My review of Shadows Over Baker Street a few weeks back reminded me of Mark Frost’s 1993 best-seller, The List of 7. If not exactly Holmes meets Lovecraft, the Arthur Conan Doyle/Jack Sparks team up and some of the occult textures have a genetic affiliation. The List of 7 is the most successful, though not the only, or even the first, use of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as a fictional character.
In fact, Doyle seems almost as popular as Lovecraft insofar as a real-life author appearing as a fictional character in another writer’s work. The Arcanum by Thomas Wheeler, actually features Doyle and Lovecraft, united with Houdini; William Hjortsborg’s Nevermore has Doyle and Houdini trying to solve a string of murders inspired by Edgar Allan Poe; David Pirie has written a trio of books, The Patient’s Eyes, The Night Falls and The Dark Water featuring a young Doyle assisting Dr. Joseph Bell, the real inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, in a series of fictional cases; these were adapted for the BBC. And The Menagerie is a series of four dark fantasy novels by Christopher Golden and Thomas E. Sniegoski starring Doyle as the head sorcerer (huh?).
The earliest occurrence of Doyle as a character in someone else’s work that I’m aware of is the 1937 German film, which I would love to see, Der Mann, Der Sherlock Holmes war (The Man who was Sherlock Holmes.) In it, two detectives claim to be Holmes and Watson as they seek to recover a stolen stamp. For awhile, everyone appears to accept this, except for a slightly overweight man who breaks into uproarious laughter each time he encounters the duo. Not surprisingly, he’s billed only as ‘der Mann der Lacht’( ‘the man who laughs’.) In the end, the two men are arrested for “impersonating Sherlock Holmes,” but are saved when the Laughing Man, who is really Doyle, gives them permission to continue.
Right from the start, The List of 7 declares itself an alternate world story. Not a bad idea for a story wherein a real character is inspired by a fictional character to create a fictional character who was, in our world, inspired by a real character. And probably not a surprise coming from the man who co-created Twin Peaks with David Lynch.
Cover of The List of 7, first edition
Christmas Day, 1884, finds a young Dr. Doyle perusing one mind-numbing volume of Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled. He is on the cusp of belief, yet struggles to find a balance between science and spirit. To resolve his conflict, he has turned to writing fiction, “stories of mythic planes, dread and eldritch deeds committed by plotters of evil intent, contested by men from the world of light and knowledge..who ventured knowingly and for the most part recklessly into the darkness.” The first three novels failed to sell; the current one, The Dark Brotherhood, is making the rounds of publishers. Almost as a deliverance, he receives a mysterious message from an unknown woman, begging for his help in an occult undertaking. Remarkably, he pockets his revolver and takes a cab to the required address.
His adventure leads him to a seance, where the lady who wrote the note, Lady Nicholson, along with her brother, seek to contact the spirit of her recently dead child. The spirit comes, but the seance is abruptly disrupted. Part of it is obviously fake, but the medium turns into a monster, even as Doyle watches Lady Nicholson and her brother savagely murdered on the far side of the table by one of a group of assassins. Doyle tries to help, and is almost felled by another gang member, but a knife flies out of the blackness and lands in the attackers throat.
The thrower of that knife commands Doyle to follow. As nothing more can be done for the two innocents – her head was smashed by a mallet, his throat was sliced ear to ear with a razor– Doyle does as he’s told. A quick trot across rooftops and through alleys fails to foil the pursuing villains. In a cab, they are attacked by a man in a gray hood, and Doyle’s new friend saves him again, and rips off the bad guy’s hood. His eyes and lips had been crudely sewn up with a coarse blue thread.
And in this way, Doyle meets Jack Sparks, special agent to the Queen. It seems that Doyle’s manuscript, The Dark Brotherhood, has somehow come quite close to the truth. There is a powerful occult group seeking “to elicit the help of evil spirits in annihilating the membrane that separates the physical and etheric plane…in order to gain dominion over the material world and those who inhabit it.”
What follows is a wild occult adventure, with zombies, infanticide, mummies, betrayal, zombies, magic, chases, fights, battles, some zombies and a round or two of deductional sparring between Doyle and Sparks. There are also cameos by Blavatsky, Bram Stoker and a Sir Nigel Gull, who bears a more than marked resemblance to Sir William Gull, physician to the Queen and Alan Moore’s designated Jack the Ripper in From Hell. Oh, and intimations that may or may not mean Alexander was in league with Dracula. He might even be Dracula, or the prototype. There are moments of real horror, laced with brisk action.
Doyle is the hero of the novel, but Sparks is the memorable character. To his credit, Frost did not make Sparks a Holmes clone. While he does indeed have some of the well known traits and abilities, has VR inscribed on his wall in bullet holes, uses cocaine, he is still a fresh and entertaining character. His moods are darker, his temper hotter; his knowledge of the occult is immense; he dresses all in black and relies heavily on two assistants, a pair of inseparable brothers. This last is especially poignant as what drives Jack Sparks is the desire to defeat his own brother, Alexander, who is the embodiment of evil and the leader of the dark brotherhood. The back story of their relationship is one of the meatiest parts of the book.
The end comes rather abruptly after the destruction of Alexander’s headquarters and Jack’s revelation of a deep personal secret regarding his use of cocaine. He makes Doyle swear that the subject will never be brought up again. The next morning, Doyle awakes to fins that Jack has left him behind without explanantion.
It isn’t until some time later that Doyle hears from one of the assistants that Sparks has perished in a fight with Alexander at the top of Reichenbach Falls. In remembrance of his friend, he sits down to write a story, and you can guess what it is going to be.
And of course, bestseller status made a sequel to The List of 7 an inevitability.
