The Far Cry

The Far Cry
Frederic Brown | Black Lizard | 1987 (first published 1951) | 176 pages

Seeking solitude to recuperate from an alcohol-fueled mental breakdown, George Weaver rents an isolated cabin in Taos, New Mexico, for a summer of psychological rest before returning to work and family in Kansas City. His rental, the last shack on a lonely, dead-end road into the mountains, was the site of a murder eight years prior, and had been unoccupied until his arrival.

Jenny Ames, a young girl responding to a lonely hearts ad, was murdered by Charles Nelson, the cabin’s former occupant, who then fled town and subsequently vanished. A true-crime writer friend of George convinces him to investigate the murder while recovering in Taos, with the goal of selling a story to the pulp magazines. What starts as a casual dalliance into the case quickly escalates into a full-blown obsession, as George tries to trace Jenny’s mysterious origins and track her killer.

The mundane details of George’s daily life set the stage for a bored mind seeking the diversion of a mystery. Coffee and eggs in the morning, light maintenance work on the cabin, and runs into town to talk to those who remember the case. Plus the drinking. Lots of drinking.

George’s role as a neutral amateur detective becomes somewhat shaded as he unearths more details about Nelson, and several parallels between the two men’s characters begin to surface. George reveals himself as a complete heel when his wife Vi arrives to spend the rest of the summer with him while their two children are away at summer camp. Although showing great compassion towards Jenny, George possesses a seething contempt for Vi, repeatedly describing her as bovine, sloppy, and dim-witted. Her arrival drives him further away, out of the cabin and away from her blaring radio, and deeper into the investigation of the murder.

George’s obsession with Jenny is comparable to Dana Andrew’s infatuation with the murdered woman in Otto Preminger’s Laura (1944). He even begins to imagine an alternate history where he meets Jenny on the bus prior to her fateful arrival in Taos, ultimately preventing her destiny from being buried in a shallow grave. As George becomes more consumed by thoughts of the tragic young woman, even the pretext of writing an article falls away, leaving him naked with his morbid fascinations and perhaps heading towards another breakdown.

The twin mysteries revolving around both victim and suspect are engrossing enough for the chapters to fly by, even as George’s likeability as a main character sours accordingly along the way. Vi is simply a one-note caricature—getting drunk, eating candies, and flipping through magazines—but his bitter insults towards her are nevertheless wince inducing. George’s perceptions, however warped, of the real versus the idealized woman remain a key foundation to the story. 

The final pages contain a love-it-or-hate-it twist which tidily closes the circle on the narrative even as it stretches credibility. For those who hate it, however, the veracity of the logical jump could easily be argued as the delusions of an unreliable narrator. 

The shock ending may firmly land The Far Cry in thriller territory, but it is also a gripping psychological noir mood piece, evocatively realized and crafted—it’s hard not to imagine Elizabeth Taylor as Jenny and Shelley Winters as Vi, as their A Place in the Sun (1951) characters mash with Lost Weekend (1945).

The Dain Curse

The Dain Curse
Dashiell Hammett | Vintage Books | 1978 (first published 1929) | 213 pages

The unnamed operative from San Francisco’s Continental Detective Agency returns in The Dain Curse, a novel–like its predecessor, Red Harvest–originally serialized in the pulp crime magazine, Black Mask.

A diamond theft from the home of scientist Edgar Leggett triggers a series of connected cases revolving around his daughter, Gabrielle. The young woman becomes convinced that she is the focus of a family curse passed down from her mother, Alice Dain, that fatally targets those in her intimate circle. Violent deaths indeed seem to follow, beginning with her father, whose apparent suicide reveals a dark family history. 

Fleeing from this personal tragedy, Gabrielle seeks to find refuge in the Temple of the Holy Grail, a religious cult run by Joseph and Aaronia Haldorn. For Gabrielle, sanctuary from the outside world also includes a growing morphine addiction. A shocking murder eventually drives Gabrielle away again, eloping in Reno with her fiance, Eric Collinson. 

The cult temple provides an appropriately sinister location, replete with its white marble altar locked behind a decorated iron door, and a golden ceremonial dagger that doubles as a murder weapon. Cults here already seem to occupy a place in the perceived landscape of California (and San Francisco, in particular), playing an outsized role in the imagined geography of the state.

