The Witch of Prague and other Stories - F Marion Crawford

This Wordsworth collection contains all the weird fiction of Crawford, a bestseller from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.  There are just eight stories and the titular novel, yet Crawford has always figured in lists of the best and scariest practitioners.  I can now see why,

The Screaming Skull is probably his most anthologised story but my favourite was The Upper Berth, a ghost story set at sea in which Crawford really relies on his favourite stratagem - we see nothing but we definitely feel the terror.

The novel, however, is pure fantasy - a gothic fantasy, to be true, but not for me I'm afraid.

Prayer - Philip Kerr

Philip Kerr died, too young, a month ago. He is best known for his exemplary Bernie Gunther novels, several of which have been reviewed on this blog. I had only read one of his non-Gunther novels, the unimpressive sci fi Gridiron (1995). Prayer (2013) is very different. It is, I suppose, a splice of supernatural suspense and a police procedural.  Giles Martins, originally from Scotland, is now with the FBI in Houston, Texas. His marriage to Ruth is on the rocks because 'Gil' has lost his faith in God. Meanwhile more famous sceptics - authors of anti-theistic books - are dying in very unusual, even terrifying circumstances. Because this might be some form of domestic terrorism, Gil is assigned to investigate.


I don't really want to go any further with the synopsis because Kerr's novels are so brilliantly plotted there is always the danger of giving too much away. I very much like the typical Kerr twist - just as Bernie Gunther is the oxymoronic 'Good Nazi', so Prayer is fundamentally the testing of Gil's lack of faith. As such it works very well. You either roll with the premise or you don't. My lack of belief is as solid as these things get yet I was happy enough with the stages of Gil's purification. Kerr has always had a gift for characterisation and is almost as good with women characters as he naturally is with men. Ruth, the Christian wife, is a bit of a pain but Sara Espinosa, Gil's romantic interest, and especially the enigmatic Gaynor Allitt are strong enough to carry novels of their own.


Kerr has always been at home with first-person narration. Prayer is no exception. That said, I was less comfortable with the various chunks of reported prose, written by others, the style of which seemed always the same. I did not take to the villain and I find thrillers always work better if the villain is as charismatic on the page as he or she is said to be in the action.


Not Kerr's best book, then - he came out of the gates with his best material, the so-called Berlin Noir sequence - but well worth reading for its own sake. I might try and get hold Hitler's Peace next, a non-Gunther Nazi novel.

In a Glass Darkly - Sheridan Le Fanu

I got hold of this, Le Fanu's last book, because it is presented as highlights from the casebook of Dr Martin Hesselius, the prototype Van Helsing who oversees the vampire hunt in the magnificent Carmilla, which  I read over Christmas and which is currently one of the most viewed posts on this blog. Carmilla is indeed the fifth of the five stories in this collection. As I have already reviewed it in depth, I shan't repeat myself, especially since I didn't re-read it so soon.


As for the rest, the framing device is very thin. Dr Hesselius only features in the first story, the highly-regarded Green Tea. The story deserves its reputation. It is a truly creepy tale in which the Reverend Mr Jennings overstimulates himself with the titular brew and is consequently haunted by an evidently furious little monkey. The story's power stems largely from the fact that there is no logical reason for the manifestation nor its impotent rage against the vicar. Its main aim seems to be to prevent him taking up his comfortable country living. It operates with demonic malice. In London it will suddenly disappear for weeks on end. Jennings, hoping against hope that his torment has ended, finally risks a visit to his parish, at which point the monkey reappears. Dr Hesselius features in person. In London for some academic reason, he is approached by Mr Jennings who seeks his expert help. The help proves to be less than useless and the poor priest finally ends his suffering in the only sure way.


Next up is The Familiar, very similar to Green Tea. This time a sea captain is dogged by a malevolent midget who calls himself The Watcher, whom everyone can see but no one can catch. This time there is a reason: Captain Barton gave an order that cost a seaman his life. The Watcher is not that seaman but seems to operate on his behalf. Again, the outcome is inevitable...


...as it is in the third story, Mr Justice Harbottle. The judge is haunted by a man he wrongly sent to the gallows and ends up doing away with himself. Evidently the theme of being stalked by guilt was a preoccupation of Le Fanu in the last years of his life. Mr Justice Harbottle is the only story here that comes anywhere near the brilliance of Carmilla. That is because it shares the same undercurrent of decadence and perversion. Harbottle is a vicious hanging judge but he is also a debauchee. It is suggested he hosts orgies in his house and he is certainly shacked up with the hanged man's wife.


The fourth story, The Room in the Dragon Volant, isn't really a ghost story at all. There is a mention, at some point, that previous occupants of the said room have vanished into thin air - and have been seen doing so. That's a promising idea but goes undeveloped. Instead we have a high Gothic romance in post-Napoleonic France. It is essentially a premature burial story. Sadly, the trope only works if the victim is actually buried. Being saved in the nick of time, as our hero is here, is just plain cheating. The writing, however, is exceptionally good, probably the best-written story in the collection.


Overall, three out of five great examples of Victorian Gothic and two perfectly acceptable lesser tales is by no means a bad thing.