Well, lightning rarely strikes twice, even if there’s occult lore behind it.
Though the dust jacket copy insists that this is not a sequel to The List of 7, but a ” spectacularly imagined novel that stands entirely in its own,” and though there is a decidedly different tone to the writing, it’s hard to overlook the fact that Alexander Sparks is the bad guy, Doyle is after him, and that Jack Sparks didn’t die at Reichenbach Falls.
Cover of The 6 Messiahs, first edition
This time out, the setting is America, 1894, where a gaunt mysterious preacher man is raising a city in the desert, calling disciples to him through word of mouth and a little psychic nudging. Everyone in the city dresses the same, all are terribly happy, and rules are strictly enforced.
Doyle, with his brother, Innes, is traveling by ship to America in the wake of the success of Sherlock Holmes. He’s not a bit happy about it. Diversions on board are few, save for a seance, until the theft of a rare book, the Gerona Sefer ha-Zohar, “The Book of Splendor”, from a stateroom.The owner, a man named Selig, has been murdered. He was a rare book dealer, and his partner, Stern, is the one who alerted the captain. A mysterious Irish priest skulks around, but can’t be found when he’s needed.
At the same time, a mysterious purpose tied to the New City is drawing six very special people together, including a newly arrived Ninja named Kanozuchi; an Indian woman known as Walks Alone as well as Mary Williams; a Jewish rare book dealer who has recently secured the loan of , used as a basis for Kabbalah; Eileen Temple, an actress who supplied the love interest in 7, who is now touring the west with a rundown repertory company; Cornelius Montcrief, a New York osychopath All are heading, in their own way, toward the New City.
In New York, Doyle is startled by the sudden reappearance of Jack, who, of course, was the mysterious priest. Only it’s not the Jack he knew. He is scarred, “a band of white along the left jaw, an indentation on the forehead running just below the hairline, ” As if he’d been fractured and reassembled.” and his eyes are disturbed, haunted.
In clipped tones, Jack reveals the theft of numerous important religious works around the world, of which the Zohar is only the latest. And with that they are off on the case.
Though the story moves along and the secondary characters are reasonably interesting, the threads never seem to belong to the same weave. Doyle comes to believe that Jack is completely mad, and as a reader it’s hard to disagree, a sad state for a character that was so engaging in the first novel. His condition came about as a result of that fall from the heights of Reichenbach, again making it hard not to see this book as a sequel.
The mixture of the various religions is muddled; The New City is weird but never quite rings true. The apocalyptic climax is spectacular almost to the point of overkill. Jack does find some redemption after his brother’s final defeat, but there’s not much reason to celebrate. There won’t be anymore non-sequels in this series.
I wish there hadn’t been this one.
You no doubt noticed I didn’t make a token post last week, but at least the page went up as planned. For the first time in my life I’m finding that everything around me is a top priority, which is absurd, but no matter how I look at my current obligations, I don’t see any way to push one before the other except on a moment-to-moment basis. That is truly an inefficient way to work.
But on to better things! This last week saw the premiere of Alcatraz, a show with an intriguing premise and a flabby two-hour opener. Lots of mysteries are thrown out in scatter-shot fashion, none of them engaging me enough to watch the show again. Like Fringe, I like the ideas, but the execution is dull.
The Walking Dead returns Sunday, February 12, and though I thought the first half of the season was on the slow side, I can’t wait to get back into the story. I’ve read the first 8 of the trade paperbacks, and the show follows the storyline faithfully enough to satisfy me, but throws in enough zingers to keep me guessing.
Besides slogging through Madame Bovary, Crime & Punishment and The Awakening for my MFA, I’m also reading Stephen King’s 11/23/64. It’s not horror, but I usually enjoy Mr. K’s company even on the journeys that don’t turn out so well. Thus far, the book is entertaining but doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. I suspect (hope) that many of these small details will come into play as the book moves to its climax. But I’m still looking forward to his sequel to The Shining with a bit more enthusiasm.
Is anyone planning to make a good horror movie anytime soon? The Devil Inside and The Darkest Hour both died miserable deaths at the boxoffice. I have no expectations for the latest Underworld installment.
But I am, on the other hand, enjoying the heck out of playing Bioshock. It’s dark side of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Within a world where absolutely everything is profit driven, things, believe it or not, went horribly wrong. The city is creepy and decaying (and located on the bottom of the sea, no less) and those citizens a player gets to meet are crazed genetic experiments-gone-wrong. I’ll get more pleasure out of this than any five movies that will be at the theatre this year (at least in this genre) and I’ve already paid for it, and I can play it again. Me like-ee. And there’s a new sequel coming out this year. Does anyone in Hollywood really wonder why theatre attendance keeps dropping about 10% a year? When guys MY age would rather sit at home and play video games, Hollywood is really in trouble.
Have a good weekend.
The Cosmical Horror of H. P. Lovecraft: A Pictorial Anthology, edited by Stefano Piselli, Federico de Zigno, & Riccardo Morrochi, Glittering Images, 1991
I have no memory of ever buying this book (which sounds like an intriguing start to a Lovecraft story, doesn’t it?) but I’ve spent a few enjoyable hours with it. That’s more work than you might think, as the quality of the illustrations is mixed at best and the text is in Italian, though the word balloons in the comic pages are reproduced in 
English (assuming it’s from an English speaking country, that is.)
