Dennis Wheatley’s The White Witch of the South Seas

The White Witch of the South Seas, published in 1968, was the last of Dennis Wheatley’s Gregory Sallust thrillers. Wheatley wrote in various genres including science fiction and spy fiction but became best known for his “Black Magic” series of occult thrillers. He created a number of popular series characters. What’s interesting is that some of these characters featured in both Black Magic occult thrillers and straightforward espionage thrillers.

That’s the case with Gregory Sallust and The White Witch of the South Seas straddles both genres. In fact it’s a spy/crime/occult/adventure thriller.

Gregory Sallust is a dashing British gentleman spy with quite an eye for the ladies. Wheatley’s thrillers can be somewhat on the sleazy side. Ian Fleming was a fan and Gregory Sallust was certainly one of the models for James Bond.

The story begins in Brazil. Retired British spy Gregory Sallust gets caught up in a treasure hunt. Towards the close of the 18th century a Spanish ship was wrecked just offshore of an island somewhere to the west of Fiji. The ship may or may not have been carrying a hoard of gold.

To whom does the gold belong? The hereditary ruler of the island, the Ratu James, thinks it’s his. The island is a French possession, so the French feel that perhaps it should belong to them. James has persuaded Gregory to back him but he is also seeking financing from a Brazilian millionaire. Lacost, a French adventurer with decided criminal tendencies, is after the gold as well.

The situation is complicated by two women. Olinda is married to the Brazilian millionaire but she has fallen in love with James and he’s hopelessly in love with her. Gregory has begun an enjoyable sexual liaison with glamorous Frenchwoman named Manon. Manon has her own interest in this treasure hunt and it’s unfortunate for Gregory that he is unaware of this.

There will be various attempted murders, vicious gunfights at sea, the usual perils of the deep and countless double-crosses. There’s also a malevolent witch-doctor to deal with. And of course, there’s the White Witch of the South Seas.

This is an occult thriller of sorts, but not quite in the conventional sense. There is a spy thriller aspect and it’s interesting since it involves the French, the British, the Russians and the Americans. What’s really interesting is that despite Wheatley’s reputation as a political reactionary he’s clearly far more sympathetic to the Russians than to the Americans! And this was the late 60s, de Gaulle was in power in France and there was no love lost between de Gaulle and the British. The French are not the bad guys in this story, but they’re not quite the good guys. Wheatley was a complicated man and his views on most subjects were far from straightforward.

This is Dennis Wheatley, so there are touches of sleaze.

There’s no shortage of action. And yes, there are suggestions of occult powers.

If Wheatley has a fault it’s his tendency to go off on lengthy tangents but in this case the tangents are fascinating, dealing with Brazilian history, French colonial history and the cultures of various South Pacific peoples (including some lurid accounts of cannibalism).

The White Witch of the South Seas is wild adventure in very off-the-beaten-track exotic settings and it’s enjoyable stuff. Recommended.

I’ve reviewed two of Wheatley’s earlier Gregory Sallust thrillers, Contraband (from 1936) and the totally outrageous They Used Dark Forces (from 1964).

Sax Rohmer's The Green Eyes of Bâst

The Green Eyes of Bâst is a 1920 potboiler by Sax Rohmer. It’s a lurid mystery which may or may not deal with supernatural happenings.

It begins with a policeman receiving an odd instruction to visit the Red House to check that the garage has been locked properly. What’s odd is that everyone knows that the Red House has lain empty for some considerable time. Inside the garage is a large packing case marked with the design of a cat-like figure.

The narrator, a journalist named Addison, had accompanied the constable on his strange errand. And on that same night he had the impression of being followed by a figure that seemed both female and perhaps slight feline. What struck him most were the startling green eyes.

Shortly afterwards the body of Sir Marcus Coverly is found at the docks, in that very packing case.

A short time before Addison had been involved in a romantic triangle involving a pretty actress named Isobel and Eric Coverly, brother of the late Sir Marcus.

It will soon become apparent that another romantic triangle had formed, involving Isobel and the two brothers. Also, Eric Coverly has now inherited the baronetcy.

Inspector Gatton of Scotland Yard being an old friend our narrator is asked to consult, unofficially, on the case.

A significant clue appears to be a cat figurine. It is fact a representation of the Egyptian cat-goddess Bâst. There are other possible connections to Egypt. There’s a second rather striking and mysterious woman mixed up in the case. There’s a possibly sinister doctor, who seems to have an interest in things Egyptian.

There was a third Coverly brother, Roger, now deceased. His mother has possession of the family estate which will now eventually pass to Eric Coverly.

Quite a few of the characters have some connection to Egypt.

There’s a sprawling ancient house, once an abbey, now inhabited by Roger Coverly’s mother. And perhaps by a mysterious doctor. He may be a mad scientist but he is a student of the occult as well as being a student of science and those two interests can overlap in disturbing ways.

Madness of various kinds might be involved.

This could be simply a story of a family feud over an inheritance, but it could be something much stranger. There is evidence that points to unimaginable horrors and creatures that are neither human nor non-human. With Sax Rohmer you never know. You might get an entirely rational explanation at the end. Or you might get an explanation that challenges our entire understanding of the natural world. And in this case the weirdness might not necessarily be the kind of weirdness we’re expecting.

In this tale he demonstrates great skill in feeding us just enough hints of serious weirdness to keep us interested but he has no intention of revealing the truth until the end.

This is Sax Rohmer at the top of his game. Very highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed many of Sax Rohmer’s books. The Bride of Fu Manchu and The Mask of Fu Manchu are fine mid-period Fu Manchu books. The Dream Detective is a terrific collection of clever occult detective stories. The Leopard Couch and Brood of the Witch-Queen are typical of his excellent gothic horror fiction/weird fiction. The Sins of Sumuru introduces us to his final creation, the glamorous sexy female diabolical criminal mastermind Sumuru. Sumuru is a diabolical criminal mastermind with a genuinely objective in mind.

Sax Rohmer's She Who Sleeps

There was much much more to Sax Rohmer than the Fu Manchu stories.

Stark House have issued two Sax Rohmer novels written at almost exactly the same time (the late 1920s) in a two-novel paperback. They give an idea of his ability to jump from genre to genre. Moon of Madness (published in 1927) is a straightforward spy thriller and I have to say that conventional spy tales were not his forte. She Who Sleeps (dating from 1928) is much more interesting and much more successful. He’s in more congenial territory here - this is both weird fiction and an occult thriller.

A rich young man named Barry Cumberland, lost in a storm, crashes his car after catching a glimpse of an Egyptian princess on a balcony. Of course she can’t be a real Egyptian princess, not in 1920s New York. He tries to find her but can’t. He can’t even find the place where his car accident occurred.

His fabulously wealthy father John Cumberland is a keen Egyptologist who has come into possession of a papyrus that concerns an Egyptian princess, Zalithea. It contains a formula and a ritual. Zalithea is She Who Sleeps. In fact she is She Who Sleeps and Will Awaken. She lies in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings but with the formula and the ritual she can be revived, after sleeping for 3,200 years.

John Cumberland is convinced that the papyrus is genuine. He was has consulted various experts. They agree that it really is 3,200 years old. Is it possible that Zalithea still lives?

John Cumberland naturally organises an expedition, with assistance from several Egyptologists including the slightly mysterious Danbazzar. The real purpose of the expedition will have to be kept secret. If all goes as planned they will have in their possession a living, breathing 3,200-year-old Egyptian princess which could cause all manner of complications with the authorities in Egypt.