The couple’s honeymoon proves short-lived, however, as Eric is mysteriously killed outside the couple’s remote coastal cottage. Gabrielle is missing, presumed kidnapped by unknown persons. The Continental Op bounces from client to client, stubbornly persistent in continuing his investigations and debunking the curse. The cottage’s isolated location, surrounded by sheer drops and hidden coves, provides an appealing backdrop for the unfolding crimes.

Structurally, the book reflects its original serialized format from the pulps. Summaries of varying length follow each individual mystery, with the Continental Op explaining all the details of the complicated crimes to his novelist friend, Owen Fitzstephan. Although appearing to weave together all the loose ends of the separate crimes, the Op remains troubled. He argues to Fitzstephan that a single, unresolved thread connects everything together.

Although occupying the center of the spiraling violence, Gabrielle spends much of her time drugged, incapacitated, or self-recriminating, an unlikely focus of all the other characters and their (romantic and otherwise) obsessions. That such a passive figure generates equally passionate levels of love and hate is as much a mystery as the murders themselves. Never descending into a blatant romantic interest in Gabrielle, the heavy-set, middle-aged Op nevertheless appears to be somewhat charmed. The final chapters of the book break from deduction to detail his intimate efforts to break the girl’s drug habit.

The Continental Op serves as a foundational hard-boiled gumshoe, doggedly pursuing the case at hand. His somewhat brutish physique reflects his determination and underscores his singular identity as the detective. Readers are never privy to his emotions, personal backstory, nor even his name. Interestingly, all the names of the Op’s colleagues are revealed, with the exception of the head of the agency—referred to simply as “The Old Man.”

One of the other operatives does make a tossed-off reference to the previous novel, Red Harvest, by drawing a parallel between Gabrielle and another woman placed under the Op’s protection—a woman brutally murdered on his watch.

The book speeds along at a rapid pace, twisting the Op through the many convoluted individual story segments. He encounters an ever-growing roster of colorful characters along the way, including charlatans, cultists, and crooked cops. Bodies disappear, bombs explode, evidence is planted, and ghostly apparitions manifest themselves as the Continental Op struggles to unpack all the evidence relating to Gabrielle’s purported curse.

The final reveal becomes a bit long-winded, but delivers on the Op’s promise to expose the buried thread entwining all the cases.

Red Harvest

Red Harvest
Dashiell Hammett | Vintage | 1972 (first published 1929) | 199 pages

“This damned burg’s getting me. If I don’t get away soon I’ll be going blood-simple like the natives.”

An unnamed operative from the Continental Detective Agency arrives in the small mining town of Personville (derisively nicknamed “Poisonville” by its residents), only to find that his prospective client has been murdered. 

The dead man’s father is Elihu Willsson, Personville’s patriarch and owner of the powerful mining company, who single-handedly controls the majority of the business interests in town. “Poisonville” gained its nickname due to the widespread corruption after Willsson imported criminal gang members in an attempt to break a crippling miner’s strike at his company. Nominally to solve the murder, the Continental Op quickly expands his role to take down the many criminal factions and clean up the town.

Originally serialized in Black Mask magazine in the twenties, the story surges along at a rapid pace. The original murder is solved early on in the proceedings, but the Continental Op continues to wage his war on the town’s gangs and its corrupt police force. Rigged boxing matches, bank robberies, staged suicides, gunfights, and more murders all unfold in episodic fashion. The Op himself is eventually framed for murder when he wakes up next to a woman with an icepick buried in her chest.

Colorful and dangerous characters abound in Personville, a town filled to the brim with gamblers and bootleggers like Pete the Finn and Max “Whisper” Thaler. Everyone is corrupt, including the Op, who switches sides with ease depending on his current needs or circumstances. As the body count increases, he finds himself enjoying the carnage, leading to some considerable rumination that the town’s poison is working its toxic influence on his system.

Make no mistake, “Poisonville” is a violent place. At one point, the Op reflects upon the string of killings in the town and quibbles with an agency associate upon the exact number of murders. A chapter titled “The Seventeenth Murder” does not exaggerate, as the grim total–however enumerated–easily exceeds the ability to count on the fingers of both hands.