But the book is a pictorial anthology after all, and art crosses all linguistic hurdles. The scope ranges from the best of the pulp and book illustrations of HPL’s stories to movie stills to comic book stories from around the world, salted with occasional stand alone pieces. Unfortunately, even given that the book is twenty years old, it isn’t a particularly great selection of art. The big names are here –Bok, Finlay, Corben, Wrightson, Druillet– but most of their work is easily attainable in other volumes. JK Potter is represented by a single illustration, and none of the cover art from the Arkham titles are on view except for a b&w reproduction of The Outsider and others. Michael Whelan’s paperback covers are included, but there have been lots of other paperback artists taking a swing at HPL’s stories over the years. The movie section is pretty small, and pretty much ends with Carpenter’s The Thing,(1982) but curiously omitting Alien (1979).
The foreign contributions range from spectacular to amateurish to pornographic but without enough variety to make this a book to seek out, especially in light of the A Lovecraft Retrospective: Artists Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft published three years ago. Of course, that book is almost $300, which keeps it out of reach for most of us, but it sure seems like there ought to be some middle ground here. Even the Art of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, comprised of the best of the Chaosium game art, is a better buy at around $40.
Far and away the most exciting picture in the book is what I take to be a reproduction of the actual engraving of cannibalism by the brothers De Bry referred to in “The Picture in the House.
I’ve included some of the more interesting and obscure illustrations in the gallery, but unless you are some kind of completist or fanatic (is there a difference?) then this is a book you can safely pass on.
If you haven’t read Hodgson, I envy you the way I envy a young person going on their first trip abroad.You are going to see. hear, experience things that you will never forget. Despite some inconsistencies and an early death which limited his output, Hodgson’s vision of the weird and unearthly is at the very least equal to Lovecraft, Blackwood and Machen. His four fantastic novels are among the most original works of fiction I’ve ever encountered; in fact, The Nightland is probably the single most unique vision in weird fantasy, despite Hodgson’s use of a clumsy invented archaic narration style that fights the reader every step of the journey. By the end of the book, it’s hard to imagine that it could have been written any other way.
I don’t know how you find out this kind of information with any certainty, but my guess is that Carnacki the Ghost Finder is his best known and most popular work. There are nine stories in all. Five of the stories (“Gateway of the Monster,” “The House Among the Luarels,” “The Whistling Room,” “The Horse of the Invisible,” and “The Searcher of End House”) appeared in The Idler Magazine in the January through April, plus June issues of 1910.”The Thing Invisible” , wasn’t published until 1912, in The New Magazine. (It was the practice to commission series of stories in groups of six; why the stories did not all appear together is a matter for speculation.)
These six stories were collected into book form in 1913.
Many years after Hodgson’s death in World War 1, his wife discovered three additional Carnacki stories. “The Hog,” the longest of all the stories, appeared in the January, 1947 issue of Weird Tales. That story, along with”The Haunted Jarvee” and “The Find” were included in the Mycroft & Moran edition, and all subsequent printings likewise contain the complete series.
There are several qualities besides that of the writing that set Carnacki apart from all the other Occult Detectives we’ve looked at thus far:
the 1920 "cheap" editiion
“‘Tis curst with innocent blood an’ ye’ll be better pullin’ it down an’ buildin’ a fine new wan. But if ye be intendin’ to shtay this night, kape the big dhoor open whide an’ watch for the bhlod-dhrip. If so much as a single dhrip falls, don’t shtay though all the gold in the worrld was offered ye.”
Carnacki and his friend are accompanied by a handful of policemen, and their reactions to Carnacki’s precautions, and the inevitable ‘bhlood-dhrip’ are humorous yet entirely believable.
“We’ve got a room in this shanty which has got a most infernal whistling in it, sort of haunting it. The thing starts any time, you never know when, and it goes on until it frightens you. It’s not ordinary whistling and it isn’t the wind. Wait till you hear it.”
Saiitii manifestations – the Unknown Last Line of the Saamaa Ritual, used by the Ab-human Priests in the Incantation of the Raaaee–Outer Monstrosiities (which seems to be missing a few vowels; it might better be spelled ‘Ouuterr Monsstrooooositiiis.’) This is classic Carnacki, with as chilling and original an ending as you’re likely to find in weird literature..
It is the longest, and in some ways the simplest of the collection. A man comes to Carnacki, seeking help for his bad dreams. only they are much worse than dreams. They have the feel of reality, though all the man can really remember of them is grunting and howling of pigs.
From hints in the Sigsand Ms., Carnacki has been developing a new spectrum defense, an updated version of his Electric Pentacle, consisting of “seven glass vacuum circles with the red on the outisde and the colour circles lying inside it, in the order of orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.” Putting on a weird rubber suit, armed with camera and sensitive sound recording gear, Carnacki fits the vacuum tubes together around himself and the dreamer. The man falls asleep…and from there on, it’s one long extended climax of horror, a visitation from the Outer Monstrosities.
That is more or less the end of Hodgson’s Ghost-finder. If, however, you want to be a completist, there is one more odd item, found in Hodgosn’s papers by Sam Moskowitz some years ago. For reasons unknown, some time after the magazine publication Hodgson re-worked four stories (“The House Among the Laurels,” ” The Gateway of the Monster,”"The Horse of the Invisible,” and “The Whistling Room.”) into a single 5,000 word short story, entitled “Carnacki, the Ghost Finder and a Poem.” It’s a summary of the four cases, and it is amazing how concise and atmospheric the piece is, though no substitute for the stories themselves. The only place I have ever seen it is in the second of Moskowitz’s Hodgson collections for Donald Grant, The Haunted Pampero. The other two books are Out of the Storm and Terrors of the Sea. All three are out of print, but worth looking up on ABE or eBay; in addition to a generous sampling of Hodgson’s short stories, each volume contains part of a long biographical essay on Hodgson by Sam, based on years and years of research . Much of it deals with sales records for the stories, and it can be tedious going if you’re not an avid historian, but it’s the best overview of WHH’s life and work out there.
