels and SF TV show novelizations. I had to notify the Admin of a crime fiction website that he conflated both Butterworths. I advised him to remove all the SF titles from the mystery writer Butterworth’s bibliography. He speedily updated that page on his website.

If Flowers for a Dead Witch is any indication of what Butterworth is capable of then I’m eager to check out as many of his other books that I can find. Most satisfying is that this is a legitimate detective novel with fair play clueing. Assiduous readers may catch onto what I overlooked as I foolishly fell for all of the writer’s rather clever red herrings. Butterworth mixes the formulaic plot of those 70s Gothic romances churned out by writers like Phyllis Whitney, Victoria Holt, and Mary Stewart with genuine mystery novel conventions and thankfully improves on both. Of course with a generous helping of creepy superstition and lurid witchcraft legends the plot is considerably spicier and more intriguing. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and completed it in a speedy two days. There are several copies available for sale out there in the vast shopping mall of the internet. I’m sure it ought to turn up in local libraries both in the US and UK. Check it out!

Michael Butterworth Crime & Detective Novels
The Soundless Scream (1967)
Walk Softly in Fear (1968)
Vanishing Act (1970) (US title: The Uneasy Sun)
Flowers for a Dead Witch (1971)
The Black Look (1972)
Villa on the Shore (1973)
The Man in the Sopwith Camel (1974)
Remains to be Seen (1976)
Festival! (1976)
X Marks the Spot (1978)
The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo (1983)
  -- adapted into a musical: The Lucky Stiff by Ahrens & Flaherty
A Virgin on the Rocks (1985)
The Five Million Dollar Prince (1986)

As by “Sarah Kemp” – all feature Dr. Tina May, a psychiatrist detective
Goodbye Pussy (1978) (US title: Over the Edge)
No Escape (1984)
Lure of Sweet Death (1986)
What Dread Hand (1987)

FFB: Golden Guilt – Francis Gerard

THE STORY: Sir John Meredith is off on another adventure involving kidnapping, revenge and another bizarre cult that hints at supernatural origins. In the prologue of Golden Guilt (1938) two men and one girl are “anointed” and banished to the Place of Fire “never to return until such a time as [they] have restored that which is lost and have avenged the sacrilege.” This outlandish thriller with a smidgen of a detective novel plot is populated with Aztec descendants, Russian gangsters, Mexican terrorists, a gang sporting tattoos of Three Clasped Hands, and a group of zealots from a lost kingdom in search of the legendary Golden Fleece.

THE CHARACTERS: Meredith does his best to prevent the kidnapping of Lord Allingham’s son Bobby with the help of his wife Juanita, Sgt Beef (who is remarkably related to Leo Bruce’s Sgt Beef!), Bradford and Col. Merryweather-Winter. Along the way two characters from previous books turn up, Sir Hector MacAllister and Clifford Craigworth, and assist our heroes in the complicated plot.

Add this title to the ever growing list of mystery novels and thrillers with a burial vault break-in. (I swear I need to do a post on this topic soon). After a funeral the Allingham family vault is discovered broken into and smashed coffins littering the interior of the chamber. Evidence points to the M.O. of “Soup” Smith, a notorious safecracker and burglar who preferred dynamite over picking locks to gain entry. Smith was recently released from prison and the search is on to track him down.

Some of the supporting characters were my favorite people in the heavily populated story and Gerard enjoys taking advantage of their eccentricity to indulge in his ever-present ribald and vulgar sense of humor. Lord Marshington, for example, is an aristocrat obsessed with growing roses. Meredith apologizes for interrupting him while in his garden and Sgt Beef is appalled when he hears his lordship mention he was planning on putting muck into Dorothy Perkins bed. Beef thinks the worst of this “supposed gentleman” who would throw horse manure into a woman’s bed chamber. The scene turns into an Abbot and Costello routine of wordplay and misunderstanding thankfully lasting only a few lines. But even in its brevity it made me laugh out loud.

INNOVATIONS: Like Secret Sceptre Gerard peppers his story with frequent allusions to Golden Age detective fiction writing and characters which supports my theory that these books are meant to be a send-up of the entire genre. See the QUOTES section for some of the better references.