Even as the criminals (and crooked cops) begin to fall, the Op notes the general futility of battling against such an inherently corrupt system by remarking to Willsson, “You’ll have your city back, all nice and clean and ready to go to the dogs again.”

The original serial format shows as many smaller mysteries are self-contained and scattered throughout the greater narrative arc. Although the who-dunnits are all solved along the way, Red Harvest emphasizes two-fisted action as much as detection. The bruising, morally-gray violence paints the Continental Op as less an upright hero than an enthusiastic agent of chaos who brings everything (and everyone) tumbling down around him.

The Black Abbot

The Black Abbot
Edgar Wallace | Hodder & Stoughton | 1959 (first published 1926) | 192 pages

Harry Alford, 18th Earl of Chelford, is obsessed with the legend of a buried treasure hidden somewhere on the grounds of Fossaway Manor. His search for the cache of gold bars–not to mention a bottle containing a magical elixir granting immortal life–is thwarted by his fear of the Black Abbot. This ghostly specter is rumored to restlessly stalk the estate, the reputed site of his murder two centuries earlier, and protect the treasure from discovery.

Although an early encounter with the Black Abbot is reported by a second hand witness, nearly a dozen chapters elapse before the sinister figure is directly spotted in the ruins of the old abbey. The bulk of the early novel revolves around a series of schemes and extortions to secure the engagement of Leslie Gine, Harry’s fiancée and sister of the Alford family attorney, Arthur Gine.

Arthur has accumulated a series of gambling debts, fueled by theft from his sister’s inheritance and from the Alford family trust. However, his plan to wed Leslie to the Earl of Chelford is thwarted by his colleague, Fabrian Gilder, a shady character who has his own romantic designs for Leslie. Complicating the romantic landscape is Richard Alford, Harry’s brother and penniless “second son” of the Alford family, who is Leslie’s secret love.

Leslie seems to be more of a prize than the buried treasure, with a spinning wheel of characters determined to win her affections. The unfolding of various plots to win Leslie’s hand in marriage easily supplants the hunt for the buried treasure. The Black Abbot remains mostly a background figure until deep into the book, when the murder of a figure in a black cowl sends the narrative into a more action-oriented mode.

Although mixing elements of blackmail, extortion, and murder, the obsessive search for treasure–whether buried or married–also manages a more lighthearted tone, although perhaps it could simply be a result of the book’s vintage or melodramatic machinations. Strip away the mystery elements and play up the slapstick, and the single-minded pursuit of treasure could eventually sink into It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

After Leslie is kidnapped, the chase is on through the subterranean labyrinth sprawling beneath the ruined abbey. The atmosphere is evocatively gothic, and although the villain’s reveal is not particularly unexpected, the lagging narrative finally gets some punch. Some of the other characters who were initially teased as potential villains show an unexpected willingness to assist in Leslie’s rescue. They remain morally dubious, but the shift in allegiance is curious.

However, the essence of Leslie’s attraction remains stubbornly vague, with her character finally reduced to a kidnap victim repeatedly screaming for the aid of her beloved, would-be rescuer, “Dick! Dick!”

Jirel of Joiry

Jirel of Joiry
C.L. Moore | Paperback Library | 1969 (first published 1934) | 175 pages

Originally published in Weird Tales magazine in the thirties, this collection of sword-and-sorcery tales features a red-haired female equivalent to Conan the Barbarian, but also forgoes much action to lean heavily into the weird.

In Black God’s Kiss, Jirel’s domain is conquered by the malicious–but somehow fatally attractive–Guillaume. Jirel escapes through the dungeon of her castle, where a mysterious portal leads to another dimension. Humiliated by Guillaume, Jirel is convinced that the other realm contains a weapon that will facilitate her revenge. 

The origin of the castle’s portal remains unclear, as does Jirel’s conviction regarding the existence of a hidden weapon, but her passage allows for a psychedelic travelogue across a technicolor fantasy landscape. The corpse-like face of a green moon shines down on a glittery world that would be a perfect match for a soundtrack composed by Pink Floyd.

The Black God’s Shadow serves as a companion story, as Jirel returns to the same phantasmagorical land to assuage the guilt of her revenge. Perhaps an early example of Stockholm syndrome, Jirel inexplicably professes her love for Guillaume, and journeys to free his tortured spirit. Both stories rely on extensive description, sometimes to their detriment, as the pacing drags with Jirel’s reflections upon the shiny alternate world.