Carnacki was, for a long time, a kind of cult favorite, but as fans and fandom took over the publishing industry, he started to turn up here and there as a guest star, and now has become the defining figure for his genre. He’s appeared in a number of Sherlock Holmes pastiches; a new collection of original stories, No. 472 Cheyne Walk, by A.F. Kidd an Ricke Kennet was released in 2002 (and was the second book reviewed in this series.); the fourth installment of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has Carnacki as a member; and for those of you out there who are Lost fans, Desmond’s girlfriend, Penny, in the episode, “The Constant,” lives at No. 423 Cheyne Walk. I doubt that’s just a coincidence.
There are numerous editions of the Carnacki stories available, from their inclusion in the beautiful five-volume set of Hodgson’s complete fiction from NightShade Press to print on demand and eBooks; plus most of them are available for free online, either at Project Gutenberg or various other sites. Give yourself an early Halloween present and make the acquaintance of one of the great weird writers of all time.
B.P.R.D. books 1-14, by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, Guy Davis, Dave Stewart and lot of other people, Dark Horse Books, 2003-2010.
Most of the occult investigators I’ve reviewed are Victorian or Edwardian, with a few mucking around in the 1920s. B.P.R.D. (Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense) is the modern equivalent. with a dash of super-hero and James Bond 
tossed in to liven up the mix. The cast is large and flexible; the foundational members are Dr. Kate Corrigan (occult specialist,) Abe Sapien (fishman who was originally a 19th century occultist,) Johann Kraus (a medium who lost his body and now lives in a containment suit,) Liz Sherman (fire-starter) and newest member, Andrew Devon (normal guy — what’s he doing here?) Others who move in and out of the storylines are Capt. Benjamin Daimio (a were-jaguar monster/revived dead person), Roger (a homunculus) and Panya, (a resuscitated mummy.) As the whole series spun out of Hellboy, he is also a presence, though he is on permanent leave.
B.P.R.D. is more a world than a storyline with characters; technically, I guess it’s part of the Hellboy universe, but Hellboy is so far removed from the daily comings and goings of the group that I think in terms of the B.P.R.D. universe with vague connections to the big red guy.
These first fourteen trade paperbacks collect what Mignola has deemed the first long arc of the series, seventy regular issues that more or less chronicle the war against the frog monsters that actually started back in Hellboy #1. To fully appreciate all the elements in this arc you probably also need to read the Hellboy collections Seed of Destruction, Wake the Devil and The Conqueror Worm, plus the Lobster Johnson book, The Iron Prometheus, and the first Witchfinder series, collected as In the Service of Angels.
That’s a lot of ground to cover, almost 100 comics all told, but I have to tell you, it’s worth every minute and every cent. The story line develops slowly, takes twists and turns as the characters spend as much energy dealing with each other as they do actually fighting the various menaces that confront them. Characters die, characters leave, characters betray, and some are even unpleasant. Two of the fourteen books, 1946 and 1947, deal with the origins of the bureau in the aftermath of World War 2. They don’t make any direct contribution to the storyline, other than setting up the political and monetary conflicts that continue to the present day.
The first two books, The Hollow Earth and The Soul of Venice, are collections of stand alone tales that refine and tie together the characters and concepts that will drive the rest of the series. Although Mignola oversaw the details, a variety of writers and artists contribute to these stories in varying combinations, almost like they’re trying out for the regular slot. Like a lot of people, I’m a sucker for the Lobster Johnson stories, and there is one solo adventure and another that connects Lobster, World War 2 and the B.P.R.D.
Plague of Frogs (book 3) gets the main arc fully underway as Kate, Liz, Abe, Roger and Johan follow up on a giant fungus that has escaped a B.P.R.D. research lab. Guy Davis starts as the regular artist and in his hands, the fungus is one of the creepiest critters I’ve ever seen. A climactic battle reveals that the frogs are back and ready to wreak havoc on the world. It’s a close one, and Abe is apparently killed, but as we view his near death experience, we get our first glimpse into his origin. Mignola obviously knows how to parcel out stories in just the right way, at just the right speed, to keep readers coming back, but this may be his best teaser ever.
Capt. Benjamin Daimo sits up and cuts his way out of a body bag in book 5, The Dead. With half his lower jaw cut away, he’s the epitome of the tough guy marine, and to everyone else’s dismay, he’s put in charge of the B.P.R.D. while Kate is assisting Abe in his search for further information on his origin. Among other things, Daimo is to oversee the Bureau’s move to an abandoned research facility in the Colorado mountains, a large, foreboding structure with dark secrets of its own.
The Dead marks the debut of John Arcudi as regular scripter, and it’s hard to know how much detail in the story is actually his rather than Mignola’s, but ultimately it doesn’t matter. The constant 
switching back and forth between characters and across time seems more effortless than ever. A madman sealed in a lower level of the ‘new’ headquarters since the end of World War 2, fore- shadowings of future adversaries, another of Abe’s visits to his own past are all woven around a tense adventure story. I haven’t done a body count on any of these books, but on a really primal level, Mignola, Arcudi and Davis are very fond of blowing stuff up.
As with other books in the series, The Black Flame contains more plot elements than it’s possible to coherently summarize in a small space. The title character is the anti-Bruce Wayne, a millionaire playboy who develops an alter-ego based on a Nazi original, with the goal of becoming the leader of the frogs. To that end, The Black Flame helps bring about the advent of Kata Hem, a god even creepier than the fungus guy, only to find that he, the Flame, kinda got things wrong. He’s a servant, not a master. Oops.