This was my second favorite of the weirder entries in Francis Gerard’s series featuring Meredith, a British Foreign Office agent turned policeman. Brimming with action and eccentric characters Golden Guilt is another is Gerard’s near parodies of the ultra-heroic adventure thriller which originated with H. Rider Haggard and his books about Alan Quatermain and Leo Vincey then carried into the often self-parodying adventures of pulp magazine heroes. As for the capture and reveal of the villains of the piece all is not as obvious as it first appears. Gerard does a fine job of misdirecting the reader into believing that one character is the brains of the kidnapping then performs a nifty reversal in the final pages. In doing so he simultaneously supplies the requisite twist to the crime plot making this more than satisfying as a detective cum adventure novel.

THINGS I LEARNED: One of the women characters is wearing a “…really complicated, though apparently severe black Hartnell dress.” Ignorance of early 20th century designers led me to look up Norman Bishop Hartnell (1901-1979). Probably much better known in the UK than in the US Hartnell was a fashion designer who did most of his work for the Royal Family. He was given the honor of Royal Warrant as Dressmaker to the Queen Mother in 1940 and the same for Elizabeth II in 1957.

QUOTES: “We found everybody’s finger-prints there…!” He snorted “You’d have thought, wouldn’t you, with all this damn silly rubbishy detective-fiction stuff that’s written nowadays that everybody, down to a three-year-old, would know not to handle a thing like that.”

“I’m not really trying to behave like a detective in a book, but you know the more I read detective fiction the more I realize that the detective heroes are quite right to behave as they do and keep their mouths shut until the denouement. After all, nobody likes to look a fool…”

“And you’re equally certain that there’s no pointer anywhere?” suggested Meredith. “No nice bloody thumb-marks left on a clean piece of white paint, for instance? No scented or monogrammed handkerchiefs dropped outside the window? No uneven footprints clearly indicating the presence of a red-haired French sailor off a Dutch boat with a bad limp in his right foot, and no butts of cigarettes of a tobacco only smoked by members of the Egyptian Embassy”? . . . No, I suppose not.” John sighed. “I always think those fellows in fiction have the easier job of the two.”

There had always been an amicable feeling of rivalry between Matthew Beef and his more famous cousin Sergeant William Beef, who has so signally put the amateur detectives in their place in the case which had made his name, and which had been chronicled by Mr. Leo Bruce under the heading The Case for Three Detectives. Moreover, Beef, who rather fancied himself at darts, could never quite beat his cousin William […] who was apt to be a little superior with Matthew over his recent successes.

“A stone jar which contains vitriol contains an evil thing, but the jar isn’t responsible for its contents. Madness is an evil, there’s no getting away from that; but does that necessarily make the madman, the vessel housing this horrible ill-balance, an evil thing?”

EASY TO FIND? Much to my surprise I found several very affordable used copies of Golden Guilt. There are couple of the Thriller Book Club edition (some with dust jackets) as well as the Cherry Tree paperback offered for sale from various online sellers. But be warned – the later Cherry Tree paperback reprints tend to be considerably abridged from the original text. Even more remarkable I also found six copies of the US first edition and two of the UK edition (later printings each) all of them were under $20. One of the UK edition comes with a DJ in better condition that the one I picture here. The remaining of the hardcover copies (with and without DJs) range in prices from $30 for the UK ed in DJ to $100 for a US first edition in “about fine” condition with a “very good or better” dust jacket. As far as I know none of the Francis Gerard books have been reprinted since the 1950s. Happy hunting and reading!

FRIDAY FRIGHT NIGHT: The Half Pint Flask - DuBose Heyward

"Strange the obsession that an imaginative woman can exercise over an unimaginative man.  It the sort of thing that can follow a chap to his grave."

 One of the more unusual offshoots of collecting supernatural fiction is hunting for the numerous editions of one short story or novella published as a single volume. Lovecraft's The Shunned House, the horror author's first work to be published in book form, is such a volume. Not so elusive as it used to be, but exorbitantly expensive should you find a copy in an antiquarian bookshop. There are other more readily obtained books and much more affordable and often much more interesting as both entertainingly creepy genre fiction as well as well written literature. The Half Pint Flask by DuBose Heyward belongs to this other category. I recently re-read it for our monthly "Friday Fright Night" meme hosted by Curt Evans and a found it to be as chilling and evocative as I did when I first read over twenty years ago.