Jirel Meets Magic sends Jirel again through a magical portal, this time in pursuit of a wizard that has been plaguing the countryside. Unable to engage in direct combat with the purple-eyed serpent and other creatures she encounters, Jirel still stands strong in barking defiance of her uncanny opponent. The rich description is peppered with a bit more action than the previous stories.

Jirel, the warrior leader of a medieval domain, spends a remarkable amount of time away in alternate dimensions, as several of the stories feature her transported into other realms. In The Dark Land, she is magically pulled from her deathbed into a strange world by an entity determined to make her his bride. Reputedly a master of the sword, Jirel has rare occasion to put her great weapon into action, as her main threat comes again from the employment of dark magic.

The highlight of the collection is something of a departure from the magical portal fantasy of its predecessors, reading as a creepy and threatening horror story. In Hellsgarde, Jirel travels to a haunted castle to seek its rumored treasure. The setting is appropriately gothic, with the corpses of impaled pikemen lined in rows to the castle’s approach as a warning to potential pillagers. The unexpected occupants are menacing, their motives unclear until Jirel is attacked by a malevolent spirit. The result is a satisfying ghost story, a magical treasure hunt, and ultimately a tale of twisty payback.

The Three Imposters

The Three Imposters
Arthur Machen | Ballantine | 1972 (first published 1895) | 194 pages

A chance encounter on the streets of London plunges Mr. Dyson and his associate into a netherworld of intrigue revolving around the titular trio and their pursuit of an infamous Roman coin.

Dyson, a self-proclaimed man of letters, along with Mr. Phillips, his friend who leans more toward the scientific than the literary, are something of a low-rent, bohemian Holmes and Watson. Although possessing none of the great detective’s deductive skills, Dyson is fascinated in the world hidden beneath the superficially buzzing streets. When he unexpectedly bumps into “the young man with spectacles” and accidentally comes into possession of the Gold Tiberius coin, that netherworld becomes much closer–in the dangerous form of Mr. Davies, Mr. Richmond, and a woman simply referred to as Helen.

Told as a series of interconnected short stories whose contents can stand alone but also tie into the greater events, the overall structure is that of a series of nesting boxes. One account frequently contains another, and this second account often holds another internal note or related correspondence. The tales themselves tend toward the fantastic, although arguably all serve only as disingenuous ruses by those three in pursuit of “the young man with spectacles” and his coin. These anecdotes seem told only to obfuscate their true motivations.

The three imposters assume a number of guises as their paths repeatedly interweave with Dyson and Phillipps, spinning out more weird and horrifying accounts with each encounter.

Novel of the Black Seal relates the story of a professor of ethnology who attempts to discover the truth behind the folktales surrounding the fae people of legend, only to meet a fate and tentacled horror rivaling a later H.P. Lovecraft tale.

Novel of the Dark Valley shifts the narrative to the American west, as an outlaw gang engages in occult ritual before the local townspeople take frontier justice into their own hands.

Novel of the White Powder lurches into full-blown body horror, as a pharmacological substance induces a hideous transformation. This uncanny narcotic surpasses the addictive bug powder in Naked Lunch in terms of its metamorphic possibilities.

The identity of the “young man with the spectacles” shifts in all of these weird tales, as does the identity of the storyteller. Dyson and Phillips grow more incredulous, but equally less enlightened, as the various stories assemble themselves. They sense a sinister undercurrent to events, but resolution remains elusive.

The individual nature of the stories causes the entirety to meander, the sum meaning of the parts remaining stubbornly vague. Long lonely walks lead to unexpected encounters with medieval torture devices, and seemingly casual friendships struck in the reading rooms of libraries eventually drive unsuspecting victims into the fatal clutches of hedonistic cults.

Several stories could easily stand on their own merits without compartmentalizing them inside the context of an overall novel [some were actually published separately in different collections]. However, the telescoping framework, along with the sanguine menace provided by the three imposters, succeeds in suggesting the existence of strange and dangerous undercurrents flowing beneath the surface of an unsuspecting society.

However, any nebulous mood derived from the novel’s structure violently dissipates with a brutal conclusion that inevitably delivers on the course set down by the prologue, even as it reduces our would-be detectives to bystanders and relegates the Gold Tiberius to a MacGuffin.