Roger the homunculus, until now a child-like innocent, has found his mentor and role model in Daimo, adopting a swaggering bad-ass attitude that ultimately gets him ‘killed.’ And in the meantime, Liz has her first full encounter with Memnan Sa, a Fu Manchu-looking character who may or may not be on the side of the angels. All this, by the way, is taking place as the combined armed forces and B.P.R.D. agents are waging full scale war against the swarming frogs and the monstrous, steadily advancing Kata Hem.
The Universal Machine takes a side-trip as Kate and Devon trek to a remote French town in search of a rare book that just might have the secret to restoring Roger to life. It doesn’t go well. Though lacking any of the abilities of the rest of the team, Kate’s knowledge of the occult and quick-thinking turn an ugly situation around, though without the hoped for results. We find out a little more about Johan’s origin, more about Liz’s origin, meet Carl the Wendigo and tie the whole book up with a poignant final meeting between Johan and Roger.
If I have to pick a favorite out of the series, it’s unquestionably book 7, Garden of Souls. I’m only going to say this: a living mummy, Victorain cyborgs and a finale to Abe’s origins. If that doesn’t do it for you, you’re hopeless.
I guess I have to add that Johan gets a body, because the results of that along with a taste of Daimo’s backstory make up the bulk of the narrative in Killing Ground. And the mummy. And the wendigo. And Memnan Sa. And Lobster Johnson.
Books 8 and 13, 1946 and 1947, reveal the beginnings of the bureau under the guidance of Trevot von Bruttenholm in the ruins of post-war Berlin. Both books provide well-earned breaks for Arcudi and Davis.
But you’ll notice the arc has kinda moved away from the frogs over these last few issues. They come roaring back in The Warning, teaming up with the 
subterranean Hyboreans, introduced in book 1. Memnan Sa is confronted by the bureau in his lair, easily outwits them, and takes Liz for his own purposes. She has, he reveals, a higher calling.
That calling is revealed in The Black Goddess, which is the climactic battle we’ve been waiting for. Even though it will take one more volume to wrap everything up, this is where the majority of the plot lines come together and the big evil confronted.
One would assume War on Frogs, book 12, is another collection of stories with guest artists, mostly filling in gaps in the main character’s lives. It’s a loose group of stories and by this time, I’m gettting imaptient. B.P.R.D. is far from perfect, and this is an obvious time-filler.
King of Fear wraps up the storyline, and despite the promise of a cataclysmic battle, this book is more low-key than one would expect. All the major story arcs are resolved (they have to leave something to drive future issues) and just about every major character that has appeared over this long story reappears: The Black Flame, Lobster Johnson, Hellboy, the Victorian cyborgs. The frogs are apparently stopped.
I have to tell you, these quick summaries (did you notice they got “quicker” as they went along?) don’t begin to do justice to the wealth of character and action and creepy details, don’t even suggest the complexity of the plots and their magnificent interweaving through time. There’s not so much detecting going on as in a normal Occult Detective book, but the mysteries that are there have more to do with the depths of character than figuring out the source of a manifestation. If your only acquaintance with the B.P.R.D. is via the Hellboy movies, you are getting shortchanged. This is one of the best, most consistent comics on the market, far ahead of even the other Mignola occult series, Witchfinder and Baltimore. Do yourself a favor and catch up. Book 15 just came out a month or so ago, starting a whole new arc. A whole new reason for looking brightly into the dark future.
Shadows Over Baker Street, various authors, edited by Michael Reaves and John Pelan, Del Rey, 2003
I like strawberry jam; I like pulp magazines.
Do I really need to spread the jam on the magazine to know that it’s neither going to taste good nor improve either?
Shadows Over Baker Street is an original anthology, with eighteen attempts at having Sherlock Holmes enter ‘the dark nightmare world of H. P. Lovecraft.’ There are some good stories here, though none that successfully pull off the the anthology’s theme.
Before I get into the details, let me confess that I don’t get the idea of forcing Holmes into supernatural settings in general, and Lovecraft’s world in particular. The new Guy Ritchie-Robert Downy Sherlock Holmes features a black magician who comes back from 
the dead; the game, Sherlock Holmes: the Awakened, squares off the Master Detective with unnamed but recognizable Cthulhu Mythos characters; a new Australian comic, Sherlock Holmes, Dark Detective, speaks for itself. Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), along with its many other deficiencies, added an occult subplot to the climax.
As a one time spoof, the idea might have merit, but a quick check at Amazon reveals that it has become a sub-genre of its own, apparently beginning with Fred Saberhagen’s 1978 novel, The Holmes-Dracula File. Its now joined by novels Sherlock Holmes Vs. Dracula: Or the Adventure of the Sanguinary Count, Sherlock Holmes: The Game’s Afoot, Sherlock Holmes and the Terror Out of Time, Sherlock Holmes in the Adventure of the Ancient Gods, Sherlock Holmes in the Dreaming Detective, Sherlock Holmes and the Plague of Dracula, and Saberhagen’s own sequel, Seance for a Vampire; short story collections show a similar lack of imagination: The Ghosts in Baker Street: New Tales of Sherlock Holmes, The Ghost of Sherlock Holmes : Seventeen Supernatural Stories, Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes, The Irregular Casebook of Sherlock Holmes.
On top of all the five million straight Holmes pastiches, I find that sad. Imagine if all that creative energy had been put into, say, creating an original character that might capture the acclaim that Sherlock did? Sorry. Silly idea. Much better to send Holmes off to Oz or Middle Earth or to meet John Carter of Mars. or, hell, don’t stop there -have the Master Detective team up with Mr. T. Marketing considerations, y’know.
The essence of Sherlock Holmes is reason. The Land of Mist, wherein Doyle converted the similarly rational Prof.Challenger to spiritualism, is far and away the weakest of Doyle’s novels that I’ve read.