The book itself was handsomely produced in both a limited numbered and signed edition as well as a trade edition. Both editions are fully illustrated with three full page black and white line drawings by Joseph Sanford as well as head and tail pieces and numerous vignettes. Of the two editions the latter is much easier to find but not so easy to find with its exceptionally scarce dust jacket (see photo above, courtesy of Eureka Books in California).  I only learned of the fine binding in a limited and numbered edition when I went looking for the first edition dust jacket. My copy is a serviceable reading copy, jacketless with rather worn boards but with pristine pages inside.  It was very cheap when I bought it two decades ago and you'll be hard pressed to find a copy without jacket for under $25 these days.

The story is a fable of sorts teaching a lesson about respect for the dead, the sacred nature of cemeteries and ultimately a cautionary tale to greedy collectors of curios and objets d'art. DuBose Heyward, an expert on his home state of South Carolina and its native Gullah community, incorporates African legends and mythology, Black American superstition and funereal rituals, a tinge of witchcraft, and one appearance of a ghost. Its 55 pages tell a tale of collector's mania, desecration of a grave site, covetousness of a rare antique glass flask, and retribution from the ethereal world. The sections on African mythology and religious rites that mix with a suggestion of black magic are eye opening and rendered with a flair for authenticity without ever seeming sensational or lurid. Heyward had deep respect for the Black community of his home state and was fascinated with the Gullah culture, its language and customs. The reader learns quite a bit about the Gullah world in the telling of his tale.

The Half Pint Flask (1929) is narrated by Mr. Courtney, a writer of fiction, who plays host to Barksdale, a would-be anthropologist who has traveled to Ediwander Island in South Carolina Gullah country to write a "series of articles on Negroid Primates."  The term annoys and angers local Courtney who describes Barksdale's demeanor and tone: "Uttered in that cold and dissecting voice, [the phrase] seemed to strip the human from the hundred or more Negroes who were my only company..."  Courtney goes on to explain that the local Blacks are descended from the slaves who worked the largest rice plantation in South Carolina and that their isolation may seem have kept them "primitive enough."  This provides even more incentive for for Barksdale's impending research.

On route to their lodgings the two men pass by a cemetery reserved for burying the Blacks. The gravesites are covered with "a strange litter of medicine bottles, tin spoons, and other futle weapons that had failed in the final engagement with the last dark enemy."  Barksdale has the eagle eye of a manic collector and he immediately spots a treasure.  We learn he is a collector of antique glass, in particular a rare type of glassware found only in South Carolina. He orders the carriage to stop and races to the gravesite where he plucks the glass flasks from the mound and brings it back with him.  

"Do you know what this is?" he demanded, then rushed triumphantly with his answer; "It's a first issue, half pint flask of the old South Carolina state dispensary. It gives me the only complete set in existence. No another one in America."

Courtney warns his fellow writer that he ought not to mess with the graves of the local Blacks.  The objects placed on the graves are as sacred to them as the remains they protect. He pleads with him to put it back immediately.  But Barksdale will not hear him, dismissing all his warnings as superstition and nonsense. He assures Courtney he will offer a good sum to whoever placed the flask on the grave. Unfortunately, he never follows through with that empty promise. It is his undoing.

The rest of the story details the aftermath of Barksdale's rash act and disregard for the traditions and beliefs of the locals.  Eerie sounds and thundering seem to descend upon the house where he and Courtney are staying. The droning and weird vibrations that infect the household cause insomnia and headaches. Drumming and singing, strange chants fill the night air:

I have always had a passion for moonlight and I stood long on the piazza watching the great disc change from its horizon copper to gold, then cool to silver as it swung up into the immeasurable tranquility of the southern night. At first I thought the Negroes must be having a dance, for I could hear the syncopation of sticks on a cabin floor, and the palmettos and moss-draped live oaks that grew about the buildings could be seen the full quarter of a mile away, a ruddy bronze against the sky from a brush fire. But the longer I waited listening the less sure I became about the nature of the celebration. The rhythm became strange, complicated; and the chanting that rose and fell with the drumming rang with a new compelling quality, and lacked entirely the abandon of dancers.

That night Courtney beholds the vision of Plat-eye, a legendary figure of the Black community based on a African god of vengeance. "Plat-eye is a spirit which takes some form which will be particularly apt to lure its victims away," Courtney has earlier explained to Barksdale. It is clearly a foreshadowing of the climax of the book.

And Barksdale himself becomes a haunted man in the worst way. His mania for glass has turned a fascination into a curse. His flouting of the very subject of his writing which is filled with facts about the "deeply religious nature of the American Negro" results in a deadly lesson for the fatuous writer and puts an end to his collecting and studying for good.