Barry Cumberland has another obsession - that girl he saw on the balcony. He suspects that she is Zalithea’s double, or a vision of Zalithea, or Zalithea’s ghost. His ideas on this subject are muddled but he is sure there is a connection.

And of course when the sarcophagus is finally opened Barry does find himself gazing into the face of the same girl.

The tomb had escaped the notice of tomb robbers and had lain untouched and undiscovered for more than three millennia. Zalithea cannot possibly be awakened. Or can she?

Compared to Moon of Madness this is not only subject matter much more ideally suited for Rohmer it’s also the sort of strange mysterious uncanny story that seemed to make Rohmer’s writing suddenly become a lot more lively. And the sense of breathless excitement that Rohmer tried to aim for works more successfully.

This is an occult thriller but it’s also a love story, a love story with its roots in the distant past.

These are things that appeal to me and I love anything to do with ancient Egypt so this novel really is right up my alley. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed many of Sax Rohmer’s books. The Bride of Fu Manchu and The Mask of Fu Manchu are fine Fu Manchu books. The Dream Detective is a splendid collection of occult detective stories. The Leopard Couch and Brood of the Witch-Queen are typical of his excellent gothic horror fiction/weird fiction. The Sins of Sumuru introduces his final creation, the glamorous sexy female diabolical criminal mastermind Sumuru. Sumuru wants to eliminate violence from the world. She accepts that to do so will involve killing a lot of people.

Sax Rohmer's The Green Spider

There was a lot more to Sax Rohmer than the Fu Manchu books. He wrote detective stories many of which had supernatural elements, or at least suggestions of the supernatural. And he wrote some fine gothic horror. Black Dog Books have collected a varied assortment of his early stories in The Green Spider: and Other Forgotten Tales of Mystery and Suspense.

The Green Spider (written in 1904) begins with a college servant named Jamieson discovering what appears to be a horrific murder. Someone has broken into the laboratory of Professor Brayme-Skepley, wrecked everything and murdered the professor. The body however is not there. There is evidence that suggests that the professor was forcibly removed from the premises (either dead or alive) but there is other evidence that suggests that such a thing could not have happened. And there’s the matter of the giant green spider seen by the servant.

The Death of Cyrus Pettigrew involves the sudden death of a man on a train. The only other person in the compartment was Miss Pettigrew, his niece and ward. The doctor who examines the body has no doubt that Cyrus Pettigrew was poisoned but the means by which the poison was administered remains mysterious. This is an impossible crime story, and a pretty good one.

The Mystery of the Marsh Hole dates from 1905 and is a disappointing and contrived story of a disappearance in the marshes.

The Sedgley Abbey Tragedies from 1909 begins with an escape from a lunatic asylum. Soon afterwards a body is found in an abbey moat. The explanation is clear-cut and the case is closed and the drama is over. Except that more bodies turn up in the moat. A good story with some fine twists.

The Mysterious Mummy is an OK very early story (from 1903) about odd happenings in a museum. A mummy is there, and then it isn’t there.

The McVillin (from 1905) concerns a well-born but impoverished Irish officer, Colonel McVillin. In fact he’s now a penniless rogue and adventurer. He finds himself involved in an affair of honour although he has no idea what it is all about. Something about a young lady being forced into a marriage against her will. McVillin will have to fight the duel anyway. A delightfully quirky mix of cynicism, romanticism and mystery. Splendid stuff.

Who Was the Rajah? dates from 1906. A masked ball onboard a steamer ends in piracy on the high seas. A very clever and witty caper story.

The Secret of Holm Peel, published in 1912, takes place on the Isle of Man. There’s a castle that once belonged to the king and a family secret that must be kept. There are secret passageways and phantom dogs. Good fun.

The Dyke Grange Mystery, from 1922, is a puzzle-plot mystery with some exotic touches. Private detective Paul Harley and Inspector Wessex are investigating the murder of a dissipated nobleman. An unusual dagger of Egyptian origin sees to be an important clue. Along with an assortment of cigarette stubs. An entertaining tale.

The Haunting of Low Fennel dates from 1920 and is an unusual and excellent haunted house tale. Major Dale would like to sell Low Fennel, an old house that has been in the family for centuries and has always had an evil reputation. He turns to ghost-hunter Addison for help. I’m not going to risk even the mildest spoiler but this is definitely not a run-of-the-mill haunted house story.

The Blue Monkey was published in 1920. A man is on his way home, on a lonely path through the moors. He is carrying a parcel - a blue porcelain monkey he has just purchased. The man is found dead. He has been strangled. No mystery there, but the only tracks leading from the crime scene seem to belong to a small child. A good solid mystery.

The Zayat Kiss was written in 1912. It’s extremely important since it arks the first appearance of Nayland Smith and Fu Manchu.

The Six Gates of Joyful Wisdom dates from 1915 and is an excerpt from The Return of Fu Manchu.

The Green Spider is a fine collection and is highly recommended.

More of Rohmer’s early short stories can be found in another Black Dog Books volume, The Leopard Couch and Other Stories of the Fantastic and Supernatural, which is also recommended. Also very worth getting hold of is The Dream Detective, a very fine collection of occult detective tales. And there’s some great fiendish occult wickedness in Brood of the Witch-Queen.

W. Somerset Maugham’s The Magician

The villain of W. Somerset Maugham’s 1908 novel The Magician was inspired by Aleister Crowley although the story itself is pure fiction.

Maugham had met Crowley and while he disapproved of him and considered him to be a charlatan he was strangely fascinated by the notorious occultist. And while many of the extraordinary tales Crowley told about himself were untrue Maugham had to admit that they were not all untrue. Crowley was a remarkable man. It was obvious to Maugham that he was a perfect subject for a novel.

Maugham’s novel begins with a brilliant young surgeon who is engaged to be married to the beautiful Margaret, who had been his ward. In Paris they encounter the notorious occultist and magician Oliver Haddo. Haddo is wildly eccentric and slightly sinister but he is charismatic and fascinating.

Haddo seems to be intent on seducing Margaret. Is he simply making use of standard techniques of hypnotism (aided by his charismatic personality) or does he possess actual occult powers?

And is he intent on mere seduction? There is a possibility that he has something much stranger and much more shocking in mind.

Maugham did not believe that Crowley possessed any real magical powers but had to admit that he certainly had the ability to convince people that he did. Oliver Haddo might well have obtained such powers.

The story of Maugham’s novel of course has no connection whatsoever to any events in the life of Aleister Crowley. Crowley simply served as a jumping-off point. And of course in the late 19th and early 20th centuries there were many occult practitioners so Haddo is perhaps more representative of a breed than of an individual.

Either way Oliver Haddo is a wonderful and memorable larger-than-life character. He entirely dominates the story.

This was a period of intense interest in the occult so in commercial terms the idea was a winner. It was very much in tune with the cultural obsessions of the day. The reading public had an inexhaustible appetite for thrillers with an occult flavouring.

The novel is an unashamed potboiler (and I have no problems with that). It can be regarded as an occult thriller, a melodrama, a romance and even as gothic horror. It’s not what you expect from Maugham, excepting that being a Maugham novel it’s extremely well-written. He has some fine suspense, some genuine chills and thrills and a perverse love story. And the love story is quite powerful.

This is a very early example of the occult thriller genre which would reach its full flowering in the works of Dennis Wheatley.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Magician. Highly recommended.

Rex Ingram’s The Magician (1926) is a superb movie adaptation of the novel.

Crowley was himself a talented writer. His Simon Iff Stories are splendid occult detective stories, Crowley’s most famous novel, Moonchild, does touch on some of the occult practices described in Maugham’s novel. So it is possible to get both sides of the story.