The essence of a Lovecraft story, with some exceptions made for the Dunsanian tales, is the collapse of reason.
In spite of all this, don’t think me a purist. In high school I loved Ellery Queen’s A Study in Terror and Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven Percent Solution. Like them or not, they were logical extensions of the character rather than a disavowal.
But the differences between a Doyle Sherlock Holmes story and a Lovecraft story are pretty great and pretty obvious:.
1. They occupy separate worlds with different realities. If you don’t think that’s a big deal, imagine Sherlock being so absorbed in tracking with his magnifying glass that he steps off a cliff…….and continues walking in the air until he realizes what he’s done; then he falls. Works fine if it’s a caricature in a Warner Bros. cartoon; violates the world of Victorian England. That’s extreme, of course, but every creative universe has it’s own rules, whether they are written down or not.
2.Though Doyle and Lovecraft both write stories that reveal as they go along, their pacing is as radically opposed as their philosophies. HPL’s stories are as much about atmosphere and mood as about plot, and they develop slowly. Doyle’s stories move at a brisk pace, centered on character and action.
3. No one can confuse Doyle’s authorial voice with Lovecraft’s, and to a great degree, their voices are essential to their appeal. Lovecraft pastiches ( at least as I define the term – I’ll save my rant about pastiches in general for another time) succeed in inverse proportion to how hard the author tries to mimic Lovecraft’s style. It’s amazing how silly words like ‘eldritch’ and ‘cyclopean’ can seem when used by a lesser hand.
4. Finally, there is the baggage that each author carries in the form of their fans. Just dropping the name Cthulhu doesn’t make a story “Lovecraftian” anymore than exclaiming “The game’s afoot!” makes a story Sherlockian. There are expectations.
So, no matter how you decide to meld these two worlds, you’re going to have to address these issues. And you better be clever about it.
Neil Gaiman’s “A Study in Emerald” kicks the collection off. It’s the most successful story, largely, I think, because he takes the assignment too seriously to take it too seriously. With an obvious twinkle in his eye, Gaiman creates an alternate Victorian London where the Old Ones have long ago returned and established themselves as the royalty of Europe. A handful of Sherlockian stock elements are sprinkled about, yet each twisted slightly to conform to this new world. Though he keeps the narrator device common to both Doyle and Lovecraft, Gaiman makes no attempt to duplicate either style. It’s his own world, and he makes the rules. And follows them.
Elizabeth Bear’s “Tiger! Tiger!”takes the easy way out and omits Holmes entirely, bringing Irene Adler in as a member of a tiger hunting trip in India. A guest appearance by Col. Moran also fails to provide any flavor of Holmes’s world; there’s even less of Lovecraft. Change the names and alter the few unnecessary Mythos references and you’ll have a decent weird tale that stands on its own, but as is, it’s far off the presumed mark. Same thing applies to James Lowder’s “The Weeping Masks,” the story behind the wound Watson received in Afghanistan before meeting Holmes. It has more of Kipling than either of the inspiration sources, but it’s one of the better stories in the book..
Co-editor Michael Reaves takes a more conventional route in “The Adventure of The Arab’s Manuscript.” setting his narrative firmly in Holmes’s world, constructing his story in Doyle’s manner, but having the mystery resolve around a Lovecraftian theme. It’s an enjoyable read, though Holmes is conveniently knowledgeable about the Necornomicon, and he accepts that knowledge quite easily given his compulsively rational brain. I would think he, rather than Watson, would be the one trying to explain it away, or else collapse at the undermining of his very core belief.
“The Mystery of the Hanged Man’s Puzzle” by Paul Finch, takes the same approach and gets off to a solid start, but the melodramatic ending, complete with the villain ‘monologuing’ about his master plan, belongs in a different anthology altogether.
The rest of the stories, some very well written, others clumsy, fail to engage. It’s hard to know who gets the worst of it in the end. Holmes is largely unrecognizable; most of the Lovecraftian touches fall flat and truly cosmic horror is completely absent. Guest stars like H. G.Wells, Dr. Nikola and Carnacki parade through, more distracting than entertaining; adding hints of Stoker and Machen also fail to bring the original mixture to a boil, though Holmes in Machen’s world might have been a better concept. But, alas, Machen’s name does not sell books.
Marketing. Branding. The Same Only Different.
Can Sherlock Holmes in Oz be far off?
Ok, we’re back! Happy New Year! Hope everyone had a great holiday.
The holidays were crazier than usual, with both my lovely wife and I having colds for most of the week. I got my first xBox for Christmas and am learning to play with Capt. America, but want to start Bioshock later this next week. I hear that’s an oldie but goodie. And I started Stephen King’s new book.
I have to start back to school on my MFA sooner than I had planned. They messed up my course planning so that if i didn’t take a course in January I’d lose my financial aid. I had already enrolled for February, but had to scramble to find a class that fit my degree program for Jan. 9. The only class that fit was Comparative Literature, a class I really do not want to take. We’ll be reading Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary and a proto-feminist novel I’ve never heard of, The Awakening. I’m not saying they aren’t great books, but they are not my cup of tea. I’ve done battle with Dostoevsky before and walked away from the fight, and I can’t tell you how unthrilled I am by the thematic concepts of the other two. Classics-shmlassics. I like Twain, Dickens, Wharton, Steinbeck, Eliot, Austen, and am bored stiff by James, Faulkner, Trollope and…well, you get my point. I’m not a snob, but there are so many other books that interest me so much more, I hate to waste this time. whine whine whine. This too shall pass.
I plan to do some more advertising starting next week. Please spread the word, vote for LIM at Top Web Comics…and be here next Friday for page number next.
Have a good weekend.
The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls, by John R. King, Forge, 2008
Save your money.