DuBose Heyward, 1929
(photo by Ben Pinchot for Vanity Fair)

DuBose Heyward (1885-1940) was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina and spent much of his writing career exploring the lives and culture of the Black people of his hometown and state.  Author of poetry, short stories, plays and novels his name nor face might not be familiar to most readers but certainly his one work should be remembered by many.  In 1925 he wrote Porgy, a novel of the tragic life of its disabled Black hero and his love for a woman being abused and dominated by a local criminal. Heyward and his wife, Dorothy, a frequent writing collaborator, turned the novel into a stage play which had a successful run on Broadway in the 1927-28 season. George Gershwin saw the play and approached Heyward with the hope of turning the play into an opera. That collaboration along with Gershwin's lyricist brother Ira gave us Porgy and Bess, the first American operatic work to have a cast of exclusively Black performers.  Since its first performance in 1935 the opera has been revived on Broadway seven times over a span of nine decades its most recent Tony award winning production ran for  between 2011 and 2012. The opera was also adapted into a movie musical in 1959 starring Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Pearl Bailey and Sammy Davis Jr.  Heyward also is known for his novel Mamba's Daughters, also adapted for the stage with his wife.

 

FFB: Secret Sceptre - Francis Gerard

THE STORY: The preposterous plot of Secret Sceptre (1937) reads like a matinee cliffhanger serial overloaded with harrowing incidents, gruesome murders, hairsbreadth escapes and eleventh hour rescues. Sir John Meredith investigates a murder by decapitation carried out by men in armor and eventually uncovers an ancient secret society made up of men entrusted with protecting the Holy Grail.

THE CHARACTERS: Our hero is the inscrutable Sir John Meredith, a Foreign Office agent who becomes a policeman almost by accident. In this seventh book in sixteen book series he is aided by Sergeant Beef (who is nothing like his namesake created by Leo Bruce) and some other associates from both Scotland Yard and both Foreign and Home Offices. Meredith is not at all a likable man in this book. He comes off as arrogant, classist, and racist. Surprised? I'm not. He has little patience for anyone, insults people to their faces passing it off as wry wit, is constantly telling his colleagues to shut up and is generally one of the worst examples of the ubermacho self-styled aristocrats found in pre-WW2 era fiction written by British men. Took a while for me to warm up to him, but even then I didn't' think him the ideal candidate for the protagonist of a sixteen book series. Maybe he becomes less haughty and sarcastic as the series progresses.

Thankfully the book is filled with interesting and colorful characters along the way like Dermot O'Derg an Irish mercenary "born several centuries too late" whose "out of time persona" makes him the stand out in the very large cast. O'Derg is a powerful red haired man who might have been descended from Vikings despite his obvious Irish speech and heritage. He falls hard for the requisite "pale beauty" of the novel -- Daphne Birrell, sister of sculptor Nicholas Birrell, of one the many handsome young men who met a grisly end over the course of the book.  (For some reason Gerard likes to kill off "handsome young men" with an almost gleeful sadism.  No sooner has an HYM appeared within the story he is almost immediately dispatched with callous cruelty. Wonder what that's about!)

Apart from O'Derg it's the villains who steal the show. There is the sadistic American who speaks with an indeterminate foreign accent Al Cartell-Ardew, the master criminal of the novel who is constantly slapping the face of his Asian-Jewish servant Li-Fu Isaacs. There is a Russian secret agent who join forces with Cartell-Ardew. And let me not forget the motley crew of oddball criminals Cartell-Ardew hires in order to free a prisoner who he needs for his master plan. In one of the more hilarious portions of this very odd book Cartell-Ardew engineers a prison break that seems like a Mission: Impossible episode as written by John Cleese and Graham Chapman. The group of crooks masquerade as French prison experts and demand a tour of Broadhurst prison then manage to ferret out their targeted inmate all without once resorting to violence.

INNOVATIONS:  Secret Sceptre is a strange mix of straightforward adventure with hard edged violence and loopy farce. I'm convinced that Gerard was in fact parodying all of the superhero protagonists of British pulp fiction. The prison break sequence alone is evidence enough. Gerard's irreverent humor mixes groaning puns, Abbott & Costello wordplay, a couple of dirty jokes (one about "Lord Hereford's Knob" amazingly escaped the blue pencil of McDonald's 1937 editor), and low farce clearly are all signs of high spirited fun. Nothing is meant to be taken too seriously here. Witness this pointless and ridiculous exchange between Daphne and Nicholas as they snack on pieces of melon while lounging in their pajamas and dressing gowns:

"Why must you make those disgusting sucking noises, Nick?"
"Can't help it," he replied, "the damn thing drips so and I haven't got a bib."