In a Glass Darkly

In a Glass Darkly
J. Sheridan Le Fanu | Wordsworth | 2007 (first published 1872) | 272 pages

Considered a classic of gothic horror, In a Glass Darkly is a collection of short stories told through the papers of Dr. Hesselius, an occult detective, compiled by an assistant many years after his death. Yet, Hesselius himself plays little part beyond documenting the cases, which are mostly dull affairs peppered with an occasional eerie or macabre moment. However uneven the stories, the inclusion of the iconic vampire tale, Carmilla, ultimately cements its classic status.

Green Tea

A literal exploration of the idiom, “Get the monkey off my back.” 

Dr. Hesselius encounters the strange case of Reverend Jennings, a vicar who has fallen victim to an increasingly malevolent presence. The vicar’s direct account of his affliction, characterized by a phantom black monkey with glowing eyes, is creepy and compelling. In desperation, Jennings reaches out for consultation, trying to determine whether the cause is simple insanity, or something altogether more demonic.

Hesselius wraps up the affair with a monumental thud, providing a quackery-infused (yet altogether deadpan) medical summation that points an accusatory finger at the victim’s high consumption of the titular brewed beverage.

The Familiar

Captain Barton is haunted by a strange stalker in this slow moving and uneventful tale. The overall structural conceit of the story being retold through Hesselius’ notes, which themselves document a third-party account, adds a crippling layer of cruft to an already boring exercise in non-suspense. Barton’s inexplicable descent into madness follows a number of incidents that fail to escalate much beyond mysterious footsteps and grotesque visages, and the unwelcome epilogue simply extends the suffering. At least the protagonist in Green Tea was stalked by a satanic f*****g monkey!

Mr. Justice Harbottle

This tale of judicial revenge initially teased as a haunted house story was so dreadfully boring it repeatedly raised the question, “Should I just skip ahead and read Carmilla?”

The Room in the Dragon Volant

Richard Beckett, a young Englishman traveling through France following the Napoleonic Wars, becomes infatuated with the young wife of an elderly count. Although possessing a modest fortune, Beckett is intimated to be something of a grifter and a gambler, but his plans are put on hold in pursuit of his new romantic obsession.

A masked ball at Versailles, a mysterious fortune-teller, moonlight trysts, and several tales of mysterious disappearances all add to a richly gothic atmosphere. The twist may be apparent before all the elements come together, but Beckett’s fate is a macabre finale worthy of Poe. Unlike Poe, however, Le Fanu lacks the determination to see the story through to its grim conclusion, providing a convenient rescue to prevent the otherwise inevitable–and much darker–destiny from unfolding.

Carmilla

Adoration mixes with abhorrence for Laura, a young girl living with her ailing father in a remote castle, as an accidental carriage crash brings a mysterious companion into her isolated life. 

Although the relationship between Laura and Carmilla has provided a wealth of contemporary readings through the lens of queer studies, their intimacy arguably describes a more fundamental bond, the languid–and undeniably erotic–pleasure between vampire and victim. The fates of the other victims of the vampire in the surrounding countryside are short and brutal, driven by need, but Laura’s doom is slow and drawn out. Her condition gradually worsens as Carmilla luxuriates in the draining life of so emotionally close a companion.

Laura and Carmilla’s relationship is described in terms of love and possesses an intimate closeness, with Laura briefly speculating that Carmilla could be a male suitor in disguise, but lacks an explicit romanticism. Readers anticipating the titillation of a Hammer Studios exploitation film will certainly be disappointed.

However, the overall atmosphere is almost decadently described and positively saturated with all the elements of gothic horror. Nightmarish visions of nocturnal visitors, decaying castles, ominous masquerade balls, hidden family crypts, and undead corpses bathed in blood inform the backdrop to Laura’s account of her illness, told at a remove of some ten years. 

Only the epilogue offers a slight letdown, indulging in the extra opportunity to expound and explain some of the aspects of the vampire’s existence.

The Mummy

The Mummy
Riccardo Stephens | Valancourt Books | 2016 (first published 1912) | 246 pages

Its straightforward title may suggest a monster rampage, but Riccardo Stephen’s 1912 novel is instead a supernaturally flavored parlor mystery.