Can I be any more direct? You want details, I’ll give you details, but they will all come back to the same thing.
Save. Your. Money.
Carnacki meets Sherlock Holmes? Had to have it, and I meant right this minute. I kept my calendar clear so that as soon as I pulled it out of the box, I started reading. I had no idea what to expect, I’d never heard of the author. My excitement was dashed on the very first page, with Carnacki’s ‘negotiation’ with a rat over a piece of cheese. It’s Switzerland, 1891, and Carnacki is young and on the tramp. Further reading will confirm what I suspected almost immediately: the characters in this book will bear no resemblance whatsoever to their famous namesakes. The book might even go down better if someone would do a find/change function and make up original names.
Carnacki’s heart is on the tramp as well, and a beautiful young woman catches his eye. He pursues, with a pick-up technique that possibly explains why he was a bachelor in later life. But Anna Schmidt responds, and together they set off for a picnic at nearbyReichenbach Falls, arriving just in time to see…
Anna pointed, her eyes narrowing. “Don’t you see that motion, up there beside the falls? Something big.”
I squinted and put a hand visorlike above my eyes, but still could make nothing out. “Probably a stag. They’ve got their winter velvet now and—”
“It’s not a stag! It’s…a man. No, two men – and they’re…they’re fighting!”
The most exciting element in the book, and Carnacki sees nothing, though the argument continues on for the rest of the page, until Anna sees one of the men fall. Carnacki is still not sure. But Anna is on the move, and soon they are fishing a body out of the swollen river downstream from the falls. Carnacki stares into “eyes more brilliant than any I had ever seen,” but the man cannot remember who he is. Now we know from the Jacket that Sherlock Holmes is in the story; two men fighting at the top of Reichenbach Falls implies that the second man is Moriarty. But the only clue we are given as to which one this fellow might be is that the other is Anna Schmidt’s father.
King expends laborious effort to keep from identifying either of the two men for the first half or so of the book, effort that implies a twist of some sort in the offing. Nope. When Anna finally ‘reveals’ that Moriarty is her father, at the end of a chapter, the effect is not surprise but relief that we won’t have to dance around the names anymore.
From a letter that prefaces the book, from Carnacki to Dr. Watson, the ‘document’ which comprises this book is Carnacki’s own telling of this story. Inexplicably, the second chapter is in the mind of amnesiac Holmes; later chapters shift between the two and the third person, until Moriarty’s diary picks up the narrative midway through the book. Very literary, I suppose, but a poor substitute for characterization and storytelling.
Since credibility isn’t an issue here, it’s no surprise to find that Moriarty married a prostitute whose genius for mathermatics exceeded even his own. After years of research, she perfected a mathematical formula for predicting people’s individual behavior. When she’s killed by the crazed son of a mob-boss –must’ve missed a variable somewhere– Moriarty uses her formula to try and root out the criminal element in London.
He has a daughter. He’s a good and loving if awkward father. Life swims along tediously but well.
So let’s trot out Jack the Ripper. Why not? Only, see, he’s just a sailor with a demon inside him! Moriarty, like any dad, takes Anna along in an attempt to catch the murderer. When Moriarty, old math professor that he is, kills the host, what does the demon do? Well, there ain’t nobody else here…(We’re later told, by the demon, that he is the Shadow of Reichenbach Falls; I have no clue as to why.)
Moriarty now uses the math formula to take over the Underworld and become the Napoleon of Crime. He and Anna are estranged.
Seriously, it goes downhill from there. Watson makes an appearance; Holmes is held captive in a lunatic asylum where a mad scientist uses a device that is supposed to be an ancestor of Carnacki’s later Electric Pentacle, though physically it bears no resemblance; Carnacki and Anna fall in love; followed by more non-twists interspersed with non-tension, and action that was ludicrous in the 1930s. Carnacki attempts to slip inside the asylum and hides in the crematorium. Oh, there’s a good idea. Will he escape?!!!!
Unfortunatley, yes.
Spewing all this venom wears me out, so I’ll wrap this up. It’s not so much the money wasted , but the time. Whenever you start a book, there’s always a chance you won’t like it, that’s a given, but even disliking a book doesn’t mean you didn’t get something out of it. The blurb at Amazon says that Mr. King is a popular fantasy novelist but whatever skill he may display in the world of Magic: The Gathering is not apparent here.
I once heard great storytelling described as “leading the reader along with the promise of a thick ,juicy hamburger, then giving them a delicious slice of pizza in such a way that they say, ‘Ah! That’s what I really wanted all along.” Goofy yet pithy analogy. King leads us along with the promise, but in the end only delivers a Lunchable. That’s not what I wanted all along.
Save your money.
I’ve never really been sure why the day after the day we have designated the last one of the previous year is anything different from any other day after the day, but I get sucked up into the celebration as much as anyone. So Happy 2012 to all of you.
Lovecraft is Missing returns this Friday, Jan.6, as scheduled, so be sure to start watching your RSS feeds and mark the calendar. Tell your friends, spread the word, as I would really like to enlarge the readership this year , to both share the joy and to possibly find a way to publish the comic at a reasonable price. Not that failure to do so is going to stop me. At worst, when the story ends sometime late in 2013, I will make it available as .pdf downloads as I begin my new comic.
The reprints of the Occult Detective series will continue, but I am working on new blog posts as well, extending that series and looking into new topics like Lovecraftian art.
Have a great week and don’t forget to check in Friday as our story resumes.