En route to the Welsh coast in order to get to Fishguard where Slim Shardoc, an American crook is being held for questioning Meredith has a car accident. While speeding down the foggy road a boy on a bicycle appears seemingly out of nowhere and he swerves and skids to avoid hitting the boy. He gets of out of the wrecked car and swears up a storm in Hindustani which Gerard graciously translates for us: "Now may Shaitan gather thee to his bosom in the nethermost pit which is seven times heated."  And then -- "John put his head back, raised his fists to the sky, opened his mouth and howled like a wolf, at which the small boy, hastily remounting his bicycle, peddled frantically into the darkness."

As the outrageous story progresses, the bodies pile up, the offbeat sense of humor becomes increasingly ludicrous and the climax seems like something out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail four decades before that comedy troupe ever thought up their King Arthur saga parody. Even if Gerard's description of the Knights of the Holy Grail is presented as deadly serious, the mix of nationalism and sanctimonious dogma in which the secret society members espouse their mission "to keep England English and Christian," the scene and group ultimately come off as absurdly risible while simultaneously being scarily resonant in our isolationist narrow-minded age. The Knights exploit the local superstition about a haunted abbey where they are headquartered by dressing as white robed monks thereby hoping to be seen as ghosts if anyone might accidentally encounter them in their nightly vigils. Typical of Gerard's eccentric humor the Grand Master of the Knights of the Holy Grail is an ornithologist whose keen observational skills aided by his high powered binoculars prove very helpful at a key moment.

I'll leave it at that. You must read the book to discover the rest on your own.

THINGS I LEARNED: Arabic lessons! Meredith suspects that Al Cartell-Ardew is not American at all. Using his knowledge of Arabic and Muslim culture Meredith tells his police colleagues that the man's name is an Anglicization of al kātil adū which translates as "deadly enemy." The actual 21st century transliteration of the Arabic for deadly enemy is alqatil aleaduu.

QUOTES:  John Meredith had the reputation of a complete lack of scruple, but this applied only to his methods, not to the end in view. He was one of those men who believe that if you have to fight at all, every weapon is justifiable.

THE AUTHOR: The most complete and interesting biographical information written about Francis Gerard appears on the rear flap of the Tom Stacey reissue of Secret Sceptre, the edition I own. Most of the bio blurb is quoted verbatim below with some additional trivia in brackets added by me:

"Francis Gerard was born in London in 1905. His father was French and much of his childhood was spent in France. He began to write while working in London as a dealer in precious stones. His first stories appeared in The Thriller [a weekly magazine that published the work of several well-known and prolific crime fiction writers like Gerald Verner, Berkeley Gray, Leslie Charteris and James Ronald].

"During the war he served as Major in the Essex Regiment, while his wife worked at the foreign Office. In 1946 he moved, with his family and aging parents, to Natal where he became a South African citizen. Gradually he wrote less and less, devoting much of his time to politics instead. Springbok Rampant, a semi-autobiographical account of his reasons for leaving Britain, was published in 1951. [The title is a heraldic reference pointing out Gerard’s lifelong interest in heraldry and coats of arms, an interest which featured prominently in Secret Sceptre and frequently turns up in his other fiction.]

"He married twice and had three children by his second wife. He died in 1966."

Sir John Meredith Adventure & Crime Novels
Number 1-2-3 (1936) (US title: The 1-2-3 Murders)
Concrete Castle (1936) (US title: The Concrete Castle Murders)
The Black Emperor (1936)
The Dictatorship of the Dove (1936)
Fatal Friday (1937)
Red Rope (1937)
Secret Sceptre (1937)
The Prince of Paradise (1938)
Golden Guilt (1938)
Emerald Embassy (1939)
The Mind of John Meredith (1946)
Sorcerer's Shaft (1947) - only in a minor role
Flight into Fear (1948)
The Prisoner of the Pyramid (1948)
The Promise of the Phoenix (1950)
Transparent Traitor (1950)
Bare Bodkin (1951)

FFB: Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn - Philip Craig

US 1st edition (Doubleday, 1969)

THE STORY: A quartet of unlikely exploring adventurers set out for a little known island off the coast of Sweden. There they hope to find proof that the events described in the epic poem Beowulf were based on historical fact. Professor Cyril Ashman is sure that they will find Beowulf's tomb and a hoard of ancient treasure on the island.

