Thrilling tales of occult detection... Yes! Ghost-finders - my absolute fave. And favourite amongst them, John Silence and Thomas Carnacki, both prominent in this compilation of classics by Mike Ashley for the British Library. My second faves, Aylmer Vance and Flaxman Low, both appear, too. The Silence and the Carnacki were both familiar to me - Blackwood and William Hope Hodgson both only wrote one collection each and I have long had both - but I was reminded how superior Blackwood was with Ashley's choice of 'A Psychic Invasion.' Sadly, 'The Searcher of the End House' is to my mind one of the lesser Carnacki tales.
New to me were the tales by Bertram Atkey, Dion Fortune, Moray Dalton, Gordon Hillman and Joseph Payne Brennan. The latter two were especially effective. 'Forgotten Harbour' (1931) by Hillman is a tale of spooky doings at a fog-bound lighthouse, absolutely dripping with menace. Brennan's story, 'In Death as in Life' is by far the most recent of the tales, dating only from 1963, but his ghostfinder, Lucius Leffing, is a Victorian out of his time, and the ghost when it manifests is literally dripping, truly horrible, and squishy. Brennan's real stroke of genius is to make himself Leffing's Dr Watson.
A fantastic collection, essential for any fan of the sub-genre.
No comments:
Post a Comment