The Occult Files of Francis Chard:Some Ghost Stories by A.M. Burrage, Ash-Tree Press,1996
Of all the occult detective books on my reading shelf, I’ve most been looking forward to this volume.Though I’ve never read any of his other stories, Burrage is a highly regarded author of ghost stories; this volume is the second of a four volume collection of his complete stories. There are no other editions of these stories in print as far as I know, and this one, long out of print itself, lists at $250 and up on ABE. Plus, there are TWO occult detectives, the Chard series and two stories from an aborted series featuring Derek Scarpe. How could it not be a great read?
Well, easily enough that I don’t know where to begin. It’s not that the stories are badly written; Burrage is an engaging, pleasant writer, far superior to someone like Sax Rohmer. I wasn’t never bored reading these. Francis Chard is believable, knowledgeable without being arrogant, curious without being reckless, compassionate without being sentimental. But, even for the year 1927, when these stories first appeared, he is just so….tame. And worse, considering his profession, largely ineffectual.
The stories are maddeningly short, only one being longer than nine pages. There is simply no time to build any sense of the otherworldly, even if the author attempted to, which Burrage doesn’t. He is the anti-Blackwood in this respect. The remote and ancient houses are suitably musty and crumbling, but with an ambiance more suited to an Agatha Christie mystery than a weird tale.
The first story, “The Affair at Penbillo, ” is the longest of the series, and starts off promisingly. A lonely bachelor, in a remote part of Cornwall, seeking to communicate with the spirit of his dear, dead sister, performed a ritual he obtained from a ‘certain woman’, in his village, a white witch. Chard is familiar with the procedure, consisting of, among other things, opening every door and window in the house and reciting “Woman come back to me.” Something very different responds, driving the man to seek Chard’s help.
So far so good, and the confrontation with the ‘bad’ spirit is the second best thing in the entire series. But confrontation is really too strong a word. Chard and his amanuensis, Torrance, come face to face with the misshapen figure, splash some holy water on it, and then the story suddenly shifts back to Chard’s drawing room, where he explains the reason for the haunting and suggests that an exorcism is the only likely cure…and we’re done.
If you can’t guess the source of the manifestation in “The Pit in the Garden” then you’re not paying attention. And again, there is a brief meeting with the ghost, which is this time dispersed by having a candlestick thrown at it, and the ultimate solution provided inadvertently by the client. “The Woman with Three Eyes” -evocative title — is about an annoying but harmless pair of ghosts, one of whom is doomed forever to try and redeem a shady business deal. Chard sends a priest friend down to see what can be done. “The Third Visitation” refers to a family curse: when the head of the Selchester clan sees a certain ghost three times, he always commits suicide. The solution is non-supernatural and preposterous, interesting only to observe a capable writer dealing with an incident that a pulp hack would have been reluctant to use.
“The Girl in Blue” is Chard’s wistful telling of his own first encounter with a ghost. It is mild by any standard. “The Bungalow at Shammerton” finds Chard at his most ineffectual. Besides noting some unpleasant smells, he has no part in the story other than to hear the tale leading up to the haunting. There the story just ends. Tough luck, old chap, sorry you can’t use your bungalow. Bye now. (But I do have to share with you the name of the bungalow: Munki Puz, after a “a monkey puzzle which grew on the miniature lawn in front.” Apparently, a monkey puzzle is something that average readers of the day would know about; me, I haven’t a clue.)
It’[s downhill from here. “The Protector” is about a benign ghost at a a boy’s school. Again, Chard is more an audience than a protagonist. “The Soldier” is not only predictable, Chard notes that there is nothing to be done and leaves an elderly couple to probable suicide, noting that “It might be dangerous to interfere. We’ve got to pay for our sins-in some way or another, you know.” “The Hiding Hole”, even at seven pages, seems endless, as the ending is telegraphed from the very beginning of the story.
“The Tryst” has some of the flavor of a Carnacki story. A notorious and ‘celebrated beauty’ has been visited by the ghost of a jilted lover, who has promised to take her away at a certain time on Saturday night. Burrage is at his best in his fascinating if sexist description of the woman:
“She’s a strange creature, Torrance. Temperament without any genius, essentially common, beautiful in a certain cheap and showy way, and with a certain sex appeal. Quite conscienceless and terribly ignorant, of course. She doesn’t believe in God, but she believes in mascots.”
He has agreed to come and sit with her on the appointed evening, but admits to reliable old Torrance, “Of course, we can’t really do anything except give her comfort and confidence, and it would be uncharitable to say the least, to withhold those.” Well, thanks a whole helluva lot, Mr.Chard. The climax does, however, actually approach the level of tension one craves from a story like this, and though brief , ends the series on a relative high note.
There are only two Derek Scarpe stories, dating from 1920, presented together here under the umbrella of The Man Who Made Haunted Houses His Hobby. As the weekly London fiction magazines usually bought such series in groups of six, editor Jack Adrian surmises that Burrage had a row with the editor/publisher that prevented completion of the series. I’d go further and propose that such a row was over said publisher/editor wanting his money back, appalled at having read the first two submissions and found them not quite approaching mediocrity.
I’m not going to waste time on the details of the stories. I submit instead this conversation between Scarpe and his client from “The Severed Head”, right after the client has related an ancient and tragic family story:
“One more question, if you please, before we close the subject for the time being. This butler, who is staying on with you is new, you say. How long have you had him?”
“Not much more than a month. He arrived almost at the same time that the manifestations began.”
Is there any reason to read further?
Much of the rest of this volume is made up of non-series ghost stories, and in fairness, I read a few. They are likewise tame, but with subtle twists here and there to raise them above the ordinary. Why then, are the Chard stories so lackluster? By 1927, occult detectives were common, and the archetypes and tropes well established; Burrage can’t claim that he was tilling new soil. All in all, the Occult Files of Francis Chard represent either a failure of imagination or a personality too timid for this kind of fiction.