Curmudgeonly bachelor Dr. Armiston (lamenting his old age at 50!) is brought into consultation regarding a pair of strange deaths, whose common feature is the presence of a sarcophagus containing the mummy of an Egyptian sorceress. The mummy was acquired on a trip to Egypt by Professor Maundeville, a scientist and scholar of the arcane arts, who upon his return to England, related tales of its rumored curse to members of his gentlemen’s club. 

Fascinated by Maundeville’s story of the mummy, the club members agree to rotate the possession of the sarcophagus among them in a casually flippant defiance of the curse. Playing cards are randomly dealt among the group, with the recipient of the ace of spades to host the mummy for two weeks. However, the first two members to take possession of the mummy both end up dead, their fates seemingly the result of natural causes. The fate of the others, who agree to continue with their fatal lottery, ultimately rests in the hands of Dr. Armiston.

Armiston is a grumpy, but appealing protagonist, a doctor of only modest success who seeks out the mystery surrounding the mummy to add adventure to a life he regards as unremarkable. The atmosphere of his habitat is effectively portrayed, from the meetings of secret social clubs to the overstuffed chairs of smoking rooms where gentlemen enjoy their cigars before the fire. 

Maundeville’s personal obsession with youth and prolonging life also introduces some weird science into the proceedings. Armiston himself is drawn into the experiment, allowing a series of hypodermic injections intended to restore youthful vigor, but which may color his judgment of some of the strange events that unfold around the mummy. This becomes of particular importance when–of course–Armiston eventually draws the ace of spades.

The story slows a bit after the third death, as Armiston feigns courtship to Nora O’Hagan, the club’s only female member, in order to flush out a suspect in the deaths. A latent romantic triangle (rectangle? pentagon?) involving Nora and her potential suitors at the club offers some important motivational foundation, but also allows more time for Armiston to bemoan his own growing age and lack of status.

The book does briefly include some bluntly racist language characteristic of its era, but the occurrences of strange deaths, illicit drugs, sailors of dubious character, immortality treatments, and ancient curses make for an engaging and slightly pulpy read. 

Although certainly no Sherlock Holmes (Dr. Watson is the obvious comparison), it is perhaps unfortunate that Dr. Armiston did not return in a series of adventures similar to Arthur Conan’s Doyle’s detective. Armiston, along with his faithful servant Mudge, could easily be envisaged in pursuit of additional supernatural cases around the landscape of Edwardian London, while indulging in self-reproach rather than a seven-percent solution.

Frankenstein

Frankenstein
Mary Shelley | Signet | 1965 (first published 1818) | 224 pages

“What was I?”

For readers whose knowledge of Frankenstein is limited to classic monster movies or general pop culture references, Mary Shelley’s original novel will come as a revelation. Indisputably a foundational text of gothic horror, it also expresses an almost existential howl of despair—issued both by Frankenstein the man, and his abominable creation.

The general critical discussion surrounding Frankenstein heavily focuses on the work as a fable, dispensing a cautionary lesson against the egomaniacal hubris of man playing god. However, Victor Frankenstein is little more than a precocious college student, undeniably obsessed with uncovering the primal mystery of the natural world. The spark of animation that provides the essence of life is the focus of his studies, and he sacrifices all in pursuit of his goal. He is not simply a megalomaniac hell-bent on controlling the world.

The dramatic, lighting-fueled mechanics of the mad scientist’s laboratory so frequently portrayed in film adaptations are completely absent. Relating his tale in the bookend sections aboard an icebound ship in the Arctic, Frankenstein remains coy about the actual process of animating life. Through some chemical alchemy, the piecemeal abomination of his creation comes alive, although it immediately escapes and slips from Frankenstein’s control. 

The life-giving process remains obscure when, later in the story, Frankenstein is coerced by his monster to create a companion. Traveling only with his chemistry equipment, he abandons his new attempt in a crisis of self-disgust after achieving some considerable progress. He rows out to sea and sinks the mostly undescribed remains like a killer disposing the grisly remains of his crime.

Instead of celebrating the initial success of his dream of creating life, Frankenstein is seized with an overpowering anguish over his actions. His entire account is drenched with abject misery, which only grows more profound as the monster’s actions continue to accumulate a fatal personal cost. Frankenstein withers as those he cherishes most suffer retribution at the hands of his monster, sinking into repeated debilitated states over his own responsibility for their deaths. The man and the monster are equally wretched in Frankenstein’s eyes.