THE CHARACTERS: Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn (1969) is narrated by grifting poker player Luther Martingale who has a past littered with trouble and scandal. He was forced out of Weststock College by an angry manipulative literature professor who learned that Luther was responsible for getting his niece pregnant. Subsequently she chooses to have an abortion. Prof. Ashman not knowing the truth of the matter suspects that Luther abandoned her and left her to take care of matters on her own. Luther's future depends on his getting a college degree and that degree has to be from Weststock all because of his wealthy relative. Aunt Delia has taken a liking to her nephew and is proud of the Martingale men having a long history of being matriculated from Weststock. If Luther manages to graduate successfully with a degree from Weststock he will be her sole heir and stands to gain millions from her estate.

As the novel opens Luther is engaged in an elaborate scheme to win as much money as he can in a series of poker games from his very poor card playing opponents. Hopefully he can use the winnings to bribe his way back into the good graces of the Weststock admissions team. Astoundingly, he finds himself with the title to a yacht after a round of feverish games (and a combination of wily skill and incredible luck) in which he trounced a foreigner named Beorn Wiglafson. Luther having taken all his money leaves Wiglafson with no other choice but to offer up the yacht as collateral in lieu of cash poker stakes.

"Beowulf fights the dragon"
illustration by Lynd Ward
(Heritage Press Ltd Ed., 1939)

When Luther learns that Prof. Ashman has an obsession with discovering the tomb of Beowulf, who he is certain is not just a legendary figure of the epic poem but a real person, Luther comes up with a plan to make the literature professor's dream come true. Using his newly acquired yacht, a few choice crew members, and some obscure manuscripts the professor owns, he will find the island and Beowulf's tomb and burial site.

Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn is the story of the band of adventurers made up of Luther; Dottie, Luther's former girlfriend and hopefully future wife; Professor Ashman, her uncle; and Beorn who after a violent attempt to re-possess his yacht is surprisingly recruited to helm Gate of Horn and navigate safely across the Atlantic to the Scandinavian coastline. The bulk of the story is made up of a detailed nautical adventure in which slowly but surely Luther and Beorn become comrades at sea, Beorn's gruff malevolent nature gives way to his inherent affability and the two become an excellent team as they sail the alternately calm and furious ocean. Without Beorn's near supernatural knowledge of weather and oceanography Luther would never have made it to the island. When they two men meet up with Uncle Cyril and his niece (who wisely flew to Copenhagen ahead of the sailors) everyone is in for awesome shocks and marvelous surprises on the island of Beowulf's ancestors.

UK 1st edition (Macmillan, 1970)

Craig has a deft manner in sketching out his four characters. There are fascinating cat-and-mouse scenes between Prof. Ashman and Luther in both the beginning of the book and the ironic finale. He tries his best to make Dottie appear to be an independent woman not so easily taken advantage of, but we only see her through Luther's arrogant chauvinistic eyes and she often comes across as a horrible depiction of an abused woman. At one point he refers to her as "a sexy wench by any standard" and actually says this about her when she refuses his advances in their post-abortion relationship: "I watched her undulate away. If only I had the character to assault her! A good rape might do her good." It's extremely hard for me to see this as wit or ironic humor in the context of the first 45 pages. Thankfully this is the only instance of raunchy offensive chauvinism but it ruined my opinion of Craig as a writer. He was 35 at the time and working in a liquor store after being fired from a college for being too liberal with his teaching methods and too coarse in his writing. Callow youth? Who knows.

Truly the best part of the book is Beorn. The way Craig manages to transform his character from indignant and malevolent poker loser to comrade at sea to deceitful Judas is remarkable. Beorn is described as a giant Viking, ageless in appearance, menacing in his physicality, and otherworldly in his knowledge of Mother Nature and her fickle ways. At one point I was certain it would be revealed that he was an immortal descended from Beowulf's ancestors and warrior colleagues. As it turned out I was not far off the mark. There is one glaring clue Craig gives very early in the book and does not refer back until the climax once the four adventurers reach the island. It's an ingeniously calculated moment. I'm sure most readers will miss it and the climax will come as a nifty and gasp inducing surprise. Beorn is genuinely the best character in the book and it is thanks to his magnetic presence I whipped through this 190 page novel in practically a single day.

