The Haunting of Drumroe

The Haunting of Drumroe
Claudette Nicolle | Fawcett Gold Medal | 141 pages | 1971

Eileen Donegan returns to Ireland and her ancestral family home after receiving a cryptic letter of help from her aunt Agnes, Lady Donegon of Drumroe. Driving to the remote estate, Eileen is nearly killed by a tree falling across the road, sending her rental car plunging into a lake. Finally arriving at the great house, she is alarmed to discover that her aunt has gone missing, and that none of the household staff can explain her absence. 

A familiar gothic thriller template is further established with the introduction of two competing love interests for Eileen, the dark-haired solicitor Rory Muldoon and the gray-eyed local historian Colin Riorden. A bit of unnecessary backstory relating to Eileen’s philandering ex-husband lays the groundwork for her shifting affections between the two men, which is expressed mostly through some feverish hand holding and a few chaste kisses.

Claudette Nicolle is a pseudonym for John Messman, who wrote a number of these genre staples, almost universally featuring covers depicting women in nightgowns running away from castles. Hints of this underlying male authorship abound by the fascination with Eileen’s sleeping in the nude, and the repeated references to her firm and ample breasts.

Although there are no actual hauntings in The Haunting of Drumroe, supernatural elements emerge through Eileen’s psychic abilities. Reportedly descended from an infamous local witch, Eileen has received psychic impressions of family tragedies at various periods throughout her life, some at great distance. Now, her psychic impressions tell her that aunt Agnes is dead, although the details are maddeningly scarce. 

Beyond simply “knowing” that her aunt is dead, Eileen’s psychic talents are mostly underutilized and not particularly relevant in solving the mystery. Eileen is even less gifted as a traditional detective, since she seems bluntly oblivious to the fairly overt clues leading to the person responsible for her aunt’s disappearance, the attempts on her own life, and a laundry list of other mysterious deaths in the family.

The Irish setting is modestly rendered, but appealing: the small villages, the rolling hills, the chilly lough, the lonely cemetery, and—of course—the weird pagan rituals in the woods at night. The political violence in Northern Ireland is introduced as a possible explanation for an attack on Eileen, but it does feel slightly out of place in an otherwise standard genre work that could have easily been set in the nineteenth century.

A perfectly serviceable, if altogether unmemorable, gothic thriller.

The Mystery of the Yellow Room

The Mystery of the Yellow Room
Gaston Leroux | Dover | 1977 (first published 1907) | 188 pages

The Mystery of the Yellow Room, an early example of a “locked-door” mystery by the author of The Phantom of the Opera, introduces the young reporter and amateur detective, Joseph Rouletabille, whose ingenious acts of deduction are featured in a series of novels and short stories.

Rouletabille arrives at the Château du Glandier to investigate an attack against Mathilde Stangerson, the daughter and scientific associate of a notable professor who conducts his work in a laboratory housed in a pavilion on the grounds of his estate. Professor Stangerson’s late-night experiments were interrupted by a loud gunshot and Matilde’s scream of “Murder!” from her adjacent bedroom. Breaking down the locked door, the professor and his elderly servant discover the incapacitated Mathilde, suffering from a life-threatening blow to the head. Beyond a few muddy boot prints and a bloody handprint on the wall, there is no sign of an intruder and no obvious means of escape.

Rouletabille possesses an outsized reputation for solving crimes considering his tender age of only eighteen years, and a correspondingly large ego and reservoir of self-confidence. The case to solve the mystery is framed as a battle of wills between young Rouletabille and Frédéric Larsan, an esteemed police detective assigned to the case, who much to Rouletabille’s consternation, focuses exclusively on Mathilde’s fiance, Robert Darzac, as a prime suspect.

The novel is told mostly from the point of view of Jean Sainclair, a young lawyer and professional acquaintance of Rouletabille, although some facts of the case are recounted through newspaper articles. The crime details are repeatedly described as sensational in these press sections, but the flat reporting style actually works to diminish their emotional impact. Later, the perspective shifts briefly to Rouletabille’s own journal entries for an account of a second attack against Mathilde, but the change in viewpoint isn’t particularly critical or insightful. The few transitions in point-of-view don’t necessarily add anything, nor do they ultimately detract from the storytelling.