Peter Stafford’s The Wild White Witch

If historical fiction is fun and sleaze fiction is fun then if you combine the two you’ll get double the enjoyment. It’s not surprising that historical sleaze enjoyed quite a vogue for a while. Peter Stafford’s 1973 novel The Wild White Witch is a satisfyingly outrageous representative of the breed.

And it’s not just historical sleaze - this is a story of madness and lust in the tropics where the hot sun unleashes forbidden passions.

Peter Stafford was a pen name used by the fairly prolific Hungarian-born writer Paul Tabori (1908-1974). There was another author named Peter Stafford active at the same (who wrote books on psychedelics) so there is some potential for the two to get confused.

In 1830 Jeremy Radlett, the 22-year-old youngest son of a Scottish laird, receives an invitation to join his uncle Richard at his estate in Jamaica. No member of the family has seen nor heard anything of Richard Radlett for decades but he has apparently prospered in the West Indies and being childless he intends to make young Jeremy his heir. Jeremy takes ship for Jamaica.

Jeremy is in for some surprises when he reaches Rosehall, his uncle’s sugar plantation. His uncle is dead but has left a beautiful young widow, Melissa. Melissa has inherited the estate.

Jeremy is obviously disappointed but is persuaded to stay on as a guest. Jeremy is rather an innocent and the brutal realities of planation life shock him.

Jeremy is an innocent in other ways as well. He is a virgin. He knows little of sex but he does know that no decent woman enjoys it. He is in for quite an awakening when Melissa takes him to her bed. Her sexual appetites are voracious. Jeremy had no idea that such pleasures were possible.

There are a few problems. It’s fairly clear that the brutal overseer Arkell had been accustomed to sharing Melissa’s bed. Arkell is not at all happy about relinquishing his position as Melissa’s bed partner. He will make a dangerous enemy. And the slave population may be planning to revolt.

Then Jeremy discovers the secret door, which leads to an underground cavern. He witnesses rites so depraved that he is scarcely able to believe them. Surely Melissa could not be connected in any way with such things.

Given the setting you might expect voodoo to figure in this tale, but this is essentially a witchcraft story.

The setting is a society based on slavery but the book goes out of its way to make its abhorrence for slavery obvious so don’t make the mistake of having a knee-jerk reaction to the subject matter.

There is plenty of graphic sex and assorted debaucheries and depravities. Jeremy’s bedroom romps with Melissa are steamy to say the least. This is one of those sleaze novels that promises all manner of lurid delights and thrills and this one delivers the goods.

There’s a memorably depraved villain (or villainess - I’m not going to tell you which it is).

You can’t really go wrong with an overcooked extra-sleazy tropical gothic melodrama. It’s a formula that works for me. And this one is nicely scuzzy and it’s done with a reasonable amount of style and energy.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Wild White Witch. Highly recommended.

Thorp McClusky’s Loot of the Vampire

Thorp McClusky’s short novel Loot of the Vampire was published in two parts in Weird Tales in 1936. It’s a vampire story in a contemporary big-city American setting.

Thorp McClusky (1906-1975) is a rather obscure American writer whose works appeared in pulp magazines in the 1930s.

It begins with a jewel robbery. The jeweller has been discussing the sale of a very valuable string of pearls to a European nobleman. The jeweller is found dead and the pearls are gone. The strange thing is that there’s no obvious way the killer could have made his escape.

Even more curious is the fact that the jeweller seemed to be suffering from a very serious case of anaemia. It’s almost as if there’s no blood at all in the body.

Then on the following day the dead jeweller turns up at the jewellery story, very much alive. The police commissioner and Detective-Lieutenant Peters are both puzzled and alarmed.

They do have a suspect, a Count Woertz. The count is about to hold a mind-reading session at a swank charity party. Lieutenant Peters poses as a guy wanting to have his mind read and discovers, to his consternation, that the count really can read minds.

Peters has an interest in the occult and he wonders if possibly they’re dealing with a vampire.

There’s no solid evidence against the count and the police commissioner has another problem. He’s in love with a sweet girl named Mary. They’re going to be married. The count has threatened to steal Mary away from the commissioner and the big worry is that he may be able to do just that by using some form of mind control.

There’s not much more than this to the plot. There are a couple of slightly creepy moments. There’s no action to speak of. There’s no reign of terror carried out by the vampire.

And to be honest there’s not much suspense. We don’t get enough of a sense that Mary is in real danger, and we don’t get enough of the feeling that the natural order is being threatened and that’s something I consider to be an essential element in supernatural horror.

The sea chase is the highlight and it’s not too badly done.

The vampire in this tale conforms to some of the rules of established vampire lore as it stood at the time, but not all. This vampire cannot tolerate sunlight but on the other hand he’s totally indifferent to garlic. The mirror stuff is an interesting variation on the usual idea. I like vampire stories that vary the rules a bit.

Loot of the Vampire is OK but it doesn’t quite deliver the goods. It’s recommended purely for its historical interest and its curiosity value.

Armchair Fiction have paired this novel with The Man Who Made Maniacs in one of their excellent two-novel paperback editions.

This story seems to belong to a very short-lived 1930s genre, the weird detective story. These were basically hardboiled detective stories with some supernatural and horror elements added for extra spice. That’s actually a promising combination.

If the weird detective story genre attracts you then you should check out Off-Trail Publications’ volume Cult of the Corpses which includes two novellas of this type by Maxwell Hawkins and they’re both far superior to Loot of the Vampire.

E. Howard Hunt's Diabolus

E. Howard Hunt (1918-2007) is best-known for being one of the Watergate conspirators. He was a career CIA agent. He was also a popular and successful and extremely prolific novelist, mostly in the crime and spy genres. He had an exceptionally long career as a writer. His first novel was published in 1942; his final novel was written in 2000.

Using the pseudonym David St. John he wrote ten Peter Ward spy thrillers between 1965 and 1972.

The final three Peter Ward thrillers marked a slight change in direction. They were both spy thrillers and occult thrillers. These three books included Diabolus, published in 1971.

Diabolus opens on the small French-Controlled Caribbean island of Lapoire. Peter Ward is on holidays. He’s thoroughly enjoying himself, until his young black housekeeper Dominique disappears. And is found dead. She had been brutally sexually assaulted. The police assume she committed suicide as a result of the rape, and they obviously do not intend to investigate any further.

Peter is very unhappy about this. It’s not that he had anything other than a straightforward employer-employee relationship with Dominique. But she was a nice girl. And Peter doesn’t like the idea of young girls being raped and murdered. He does not believe the suicide theory. And he doesn’t like unsolved mysteries.

He’s even more unhappy after talking with the cop in charge of the case, Commissaire Ducamp. Ducamp’s indifference to Dominique’s fate bothers him a lot.

Peter decided to do some investigating on his own, which has very unexpected consequences. A few days later he is back in Washington, about to be sent on a totally unrelated mission to Paris. It’s a very delicate mission. The wife of the French Foreign Minister is being blackmailed. This would normally be none of the CIA’s business, except that relation between the US and France have been slightly strained and the CIA fears that a scandal involving France’s Foreign Minister could make it difficult to improve those relations.

Peter’s job is to free the Foreign Minister’s wife (her name is Simone de Marchais) from the blackmail threat. Peter is given to understand that he can use whatever methods he thinks necessary but it must be done discreetly. The French must have no inkling of the CIA’s involvement.