THINGS I LEARNED: As you can imagine sailing and ship navigation are prominent throughout the story. I learned loads of yachting terms and all sorts of unusual facts like the use of a completely different set of sails during stormy weather.

Beowulf, illustration by Lynd Ward

There are several sections that discuss the history of the Beowulf epic poem, its various translations, and the continuing (at the time) debate on whether or not the poem is based on historical fact. Prof. Ashman uses Schliemann's discovery of Troy as proof of the historicity of Homer's Iliad as the basis for his own expedition to prove Beowulf was real. Among the many facts I learned (perhaps relearned since I did study Beowulf in my high school Brit Lit class) was the earliest English translation dates to about 1000, three centuries after its initial Scandinavian composition.

The novel's title comes from a passage in The Odyssey when Odysseus is speaking to Penelope of dreams and she answers him that dreams are hard to understand. The passage Ashman quotes from memory is: "Twain are the gates of shadowy dreams,/The one is made of horn, the other ivory;/Such dreams as pass the portals of ivory/Are deceitful, and bear tidings that are unfulfilled./But the dreams that pass through the gate of horn/Bring true issue to whoever of mortals behold them." Beorn's yacht is named Gate of Horn.

QUOTES: It was no surprise that men of those times, unlettered, unable to know anything of the world beyond their senses, except for what old men and bards told of past days and far lands, were so filled with fatalism and superstition. In literal darkness, it is easy to accustom yourself to the fragility of life, to the necessity of bravery, and to the ready belief in monsters. How else could a man of that time feel? Without books to tell him of his history, to keep his mind sure, in the accumulated experience of the men who preceded him and wrote down their experience, he was, in every generation, a First Man in an unknown world.

Men alone, without history. No wonder that the bards sang of heroes, for the people were in need of heroes to prove by their might and valor that men could survive or, failing that, could, in death, triumph against their enemies and, nearly, death itself.

(courtesy of philiprcraig.com)

THE AUTHOR: Philip R. Craig was born in 1933 in Santa Monica California, raised on a small ranch in Colorado. He studied religion and philosophy at Boston College during the late 1950s where he facetiously claimed he really majored in fencing and minored in bridge (two pastimes that crop up in his mystery fiction much later in his life). In 1962 he achieved an MFA in creative writing at the prestigious University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and went on to teach English and writing at several small colleges in Massachusetts. Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn was published by Doubleday's Crime Club in 1969, but he would not have another novel published for two decades. He is best known for a series of mystery novels set on Martha's Vineyard where he and his family eventually settled (his wife was originally from Edgartown). A longtime member of several crime fiction writing associations and attendee of many mystery writing conferences Craig's career includes over twenty mystery novels and one cookbook written in collaboration with his wife. He died in 2007. For more on his books and a detailed and wittily composed biography visit his website, still maintained by his family.

FFB: The Djinn - Graham Masterton

US reprint paperback, (Tor, 1982)

THE STORY: Not all genies come in bottles. Or djinns either. And not all of these supernatural beings are grateful to be freed from whatever container that imprisons them. The Djinn (1977) in this case is trapped in an ancient piece of pottery, a jar intricately designed with folkloric figures and is of great interest to a Middle Eastern antiquities consultant who would like it returned to Iran from where it was illegally procured. Now the jar is in a sealed room in the home of Max Greaves, a deceased oil tycoon, and his widow and her companion want no one going anywhere near it. Enter Harry Erskine, Greaves’ godson, whose trade is fortune telling and whose curiosity gets the better of him when it comes to the jar and its mysterious contents.

THE CHARACTERS: Harry Erskine is an interesting addition to the collection of occult detectives in supernatural fiction. He’s not a legitimate clairvoyant by any means. He’s nothing more than an opportunistic con artist. Sure he’s taken the trouble to learn the ropes with cartomancy (both tarot and regular playing cards), the Ouija board and, on occasion, reading tea leaves and gazing into a crystal ball, but he has no real powers at all. No talent other than sarcastic banter and bad puns which are very welcome in the otherwise histrionic and often gruesome novel The Djinn.
Erskine stars in one of the more original horror novels to float to the surface of the flood of 1970s supernatural mass market fiction that deluged bookstores following the success of huge bestselling books like The Exorcist and The Other. In fact the marketing team at Pinnacle Books in an effort to attract the insatiable horror crowd liken The Djinn to successful horror works like The Omen and ‘Salem’s Lot neither of which remotely resemble what you find in Graham Masterton’s unusual book. Masterton was never interested in vampires or your standard evil child possessed by the devil or even the offspring of Lucifer. He was more like a 1970s version of Abraham Merritt who penned a handful of horror classics drawing from forgotten ancient cultures and their mythology and folklore. The Djinn is a crash course in all things ancient Persia and the lore of demonic djinns.