After attempting to kill Mathilde with a brazen attack in her own bedchambers at the château, the suspect flees and–once again–seems to inexplicably disappear without a trace, this time vanishing virtually before the eyes of Rouletabille and several other pursuers. Perhaps it’s due to the translation from the work’s original French, but the suspect is always referred to as “the murderer” even though Mathilde survives her attacks. The murderer’s ability to ostensibly dissipate into nothingness suggests a connection to the professor’s scientific studies of “matter dissociation.”

This second attempt on Mathilde’s life is suspenseful, but hampered somewhat by the detailed descriptions of the hallway configurations, room layouts, and the various positions and movements of all the participants. Although clearly an instance of establishing “fair play” by the author, who provides an exhaustively thorough account for the readers/detectives to build their own legitimate solutions, this attention to detail does effectively slow down the momentum of what should be a naturally suspenseful series of events.

Another strange and evocative disappearance along the lines of “matter dissociation” occurs when the body of another victim, stabbed through the heart, is found in place of the suspect, who was seemingly shot to death while escaping mere steps ahead of Rouletabille.

The denouement greatly amplifies the gather-all-the-suspects mystery trope, as Rouletabille crashes Darzac’s public trial to reveal the true murderer. The resolution owes as much to Victorian melodrama as to conventional detective fiction, since the young reporter’s courtroom showboating crosses into the realm of the ridiculously theatrical. The credibility-stretching divulgence of the existence of a criminal mastermind pushes the overall tone closer to the serial crime stories of Fantômas than to the mystery genre conventions set in place by The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

Even after the leisurely final reveal, the story slowly winds down even further as Rouletabille ties up all the loose ends by providing full motivations for the remaining characters and their actions (or non-actions). A hint at an abandoned child in America points to even more melodrama ahead in the sequel, The Perfume of the Lady in Black.

The Uninhabited House

The Uninhabited House
Mrs. J.H. (Charlotte) Riddell | Chatto & Windus | 1889 | 168 pages

Miss Blake has a problem. River Hall, the rambling house on the Thames her young niece, Helena Elmsdale, inherited from her father after his suicide, cannot seem to keep any paying tenants, leaving the pair in a perpetual state of financial jeopardy. The law firm managing the property discovers that the house has a local reputation for being haunted, driving away any prospective tenants, buyers, and even household staff. 

Harry Patterson, a clerk at the Craven law firm, takes it upon himself to move into the house in order to solve the mystery behind the flight of so many tenants, and also succeed in winning over the affections of Helena Elsmdale, to whom he has become infatuated. Told from Patterson’s perspective, easily the first third or more of the story concerns itself with the financial albatross that is River Hall, and the firm’s difficulty in managing the property. The start is slow going, as monetary concerns outweigh any ghostly encounters. In fact, the book probably breaks the record for the repeated use of the word “pecuniary” in the text.

Once Patterson finally occupies River Hall, the spooky hijinks finally begin, although unfolding at a leisurely pace. There’s a tapping at the bedroom window, and doors seemingly open and close by themselves in the night. Patterson leaves powder on the hallway floors to capture the footprints of any potential nocturnal invaders. His disbelief in the supernatural is shaken when he witnesses a ghostly specter descend the central staircase and disappear through a closed door in the landing. However, he cannot rule out a human agency behind the campaign to drive tenants away when he finds a distinctive set of footprints outside the windows, and later discovers that he is being followed in the streets of London by a strange man.

Patterson proves to be a sincere, if somewhat dull narrator, who is occasionally upstaged by the antics of Miss Blake. Her commoner’s Irish diction and demeanor border on comic relief, all bluster and defiance before turning around to ask for the loan of a few pounds.

Charlotte Riddell’s Victorian ghost story actually blends elements from a few different genres, but never rises to a particularly thrilling level of engagement. The mystery of Richard Elsmdale’s suicide plays along with the haunted house and suspense elements, and underlying all is the latent romance between Patterson and Helena. Is the house haunted? Are people scaring the tenants away? Did Mr. Elmsdale really coming suicide? Are the two crazy kids in love ever going to get together? Perhaps not quite living up to classic status, but an appealing enough mix that is short enough to never outstay its welcome.

The ending is oddly flat, however, simultaneously confirming two separate elements behind the mystery, while leaving a critical resolution undeveloped–yet providing singular clarity relating to the inevitable nuptials.