There are certain compromising photographs of Simone de Marchais in existence. Not just your regular sex stuff, but showing her involved in Satanic rites and Satanic sex orgies. That’s about all Peter has to go on but he feels that Valérie may be able to help. She has very high-powered connections. She is married to a very important very rich man. She is also Peter Ward’s mistress. Peter Ward is one of those spies who likes to combine the serious business of espionage with pleasure.

Peter discovers that Simone really is involved in a diabolical cult and the cultists are dangerous people to mess with, as he soon finds out. It’s a cult that involves devil-worship, sex and mind-altering drugs. And probably murder.

All of this has no connection with those curious events on that tiny Caribbean island. At least Peter doesn’t see a connection at first. But of course there is a connection.

Since the author was a senior CIA agent it’s not surprising that Peter Ward never questions the idea that the CIA are the good guys. But that could be said about most American (and British) spy fiction of that era. Hunt does not allow his political views to be the slightest bit intrusive. As a writer he was in the business of writing entertaining commercial fiction.

The plot has some nice twists and the spy and occult elements are woven together seamlessly. Spy fans and occult thriller fans should be equally pleased by this book. The plot might be far-fetched, but the real-life world of espionage could be pretty far-fetched as well.

As a career spy Hunt certainly knows how the world in intelligence agencies works, and having been a high-ranking CIA officer he understood the world of international intrigue.

As to whether we’re supposed to take any of the diabolism seriously, you’ll have to read the book to find that out.

Hunt was a perfectly competent writer. His prose isn’t dazzling but it’s solid enough, he understands suspense and he understands action scenes.

There’s just enough sex and sensationalism to add spice without dominating the story. It’s a wonderfully lurid tale which doesn’t quite cross over into the sexy spy thriller sub-genre but at times it comes close.

And it’s great fun. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed several of Hunt’s other books including his excellent hardboiled crime novel House Dick, his noirish thriller The Violent Ones and one of his earlier Peter Ward spy novels, One of Our Agents Is Missing. They're all worth reading.

Gardner Francis Fox's The Druid Stone

The Druid Stone is a novel of black magic by Gardner Francis Fox, using the pseudonym Simon Majors. It was published in 1967.

Brian Creoghan is in his mid-thirties but he’s packed a lot of action into his life. That life has been spent roaming the globe in search of adventure, and perhaps (we will come to suspect) in search of something more. His globe-trotting has not taken him to places like Paris and Rome. He’s always been interested in more remote and exotic places. His journeyings have brought him into contact with strange religions, esoteric sects, secret rites and other aspects of what could be described as the weird and the occult.

Now he’s settled down in a farmhouse in New Hampshire. The first sign that his adventuring days might not be over is the patch of blackness in the woods. It just didn’t look natural. That female voice he heard was a bit mysterious as well.

He gets an invitation to dinner with his new neighbours. Moira and Ugony MacArt are brother and sister. Moira is disturbingly alluring. Ugony has spent his life investigating the occult and he has amassed a collection of ritual objects. His interest in the subject is intense but whether it’s healthy remains to be seen. Now he wants Brian to join him in a little experiment. All Brian has to do is to place his hands on a druid stone.

At which point everything changes.

At first it’s reasonable to assume that we’re going to get an occult thriller. This was a hugely popular genre at the time with Dennis Wheatley’s Black Magic books being massive sellers. But before The Druid Stone actually gets underway we’re offered a tantalising hint that this story might be more science fictional than we expect.

And when Brian Creoghan touches that druid stone we find that the book has become a sword-and-sorcery tale. Brian Creoghan is no longer Brian Creoghan. He’s a great warrior named Kalgorrn, he’s in another land which doesn’t seem to be Earth at all, and he’s a different person. Or rather he’s now two people in the same body. And the action starts to really kick in.

He’s now a warrior, a lord whose lands were stolen from him by an evil sorcerer. As a result of a spell he’s been sleeping. Possibly for centuries. But now he’s found his lover, the beautiful witch-woman Red Fann, and they have a quest for revenge to undertake. And lots of terrifying monsters to battle.

To now assume that this is going to be a straightforward sword-and-sorcery adventure would however be a mistake. The author has more tricks up his sleeve.

The story continually switches back and forth between the ordinary world of the present day and the fantastic magical world. Soon Brian Geoghan is no longer sure if he really is Brian Geoghan or if he’s the hero Kalgorrn. He has other complications to worry about. Kalgorrn is in love with Red Fann but Brian is falling in love with Moira. These two women are liable to be a bit unhappy about sharing him.

He also realises that the two worlds he inhabits are liked in some way. What happens in one world could have consequences in the other. In fact the fate of both worlds could hang in the balance. And there’s still that science fiction element lurking in the background.

There’s also the problem that he’s starting to wonder exactly what Ugony MacArt is up to. There was a murder a while back and while Brian is sure that Ugony is not capable of being involved in murder the locals have strong suspicions that Ugony is the murder. So we get a mystery sub-plot as well.

Fox had a real knack for producing thoroughly enjoyable fast-paced pulp tales in multiple genres. He wrote both the Cherry Delight series of sexy sleazy spy/crime thrillers (beginning with The Italian Connection) and the equally entertaining The Lady from L.U.S.T. sexy spy thrillers (beginning with Lust, Be a Lady Tonight). There is however no sleaze at all in The Druid Stone.

The Druid Stone is a very entertaining read. Highly recommended.

Richard B. Sale’s The Isle of Troubled Night

Richard B. Sale’s The Isle of Troubled Night was published in the May 1938 issue of the pulp magazine Thrilling Mystery (and this issue has been reprinted by Adventure House).

Richard B. Sale (1911-1993) was an American pulp writer who graduated to the slick magazines in the 40s and then turned to the writing of screenplays and film directing.

Nick Bradford is wealthy and carefree and he’s sailing his 30-foot schooner in the Caribbean when he runs into trouble. In fact he runs the schooner onto the rocks. Luckily he ends up on a small uncharted island. Or maybe it’s not so lucky.

The first thing he sees is an aircraft (a flying boat) on the beach and it’s on fire. Then he finds a dead man. After which someone starts shooting at him. Then the girl appears. The girl, Loretta Kerr, lives in a rather palatial house on the island. There’s a motley assortment of people in the house. There’s an Englishman, Lord Peter Muir. There’s Loretta’s father, Martin Kerr, who made a fortune selling munitions during the war. He owns the island. There’s a German baron named Poland. And a Frenchwoman named Toussaint. Plus a Mexican servant, Pedro Garcia.

Martin Kerr, the German baron, Madame Toussaint and Lord Peter Muir are all involved in the armaments trade ad they’ve met on the island to cook up a big deal.

So why did one of them try to shoot Nick? The answer is that the people in the house are very frightened. They had a visitor the night before - Death! Or at least they are convinced, or half-convinced, that it was Death. Death came into the house and spoke to them.

Nick is puzzled by that corpse on the beach. It was the pilot of the aeroplane and he’d been strangled but there were no marks on his throat as you’d expect with strangulation. And Nick has a strange experience which half-convinces him as well that Death is stalking the island. He heard a voice telling him things that nobody else could possibly know.

Of course everyone is in a state of semi-hysteria. Maybe their imaginations are getting the better of them. Or their consciences (apart from Nick they’re all arms dealers so they’re in the business of death). There might be a rational explanation. Nick is a level-headed sort of fellow but he’s not entirely sure there really is a rational explanation.

Death strikes again on the following day.

The island setting adds to the terror. The burning of the aeroplane means that all these people are stranded on the island until the next supply boat arrives and that’s three weeks away. And the dead pilot was the only one who knew how to work the radio.