UK 1st paperback, (Star, 1977)

Harry teams up with Anna Modena, the antiquities consultant and “America’s foremost expert in ancient folklore and Middle Eastern culture” Professor Gordon Qualt. Together the three combine their knowledge about djinns, night clocks, and the evil sorcerer Ali Babah and do their best to prevent calamity falling upon southern Massachusetts. They have their work cut out for them when they learn that widow Marjorie Greaves seems to have been overtaken by some other-worldly entity and Marjorie’s mousy subservient companion Miss Johnson starts to show an unnatural interest in the jar and what lies inside.

Anna and Qualt remind me of the occult experts you’d encounter in an episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker or The X-Files. The two of them are founts of endless information and both seem to be illogical in their obsession to get at the jar and the djinn inside. Ann more than Qualt is determined to rescue the jar as an ancient work of art. It happens to be decorated with intricate drawings of a mythological horse that has no eyes, the only known remaining illustrative example in the modern world of this particular Persian figure. Qualt astounds Erskine (and the reader) with the true story of “Ali Babah and the Forty Thieves”, which turn out not to be a group of thugs robbing gemstones for their ringleader but a sorcerer and his demon servant. The “forty thieves” are a metaphorical explanation for the two score entities the nasty demon can manifest before it completely possesses a human by stealing its face then inhabiting its body. A surprise is in store when the three demon fighters must contend with Miss Johnson who has a bizarre story of vengeance dating back centuries, one that rivals anything the MeToo movement could ever envision in payback for monstrous sexual assault. And in this case it is both literally and figuratively a monstrous assault. Read the book for the gory details, I’m not going there at all.

UK limited edition reprint - (Telos, 2010)

INNOVATIONS: Whether Masterton researched his story of Ali Babah and the Forty Thieves or he made it up entirely out of his twisted imagination there is no denying that his metaphorical reworking of a well-known Arabian Nights story is ingeniously diabolical. Additionally he seems to have invented a Persian tool of sorcery called a night clock that allows a black magic practitioner to commune with the powers of the moon and summon beings from another dimension. No rubbing lamps and wishing for riches and success in this story. The dead seem to walk, faceless zombies appear from the shadows, all in service of an age old vow of revenge. The Djinn is teeming with a wealth of unusually imaginative supernatural gadgets, lore and incantations making it all the more fascinating for readers who crave genuine supernatural content in their horror novels.

Interestingly, embedded within all the arcane lore, ancient mythology, black magic, demonic possession and manifestations is a bit of a detective story. There is a mystery surrounding Max Greaves' cause of death and why he disfigured himself. Quite by accident another mystery is solved pertaining to the identity of a sinister robed figure that keeps appearing on the grounds of the Greaves estate, Winter Sails.

Masterton is Scottish but nearly all of his books are set in America and feature almost exclusively American characters. One of his greatest talents is his talent for duplicating American syntax in his character’s speech. His dialogue is spot on and his ear for American speech rhythm, slang and colloquialisms is uncanny. More than any other non-US writer Masterton is the king of American dialogue writing.

Inside cover of US 1st edition,
(Pinnacle, 1977) 

QUOTES: Masterton has a lot of fun with Erskine’s irreverent sense of humor. He has mentioned in interviews the necessity for humor in horror novels and can’t abide writing them without someone cracking jokes or uttering a ridiculous pun. Here’s a typical sequence:

Anna: "Professor Qualt was in the newspapers not long ago when they turned up that marble smuggling racket out of Iraq. He’s very keen on keeping treasures in the environment where they were originally created."

Harry: "I agree with him. I hate to see people losing their marbles."

THE AUTHOR: Graham Masterton was one of the leading horror novelists of the 1970s and continues to thrill readers with his ingenuity and innovative storytelling today. He began his career as an editor at Penthouse and his first book was not fiction but one of the most successful sex manuals of all time -- How To Drive Your Man Wild in Bed (1976). He’s written in all popular fiction genres, written for adults, children and teens, and continues to publish at least one new book every year for the past forty years -- in some cases as many as four books in a year. He has recently turned to crime fiction and thrillers and has created at least two series characters. For more on Masterton and his work visit his website.