The House on the Brink

The House on the Brink
John Gordon | Puffin Books | 1972 | 192 pages

Two teenagers investigate a supernatural mystery after something malevolent seemingly pulls itself free of the mud of the marshy Fenlands in East Anglia. Written primarily for a teen audience, the book does suggest a hypothetical Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew mashup–in which Frank and Nancy also develop a budding romance–-that could easily have been titled The Case of the Evil Log.

Leaving a night class held in the isolated home of a lonely widow, Mrs. Knowles, teen Dick Dodds stumbles across a strange trail in the mud of the marsh. However, Dick discovers he is somehow able to continue following the trail over dry land. He experiences a bizarre, psychic-like sensation in the air around him, pointing him forward towards the destination of the strange entity that he assumes originated from the muck.

While searching the countryside, Dick meets Helen Johnson, a young neighbor who also is able to sense the psychic trail. Although Dick becomes fixated on a blackened stump that casts an inexplicably malevolent pall, Helen claims to have actually seen a frightening figure–without arms and legs–wriggling in the mud in the marsh beyond her house. 

An old woman who has the power of water divination informs the pair of their latent talents in a scene marginally prefiguring Dick Hallorann’s “Not things that anyone can notice, but things that only people with shine can see” speech to Danny Torrance in The Shining (only about dowsing). As the pair investigate the mysteries of the marsh, their encounters with the supernatural sometimes seem silly, but are frequently spooky and take advantage of the isolated wilderness of the surrounding landscape.

Their investigations prove as impulsive as Dick himself, bouncing around between the old water dowser, Mrs. Knowles, and her lawyer friend, Tom Miller, whose interest in the local legend of King John’s lost treasure further informs the story. Dick frequently acts like a heel, unfortunately subject to uncontrolled impulses of rash bravado, intermittently interrupted with chaste kisses with Helen. He is also annoyingly prone to blunt, rhetorical ejaculations that instill much eye-rolling; “I am the key in the lock of the world!”

Still, the appeal of a pair of teen amateur detectives cycling around the Fenlands in an adventure that involves lost treasure is undeniable, even if the Big Bad of the story initially appears to be “a black, smooth, round, bald-headed old post.”

The Listening House

The Listening House
Mabel Seeley | Doubleday | 1938 | 296 pages

“You let me see you talking, just talking, to that guy, and I’ll take your pants down and spank you with a table leg.”

After losing her copywriting job because of a major proofreading error, Gwynne Dacres moves into a slightly down-at-heel boarding house to stretch her modest savings. Although described as “respectable” by the house’s landlady, Harriet Garr, 593 Trent Street is perched on a steep incline overlooking a seedy neighborhood, and produces a somewhat disquieting effect upon Gwynne. Her anxiety proves justified, however, when she discovers the body of a murdered man that has been dumped over the railing behind the house.

The dead man is found to have ties to organized crime, but the police ultimately fail to connect him to any of the tenants. Meanwhile, Mrs. Garr appears nervous, suspecting someone in the house of searching through her possessions. Several days after purportedly leaving town on a trip to Chicago, Mrs. Garr’s body is discovered in the locked basement kitchen–the cause of death obfuscated by the gnawings of her hungry pet cats!

The various details may be grisly, but the general tone is lightened by Gwynne’s unflagging determination and self-confidence. Although met with personal setbacks and much condescension from various authority figures, she remains steadfast in her resolution that Mrs. Garr was murdered. Her banter with Hodge Kistler, fellow tenant and playboy heel/romantic interest, evokes the kind of back-and-forth patois found in other sparkling Golden Age mysteries, although not as fully successful here. Even the grumpy Lieutenant Strom (whom Gwynne suspects is married) eventually wants to take her out to dinner and a movie.

Gwynne is also remarkably resilient. She is almost strangled, attacked with ether, struck with a hammer, and tumbles down a flight of stairs, but never loses her verve and good humor. She plays the role of amateur detective well, searching through the private lives of the motley group of tenants who inhabit the boarding house. The case becomes more complicated than it initially appeared, when Mrs. Garr and several of the tenants are revealed to be connected to a tragic suicide that occurred nearly twenty years before.

Gwynne describes the house as quiet, yet seemingly listening to all activity, and this atmosphere of eerie suspense adds much of the appeal of the story. Although the murderous events take some time in getting going, the mood established through the location and its cast of dubious characters is thick with menace beyond Gwynne’s door–wedged shut with a kitchen chair under the knobs.

Add the prospect of a hidden treasure to the whodunnit, and The Listening House becomes an enjoyable, if not particularly weighty, romp.

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!”

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.