Sale creates a genuinely mysterious atmosphere and since this story was published in Thrilling Mystery and some of the stories published in that pulp are closer to the weird fiction genre than to the conventional mystery genre the reader doesn’t really know whether or not the explanation is going to involve things outside the normal realm of human experience or purely human evil.

The story has a definite anti-war tinge. It’s possible that these arms dealers are going to be punished for their sins, but is their punishment to be supernatural?

It’s all very pulpy (which of course is a good thing) and it’s also totally outrageous but there are some real chills with totally inexplicable deaths. The resolution works for me. I’m not going to give you any hints as to whether that resolution includes a rational explanation or not.

The Isle of Troubled Night is not to be taken too seriously but it is fun and it’s recommended.

Philip Loraine's Day of the Arrow

Day of the Arrow by Philip Loraine was the 1964 source novel for the superb and unfairly neglected low-key British horror movie Eye of the Devil (1966).

Robin Estridge (1920-2002) was a British author of suspense novels who wrote under a couple of pseudonyms, including Philip Loraine. He’s one of those many writers who enjoyed some success only to then disappear into almost complete obscurity.

There are some differences between novel and film but the core of the story remains the same.

The novel is told mostly through the eyes of young Scottish painter James Lindsay. It begins when he sees Françoise, the Marquise de Montfaulcon, leaving a Paris hotel with her lover. This surprises him a good deal. Françoise had been so much in love with her husband Philippe and she’s just not the sort of woman to take a lover. Lindsay and Françoise have a bit of a history. Lindsay had hoped to marry her before she chose Philippe. Lindsay is even more surprised when Françoise telephones him. She needs his help. Her husband has told her he is going to die.

Philippe had suffered a slight injury a short while before and Françoise had persuaded the doctor to give him a very thorough checkup. There is absolutely nothing wrong with him physically. But Françoise believes him when he tells her he is about to die.

Lindsay joins Françoise at Bellac, the Montfaulcon estate. He discovers something, mostly just tantalising hints, of the family’s history. They have been lords of Bellac for thirteen centuries. And a truly astonishing number of male heads of the family have met violent deaths in mysterious circumstances. The atmosphere at Bellac is unnaturally silent and a little grim. The vines have failed again.

There’s an odd collection of people there. There’s a young man named Christian. On his first day at Bellac Lindsay sees Christian shoot a dove with a bow and arrow. There’s Philippe’s young cousin Odile, a strange girl reputed to be a witch. But this is the 1960s. There are no witches in the 1960s. That magic trick she performed was clearly just an illusion. What else could it be?

The atmosphere at the chateau is subtly disturbing. Even Philippe prays a lot, which he never did before. Lindsay always assumed that Philippe was a non-believer.

Nobody seems to want to notice that something is strange here. Lindsay’s attempts to find answers almost cost him his life. Lindsay has the evidence he needs to explain the mystery but he can’t put the pieces together, or rather he just cannot except the true explanation.

Philippe and Françoise are much younger in the novel, compared to the movie, and there’s more emphasis on the unhealthiness of their sexual relationship.

In the movie Christian and Odile are brother and sister, which I think adds an interesting extra layer. And they’re much more disturbing in the movie. What’s interesting is that the movie downplays the sexual problem in the marriage between Philippe and Françoise but adds an interesting sexual subtext involving Christian and Odile.

The movie is definitely better than the book - its visual style conveys the atmosphere of subtle menace and strangeness far more effectively than Loraine’s prose. In both book and movie the hints of the supernatural are very subtle and very ambiguous (and I’m certainly not going to tell you if there really is anything supernatural) but they’re also handled more effectively in the movie.

The basic story is the same and it’s a pretty good story. There’s a bit more mystery in the book than the movie, but a bit less suspense. It’s a bit hard for me to judge the novel because having seen the movie I knew the nature of the secret of Bellac so the shock revelation was blunted a little for me.

This is a slow-burning story with the sense of menace being rather subtle.

Overall, not as good as the movie but still an interesting occult thriller. Recommended.

Dennis Wheatley's They Used Dark Forces

Dennis Wheatley (1897-1977) is best remembered today for what he termed his Black Magic novels. In fact these made up only a small part of his total literary output. Most of his books are non-supernatural thrillers including quite a few historical thrillers. To describe the majority of his books as straightforward thrillers would however be misleading since there is nothing straightforward about them. Wheatley’s defining characteristic is the outrageousness of his plots.

Wheatley wrote no less than eleven thrillers featuring super-spy Gregory Sallust, a character who was to have a considerable influence on Ian Fleming when he created James Bond (Fleming and Wheatley had met during the war when both were doing intelligence work). They Used Dark Forces is one of several Gregory Sallust thrillers that are also Black Magic thrillers.

Wheatley’s Black Magic novels included some stories that can be considered to be out-and-out horror (The Haunting of Toby Jugg and The Ka of Gifford Hillary being in my view the best of these) but most of them are best described as occult thrillers - books which are structurally thrillers but include elements of the occult. 

They Used Dark Forces was published in 1964 and it concludes the story of Sallust’s wartime adventures. Sallust has been sent to Germany in the guise of a German officer (he speaks fluent German) to find out exactly what the Germans are up to at their top-secret research station at Peenemünde on the Baltic. What they were up to was in fact the testing of two of the secret weapons project that Hitler hoped would turn the tide of war in his favour. The V-1 was a pilotless aircraft carrying a warhead of just under a ton of high explosive. The V-2  rocket was a more formidable weapon, carrying a slightly larger warhead but quite impossible to intercept.

Sallust is accompanied on this mission by an old friend, Kuporovitch. Kuporovitch is a former Bolshevik general who is actually a convinced anti-communist. While undertaking this mission Sallust will encounter a man who is destined to play a very large role in hi future adventures. Ibrahim Malacou claims to be Turkish but is in fact a Jew, and he is also a Satanist. At this point, if you’re unfamiliar with Wheatley’s work, you might be thinking that this is going to be an anti-semitic novel. Wheatley’s attitudes towards Jews were like his attitudes towards most things, much too complicated to be dismissed so glibly. Wheatley had no particular antipathy towards Jews. Gregory Sallust is suspicious of Malacou because he is a Satanist, not because he is a Jew. And he is prepared to overlook Malacou’s Satanism because Malacou is also fanatically anti-Nazi. Sir Winston Churchill famously remarked that, "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." Gregory Sallust decides to adopt a similarly Churchillian policy towards Malacou, reasoning that anyone who hated Hitler as much as Malacou did couldn’t be all bad even if he was a devil-worshipper.

The Peenemünde episode occupies the first half of the book. The second and much more interesting half sees Sallust stranded in German-occupied Poland. His attempts to escape back to Britain lead him instead to a German prison where he once again encounters Malacou, and will eventually lead him to Hitler’s bunker. A very dangerous place to be in 1945, so it’s just as well Gregory can rely on getting some help from his old buddy Hermann Goering. If you’re wondering why Goering would be helping out a British secret agent and a Jewish black magician you’ll have to read the book. Suffice to say that it’s exactly the kind of plot you expect from Wheatley, and that he makes it work much more effectively than it has any right to do.

Wheatley had a mind that was much attracted to conspiracy theories and in general his best books are the ones with the most bizarre conspiracy theory plots. Given the enthusiasm of Hitler and other senior Nationalist Socialists for the occult the plot of They Used Dark Forces is perhaps only slightly stranger than fiction.