For the uninitiated to Shelley’s work, the middle chapters of the book are perhaps the most unexpected, since they are told from the monster’s perspective. The creature is of a repellant nature, surely, but is not the inarticulate brute of our pop-cultural recollections. He is instead a thinking creation that grieves at his inability to find a place in the world. Shunned by his creator and savagely rejected by those around him, the creature painfully laments over the question of the purpose of his existence, and is ultimately consumed by the wretchedness of his own creation.

The creature’s outpouring of anguish invariably turns into a violent rage directed at his creator. His acts of revenge against Frankenstein are truly horrifying, the strangled corpses of friends and family providing a taunting reminder of his cruel abandonment. The rampage is personal to Frankenstein, there are no angry villagers wielding fire and pitchforks to protect their community. Although evil, the creature’s actions are calculated and deliberate in their motives.

The merits of modern horror stories frequently devolve into the reductive question, “But is it scary?” Although not without its shocks, the horrors of Frankenstein are more encompassing, flowing from the aching void in the center of existence. Yet, the novel is also accessible and compulsively readable, its horror imbued with a startling and unrelenting sense of melancholia.

A classic well worth revisiting.

Dracula

Dracula
Bram Stoker | Signet | 1965 (originally published 1897) | 382 pages

Reading Dracula again after several decades only reconfirms its rightful place in the pantheon of horror classics.

The book opens with Jonathan Harker’s journal entries, which brilliantly introduces the reader into the sinister atmosphere of Castle Dracula. Harker’s realization that Dracula is perhaps not what he seems grows with his understanding that he has become the Count’s prisoner. Harker’s encounter with the three predatory vampire brides in a forbidden area of the castle is a shocking early highlight, their advances a visceral threat that is only temporarily deflected by Dracula, who makes Harker’s ultimate demise plainly clear. The simple description of the pinprick of fangs on the tender flesh of the exposed neck instills the most basic elements of horror in the canon of vampire lore.

Although indirectly described, the contents of the bag given to the brides as an offering by the Count provides another shuddering jolt and further informs their vile nature.

Dracula fades into the background as the narrative shifts to England with the correspondence between Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray, but his shadow looms over all events. The macabre account of the doomed ship and its dead captain tied to the wheel brings the malignant presence of the Count to Whitby, as Lucy slips into episodes of sleepwalking and anemia. 

The iconic vampire hunter Abram Van Helsing makes his appearance at the bequest of his former student, Dr. Seward, Lucy’s former suitor and director of the local sanatorium. Although Van Helsing sometimes falls victim to long-winded pontifications, his evolving diagnosis slowly reveals the underlying horror of Lucy’s condition. The nightly blood transfusions establish a repeated rhythm that builds to another horrifying climax, as Van Helsing and company make a shocking discovery in the vaults of the local cemetery–and uncover the truth behind the news reports of the “bloofer lady” who has been attacking children in the area.

After such highlights, the pace occasionally slackens as all the characters eventually pool their collective knowledge. Mina’s fate becomes entwined with Renfield, an inmate in Seward’s asylum, whose violent behavior seems to parallel Dracula’s activity. Again Dracula remains in the background, although his malignant presence is keenly felt as Van Helsing searches for the scattered boxes of earth that provide the vampire a safe haven in the daylight. When Dracula does finally appear, the brutal scene reveals a shocking new twist that energizes Van Helsing’s steely determination to destroy the Count.

The logistics of the final section sometimes get in the way of the action, as details of the horses and equipment used in pursuit of Dracula eclipse the thrill of the chase. The parties separate, and Van Helsing is again prone to speechifying and lengthy philosophical orations. However, the account of the ultimate attack on Dracula’s convoy is told in a breathless alacrity, with the culminating race against the setting sun providing an electrifying denouement.

Volumes have been written regarding the many contextual readings of the work, including views on gender roles, sexuality, inherent xenophobia, and Van Helsing’s fear of the “New Woman”. While the work possesses a depth of thematic riches that allows for considerable unpacking and deconstruction, it also remains a surprisingly accessible nineteenth-century horror story.