Slade House - David Mitchell

Slade House is a traditional English haunted house story disassembled, dissected, twisted and tweaked by a master of literary tropes. Mitchell favours multi-viewpoint narratives and has made Slade House the perfect vehicle for the technique. Every nine years, over five cycles from 1979 to 2015, innocents and/or investigators are enticed to the suburban mansion that was once Slade House. Some are linked, others independent. On every occasion we and they have to try and disentangle what is real and what is not. Piecemeal throughout the novel suggestions are offered regarding the origin of the 'orison'; only at the end is the full story revealed.

Mitchell has previously been drawn to the epic format. Here, the shorter form (only 230 pages) suits his purpose better. For Mitchell, it seems to me, form and structure matter more than elegant wordplay. His words are well-chosen, his sentences polished, but he leaves the complexities to ideas which are by their nature labyrinthine. The orison, for example, is a concept Mitchell developed in his earlier novel Cloud Atlas, a sort of spiritual or supra-natural version of virtual reality. Here he traces the idea from various esoteric belief systems. Whether there is any basis for this in real world religious practice is immaterial. It reads as plausible, even authoritative, and thus the reader accepts it.

For all the structural bias, Mitchell creates characters who hold our interest for as long as they need to. The guileless son of a pretentious single mother, a libidinous copper, a chubby fresher from the local university, her sister the online reporter and, ultimately, the kick-ass doctor of psychiatry. The interdependency of the Grayer twins, whose career unites the episodic narrative, is especially well handled.

I liked this novel a great deal. I commend it to all.

Ghost Stories - M R James

Why is it I didn't take to the stories of Thomas Ligotti (see below) but fell instantly under the spell of M R James?  They have much in common - James is obviously a key influence on Ligotti.  Both writers tend to use the same type of narrator - learned, single, often a writer - and both use distancing devices such as "this is the story as someone told it to me."  I have thought about it for some days now, and have concluded that the difference is the attitude of the narrator/protagonist.  Ligotti's are inert, accepting, and thus alienate us; James's academic old buffers, on the other hand, rebel against their disturbing experiences and strive to put the world back in order.  That makes them appealing.  They do what we would hope to do in their position.

This selection, for Vintage Classics, includes an introduction by Ruth Rendell.  I like Rendell but hate it when publishers feel they need to add a 'name' to a classic.  This introduction is amiable enough but in the end it is piffle.  It tells us nothing about James and even less about his works.

On to the stories themselves, there are thirteen of them, naturally, and the best for me was the story "Number 13".  Can I say why I preferred it?  Well, to an extent.  It is odd, as hotel rooms tend to be odd, especially old hotels which have been converted from something else.  Hotel rooms strive to be comfortable, to be a temporary home from home, but they always fail because most of us can never be truly comfortable away from home.  We never fully have our bearings because there's always somewhere else, staff areas and other people's rooms, which we cannot access.

As always with ghost stories, it depends what you find frightening.  If you have a problem with spiders, then James is definitely the boy for you.  Personally, it's the oddness rather than the apparition which unsettles me.  The flapping sheet on the beach in "Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad" is, for me, much scarier than the attack on Parkins by his bedsheets.  But even if the thing itself in a particular story doesn't raise your gooseflesh you can always enjoy the sheer mastery of James's writing.  James, of course, was far more learned than any of his protagonists; that means he does not need to show off, and he doesn't.  Instead his pen flows like Picasso's line, effortless and yet magnificent.

Cold Hand in Mine - Robert Aickman

The second of my Aickman Faber Finds but I suspect originally published before Wine Dark Sea.  Again, we have eight short stories.  The settings are as varied as ever, with many of the same tropes.  Again, the tales work best when they are truly strange.  I absolutely love it when something extremely strange happens - and that's it: no explanation, no consequences.

Take for example the opening story, 'The Swords'.  A young travelling salesman has his first sexual experience with a woman off the fair, a woman who can be pierced with swords without lasting injury or apparent pain.  The fact that the setting is somewhere in the West Midlands at the height of its grime and squalor only enhances the overall seediness.  Then something happens - I won't say what, save that it's strange, and disturbing and ever so slightly revolting.  Our hero pays off her pimp - somewhere else in the lodging house someone screams - and that's it.  Brilliant.

Something similar happens in 'The Hospice'.  Another commercial traveller, this time seemingly in the 1960s, runs out of petrol and spends the night at the titular establishment.  The meals are absolutely enormous.  They offer him a bed.  He has to share - everyone shares at the Hospice, by choice apparently.  In the night his room mate disappears and locks our protagonist in.  He returns later.  In the morning they carry out a body,  We don't know whose.  And they generously offer our hero a lift to the nearest petrol station ... in the hearse.

These and 'The Same Dog' were my favourites.  'Meeting Mr Millar' was enjoyable, and 'Neimandswasser' reminded me of D H Lawrence's 'The Prussian Officer'.  Some stories are better than others but there are no duds.  I'm really enjoying the range Aickman manages to achieve within quite a limited genre, and the depth of characterisation.  These are what make him a master.