Fans of Wheatley will not be surprised to learn that Gregory Sallust’s sex life plays an important part in the novel. The use of copious quantities of sex and violence is one of the many elements that Ian Fleming borrowed from Dennis Wheatley.

They Used Dark Forces includes most of Wheatley’s weaknesses as a writer, in particular his propensity for lengthy digressions on military history and politics and his fondness for rather clumsy info-dumps. Personally I see this as more of a feature than a bug, given that Wheatley’s views on military history and politics are so entertainingly provocative and so delightfully politically incorrect. Wheatley may have been a political reactionary but he was a complex, intelligent and often surprising political reactionary.

And the novel also features Wheatley’s strengths, most notably his ability to tell very strange stories very entertainingly.

They Used Dark Forces will delight confirmed Dennis Wheatley fans. If you haven’t yet explored the delights of Wheatley’s fictions it’s probably a reasonable enough place to start that exploration. Highly recommended.

The Secrets of Dr Taverner

Violet Mary Firth (1890-1946) was a British occultist who wrote under the name Dion Fortune. She wrote both fiction and non-fiction. Her fiction includes a collection of short stories, The Secrets of Dr Taverner, about an occult detective and healer. It was published in 1926.

Fortune’s work blends the occult with psychoanalysis and this is the approach favoured by her fictional counterpart Dr Taverner. While these stories are fiction the author claimed that they were all based on fact, and as outlandish as it might seem there is little doubt that she believed this to be true. Whatever one may think of Fortune’s beliefs they did inspire her to write some interesting fiction and The Secrets of Dr Taverner will be of interest to fans of the occult detective genre.

The over-arching theme of these stories is that there is another realm of existence, the Unseen. It is in some ways analogous to the world of faerie, or to an earlier pagan phase of human existence that still lurks under the surface of 20th century life. There is another aspect of the Unseen world - Dr Taverner serves forces that are beyond ordinary human understanding. The concept of secret supernatural entities or “hidden chiefs” to whom occult societies were bound was common in many of the esoteric magical societies that flourished in late Victorian and Edwardian times. Dion Fortune belonged to several of these magical societies and not surprisingly this fact was a major influence on her fiction. 

The first story, Blood-Lust, takes a very original approach indeed to the vampire legend. It’s a variation on the theme of the vampire that feeds on life energies but the way the vampire is created is the really original part. Of all the stories collected here this is the one that is closest to being a true, and very effective, horror story.

The Return of the Ritual deals with the theft of a centuries-old manuscript containing instructions for carrying out an occult ritual.

The Man Who Sought tells of a young man, an aviator and motoring enthusiast, a man obsessed with speed. He always seems to be in a hurry, as if he is searching for something. That’s exactly what he is doing. He is searching for his ideal woman, hence his obsession with speed - she could be anywhere and he has to find her.

The Soul That Would Not Be Born sees the author indulging in her obsession with reincarnation. Reincarnation is a remarkably silly concept but it has to be admitted that it has its literary uses and has formed the basis for some interesting fiction. In this case a reluctant soul must pay the price for sins committed in a past life.

In The Scented Poppies a series of suicides has taken place among the prospective heirs to a large fortune. But were they really suicides? Or murders committed by very unusual occult means? This is one of the most successful stories in the collection.

In The Death Hound a man with a weak heart is tormented by visions of a savage dog attacking him. He is the victim of an occult attack, by means of thought transference, by a man who is his rival for a woman. Thought transference figures in many of these stories, and it’s central in this one. This is also one of a number of stories in which we encounter the shadowy menace of the Black Lodges, mysterious occult societies practising black magic. Dion Fortune took this sort of thing very seriously, claiming to be herself a victim of magical attacks. This is another rather effective story.

A Daughter of Pan is one of the weaker stories, concerning itself fairly predictably with mystical silliness. The Subletting of the Mansion is much more interesting. It’s a very unconventional romantic triangle story with one party attempting to succeed in the romantic rivalry by means of stealing his rival’s body.

Recalled is the weakest tale in the collection, a tedious tale of colonial guilt and the reconciling of east and west. 

The Sea Lure is a mystical love story dealing with elementals. The content is rather silly but it includes some interesting speculations about hysterical stigmata. It’s one of the stories in the collection in which dreams play a large part.

The Power House is another tale of the misuse of magical powers, a theme that recurs in several of these stories. A Son of the Night tells of an earl whose family wishes to have him certified as insane, although Dr Taverner can see that he is simply not quite human. This idea of people who are slightly non-human, who might in earlier times have been considered of elven stock or perhaps denizens of the realm of faerie, recurs in several of these tales.

A very mixed bag overall, and some readers are likely to be put off by a certain irritating preachiness. Fortune takes the occult very very seriously. This is not necessarily a disadvantage when it comes to writing occult fiction but many of these stories are too obviously attempts to persuade us of the author’s mystical beliefs. At the same time several of the stories do work quite well as unconventional supernatural and/or paranormal tales. I’m not sure I’d recommend this collection as a purchase but if you can find a library copy it might perhaps be worth a look. 

I should emphasise that I am judging this collection as occult fiction, while the author undoubtedly intended it to be more in the nature of propaganda for her mystical beliefs.

Herbert Asbury’s The Devil of Pei Ling

Published in 1927 and with a title like The Devil of Pei Ling you might expect this novel to be a Fu Manchu imitation. That is perhaps partly true. It does have some Yellow Peril tinges but mostly it’s a fairly straight if very pulpy occult thriller.

Herbert Asbury (1889-1963) was best known as a true crime author, The Gangs of New York (filmed a few years back by Martin Scorcese) being perhaps his most famous book. Asbury had a taste for the lurid and the sensationalistic, both of these qualities being present in abundance in The Devil of Pei Ling.

The narrator is a doctor who has encountered a very unusual case, a woman brought to hospital as an apparent road accident victim. Her injuries seem minor but she will not speak. And the appears to carry the marks of the Stigmata.

The narrator’s friend Inspector Conroy of the New York police has also encountered an unusual case, the murder of a prominent judge. It is impossible to explain how the murder was accomplished, there being no apparent way he murderer could have gained access to the judge’s room. The evidence of the judge’s butler is the really disturbing element. When he entered the judge’s study he saw dripping blood everywhere and a rope with a noose, but when the police arrived they found no traces of blood and no rope.

Conroy had received a strange telephone call warning him of the murder.

These two strange events seem entirely unrelated, but are they?

Conroy and his medical friend soon find themselves investigating another strange murder. They will be plunged into a world of horror, confronting an evil that seems to be unstoppable.

The title suggests an oriental origin to the evil, which proves to be more or less the case. The devil in question is the object of devotion to a cult of devil-worshippers in China, China and Tibet being (if we are to believe this novel) major centres of devil-worship of the most barbarous kind.

This book has devil-worshippers, demonic possession, human sacrifice, mutilations, torture, Black Masses, paranormal phenomena and heathen idols that come to life. And toads. Lots of toads. And lots of blood. What more could you want? It’s all handled in a very pulpy and deliciously trashy style.

Asbury keeps things moving at a cracking pace, piling lurid thrill upon lurid thrill. He knows how to build suspense and he knows how to bring matters to a suitably exciting climax.

Sadly this novel appears to have been Asbury’s only foray into the realm of occult thrillers.

The Devil of Pei Ling is long out of print but used copies can be found if you are prepared to search hard enough. And you will find the effort is well worth it. A delightfully trashy extravaganza of thrills. Very highly recommended.

F. Marion Crawford’s The Witch of Prague

F. Marion Crawford’s The Witch of Prague, published in 1891, is more a strange occult love story mixed with reflections on philosophy and the mind than a conventional novel of gothic horror.  

Francis Marion Crawford (1854-1909) was an American writer known for his weird fiction.

The witch of the title, Unorna, does not brew strange potions or cast spells.  Her one power is the power of hypnosis, but in her this power is developed to an extreme degree.  She can hypnotise anyone against their will, and secure complete control of their minds.  She does not use this gift in the service of any diabolical entity.  In so far as she is evil, she is evil through selfishness and through a giving in to the temptations of the power she possesses, and through utter ruthlessness in accomplishing her ends, rather than through any particular malevolence.  

She has a collaborator - a mysterious, wealthy dwarf, a man of great learning and influence.  This man, Keyork Arabian, has conceived a project to conquer old age and death, and is using an elderly scholar who had been mentally enslaved by Unorna, as an experimental subject.  When Unorna meets a enigmatic stranger, known only as the Wanderer, she finds a new purpose in her life, a new use for her powers.  She has fallen in love with this man, and means to have him, by fair means or foul.

The most interesting thing about the book is the way it illustrates the 19th century obsession with hypnotism, and the growing fascination with the relatively new science of the mind.  There’s a suggestion that occult powers are in fact simply highly developed but little understood natural powers.  The book shows a deep interest in the mystery of memory, and the links between memory and personality, and different states of consciousness.  

It also reflects, indirectly, the retreat of religion before the advance of science, with evil being seen in a rather modern way as more to do with a failure to adjust ourselves to reality and an unwillingness to deal honestly with our desires and their consequences for ourselves and others, rather than in any strictly religious sense.

It’s a little slow, and Crawford’s prose isn’t exactly riveting.  It’s a book that’s interesting for its subject matter, even if it’s slightly heavy going at times.

Cult of the Corpses

Detective stories were one of the staples of the pulps, as they had been one of the staples of the earlier dime novels. In the early 1930s an odd sub-genre of the detective story briefly flourished: the weird detective story. Off-Trail Publications’ volume Cult of the Corpses includes two novellas of this type by Maxwell Hawkins.

The weird detective story needs to be distinguished from the occult detective story. The occult detective story became very popular at the beginning of the 20th century and survived for nearly half a century. It was to some extent inspired by the enormous success of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories but the occult detective story was in reality more of a sub-genre of the gothic horror tale. It was an attempt to add new interest to the classic ghost story. It was primarily, although not entirely, a British phenomenon. These stories were very popular but most of them had at least a veneer of literary polish.

The weird detective story on the other hand was an off-shoot of the American hardboiled crime story. Supernatural, science fictional or other bizarre elements are tacked on to the basic hardboiled crime story in order to increase the sensational content. The weird detective story was emphatically American. Literary polish was not very much in evidence.

Pulp magazines had from time to time published crime stories with weird elements in the 20s but for a short time in the 30s it became a moderately thriving genre.

The two stories in this collection, Cult of the Corpses and Dealers in Death, were both published in Detective Dragnet magazine in 1931.

Cult of the Corpses sees Assistant District Attorney Benton McCray plunged into a bizarre world of voodoo in New York, and his girlfriend Nan Collette is in line to be the next victim of the murderous voodoo cult. McCray is not easily intimidated by the usual dangers that are part of the job when you’re fighting crime in a big city but this cult poses very different kinds of dangers. While gangsters might not think twice about mowing down their enemies with sub-machine guns the voodoo cult threatens its enemies with a fate worse than death - being transformed into zombies! And this story offers both zombies and machine gun-toting mobsters.

With these ingredients it would be difficult not to come up with a fairly exciting story and Cult of the Corpses is fine pulpy fun. There are all the usual fun elements you expect from a pulp story - narrow escapes, plenty of action, hardboiled dialogue - and it all holds together quite well. Hawkins appears to have done some research on the subject of voodoo in Haiti. Transplanting the voodoo cult to New York City was an obvious move and it works.

Dealers in Death is slightly different. It lacks any supernatural elements but compensates for this by giving us a sinister villain with bizarre methods. Letherius claims to have invented literally hundreds of methods of committing murder that are absolutely guaranteed to be undetectable and he’s turned his obsession into a thriving murder-for-money business. Villains in pulp stories have a tendency to overshadow the heroes and that’s certainly the case here. Fortunately Letherius is sufficiently interesting and sufficiently menacing to keep the reader’s attention riveted.

Maxwell Hawkins (1895-1962) was a newspaperman who had a fairly brief career as a pulp writer in the 1930s. After marrying in 1937 he seems to have largely abandoned his efforts in this arena to concentrate on the more certain rewards of his newspaper career.

Cult of the Corpses and Dealers in Death are both highly entertaining slightly off-beat stories that should delight pulp fans. This volume can certainly be recommended.

The Devil’s Mistress by J. W. Brodie-Innes

The Devil’s Mistress, a novel of witchcraft set against the background of Scotland in the 1650s, was published in 1915. Its author, John William Brodie-Innes (1848-1923), was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn so this is not quite the sort of potboiler you might expect from the lurid title.

The author claims to have based his story on actual events and actual persons, a claim also backed up be Dennis Wheatley in his introduction to the Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult edition. There’s certainly no doubt that Sir Robert Gordon, the Wizard Laird, was an actual historical personage and that he really was at the very least a dabbler in occult practices.

The story centres on Isabel Goudie, a young woman raised as a Catholic but forced to accept the Protestant faith and forced (or at least pressured) also into marriage with a man below her station, a dour and rather uncouth farmer named John Gilbert. Her boredom and her resentment, and her desire for romance and adventure, will lead her to become involved in some very strange events.

The Reformed Kirk appears to be in very firm control but there are still numerous Catholics in the district, practising their religion in secret. Father Blackhall ministers to the spiritual needs of the oppressed Catholics, adopting a series of ingenious disguises to avoid detection.

Witchcraft is also a strong presence in this district. Sir Robert Gordon preserves the outward appearances of conformity with the Reformed Kirk but he is in fact in sympathy with the Catholics, while at the same time pursuing his passion for alchemy and his insatiable thirst for occult knowledge. Sir Robert’s knowledge of these subjects is extensive, as a result of a pact he made with Satan years earlier. Sir Robert is aware of the dangers inherent in such a pact but he has go the better of the Devil in the past and believes he can do so again.

Isabel becomes involve with Satan as well. She knows him as the Dark Master and she becomes his lover, hunting with his coven on a regular basis. The coven hunts the most challenging game of all, man. Their victims are many and Isabel herself has been responsible for the deaths of many of their victims. Despite this Isabel is in an equivocal position. She has renounced her baptism into the Reformed Kirk but even Satan does not have the power to allow her to renounce her Catholic baptism.

Isabel’s story is one of romance, excitement and violence. Isabel is not however purely evil. Paradoxically she often uses the powers given to her by Satan to do good, and in particular to help her friend Jean Gordon. Jean is in love with the handsome Cosmo Hamilton, a scion of one of the great old families of the region and a bitter enemy of both the Reformed Kirk and of Cromwell’s government.

Isabel also venture into the fairy kingdom, the realm of Middle Earth. The fairies are by no means in league with Satan but they have a kind of agreement with him, whilst obeying their own laws.

You expect an occult thriller to be a straightforward conflict between the powers of good and the powers of evil but this story is much more complex. There are many powers, some good, some evil, some neither good nor evil. Satan is the master of the material world but his powers do not extend into the various other spiritual and otherwise non-material worlds. This is a story of the conflict between the powers of Satan and the powers of God, but it is also a struggle between the Reformed Kirk and the old Catholic faith. Neither Father Blackhall nor Sir Robert Gordon are of Satan’s party but that does not inhibit them from mixing with him on a social basis. The Devil is a gentleman and he is an entertaining and charming social companion. Father Blackhall is on friendly terms with him because he knows that Satan has no power over him, and socialising with your enemy is a good way of learning more abut him.

Isabel’s desire to help Jean and Cosmo, and later to help Sir Robert in his attempt to evade paying his debt to Satan, will drive a wedge between her and her and the Dark Master.

Both isabel and Sir Robert are gamblers and they are playing for the highest stakes of all. The Devil is a formidable opponent but he is a gentleman and he does play by the rules.

This is a novel teeming with ambiguity. Apart from the Dark Master the human characters are neither purely good nor purely evil. Both Isabel and Sir Robert have imperilled their souls but they are by no means irredeemably lost. Isabel in particular has sinned grievously but she has also committed acts of charity and even piety.

The author’s sympathies clearly do not lie with the Reformed Kirk but his attitudes towards the Devil are ambiguous. The Devil is certainly a terrifying threat to a person’s immortal soul but he is, by his own lights, an honest adversary and free from hypocrisy. People who make pacts with Satan should be aware of the dangers. In general the author’s sympathies, despite his involvement with ritual magick and the occult, seem to lie mostly with the Catholic faith. Or perhaps he merely recognises that the Catholic Church’s claims to spiritual power and its ability to offer redemption are real, in contrast with the claims of the Protestant faiths. If you are in need of salvation then the Catholic Church really can deliver the goods.

Whilst dealing with fascinating questions of faith, salvation, nature of evil and the clash between the spiritual and material spheres this is also a very exciting tale of adventure. The epic pursuit of Sir Robert by the Dark Master, each mounted on supernatural steeds, is a thrilling adventure tour-de-force. The storm conjured up by Isabel to cause the shipwreck of the brigantine carrying the captured Cosmo Hamilton to slavery is another exciting high point.

More interest is added by the story’s claims to being based on actual events, although of course the historical records furnish only a bare outline which Brodie-Innes has fleshed out with considerable skill. Even more interest is added by the hints the author drops that at least some of the events described may be dreams, although these dreams may perhaps at times have more reality than what we normally think of as the real world.

The Devil’s Mistress is a fascinating and complex and highly entertaining, as well as very unusual, occult thriller. It’s easy to understand why Dennis Wheatley was so enthusiastic about this book. Brodie-Innes is a sadly neglected writer and fans of the horror, gothic and occult thriller genres will find much here to enjoy as well as considerable food for thought. Very highly recommended.

John Buchan's Witch Wood

John Buchan was much more than just a writer of spy stories. He wrote in various genres including horror but he regarded his most important work as being his historical fiction. And within that genre he considered his 1927 novel Witch Wood to be his best book.

The setting is Scotland in the 1640s. The Civil War is raging in England and there had already been considerable strife between the King and the Scottish Church, the Kirk. Men were torn between conflicting loyalties, and this was particularly painful since all these loyalties were taken very seriously. The Kirk was determined to impose the Presbyterian system of church government not only on the whole of Scotland, but on England as well.

The National Covenant in 1638 rejected papacy and anything that resembled it and was followed by the Solemn League and Covenant in 1643. The Covenanters were effectively in control of government in Scotland. The Kirk was not merely a very militant church but also espoused a rather severe form of Calvinism. Anyone who was not an enthusiastic supporter of the Covenant was assumed to be not merely misguided but a dangerous enemy of both the Kirk and the state.

In this troubled environment the young and newly ordained Reverend David Semphill arrives in the village of Woodilee to begin his duties as minister of the parish. David is a zealous supporter of the Covenant and a sincere Presbyterian.

The parish of Woodilee has a reputation for being exceptionally strong in its support for the Covenant but all is not as it seems to be. David makes the horrific discovery that witchcraft is alive and well in his parish and that many of its chief citizens belong to a coven that meets in the nearby wood.

The wood itself is almost a character in the novel. This is not just a small wood but part of a vast primeval forest. David regards the wood with fear and loathing. It seems to represent a dark and mysterious force. He is however strangely drawn to it as well.

David believes that his duty is clear. He knows the identity of some of those involved in the rites in the wood and he has what he considers to be fairly strong evidence. He is amazed and dismayed when the Presbytery not only rejects his evidence but does so in a manner that suggests that David is the one at fault.

A further complication arises for David when he meets Katrine Yester. She is the niece of the local laird, and David is immediately fascinated by her. Of course a young minister of the Kirk could not possibly hope for marriage with a lady so far above his station, but David’s heart overrules his reason where Katrine is concerned. At first sight he thinks she is a denizen of the realm of faerie. Throughout the book the wood is linked both with witchcraft and with faerie.

David had earlier encountered three soldiers, soldiers who turned out to be followers of the Earl of Montrose. Montrose attempted to raise the Highlands for the King, an attempt that was initially crowned with considerable success. What David doesn’t realise is that one of the men is Montrose himself. The Kirk regards Montrose as the Antichrist and this meeting will have fateful consequences for the Rev Semphill. After Montrose’s defeat David gives shelter to one of Montrose’s lieutenants, thereby exposing himself to the charge of aiding and abetting a dangerous enemy of the Kirk.

While David still hopes to extirpate witchcraft in Woodilee he finds himself facing grave charges and the possibility of excommunication. Then plague arrives in Woodilee. David’s efforts to combat the plague are misunderstood and expose him to further criticism and further charges. David remains in his heart a loyal Presbyterian but he finds it increasingly difficult to reconcile his loyalty to the Kirk with the demands of common humanity.

Of course the idea of portraying religious hypocrisy as a greater evil than witchcraft has become a commonplace today, in fact it’s become a rather tedious cliché. Happily Buchan is not content with such platitudes and his novel is much more complex and more ambiguous. His hero never wavers in his belief that witchcraft is an evil that must be rooted out.

He also doesn’t make the serious but all too common mistake of making his hero hold anachronistic modern views. David Semphill is a man of his time. He is torn between the dictates of his own conscience and the requirement to submit to lawful authority but to Semphill it is a real dilemma - he does not reject (as a 20th century man would be almost certain to) the idea of submission to authority. He simply thinks the Kirk has got the balance wrong. He believes they put too much emphasis on obedience but that does mean that he believes in complete freedom. He wants authority to be less severe and less obsessed with minutiae but he certainly does not reject the necessity for some authority.

Today we are used to the idea that there is something praiseworthy about being non-judgmental. David Semphill would certainly not agree. He is very judgmental and he believes in absolute right and wrong and he never doubts that witchcraft is evil. He believes that judgments should be tempered by mercy and should not be rushed into, but he would never accept the notion that judgments should not be made.

The leader of the coven in Woodilee is a man who takes the Calvinist notion of predestination very seriously indeed. He believes that since he is one of the Elect and therefore guaranteed of salvation he can sin as much as he pleases. This perversion of Calvinist doctrine was seen at the time as being one of the chief dangers of the doctrine as a whole. Again Buchan is struggling with real religious dilemmas of the period.

Buchan’s reputation as a writer of thrillers would lead the reader to expect Witch Wood to be an adventure story but it is actually a very serious work of historical fiction that deals with complex religious and moral questions. It’s entertaining (Buchan could never be dull) but it’s also thought-provoking and intelligent. Buchan’s knowledge of 17th century history was profound (he wrote important biographies of several key historical figures of the period including Montrose). Witch Wood deserves to be regarded as a major work by a great writer.