Paul Tabori's The Green Rain

The Green Rain is a 1951 science fiction novel by Paul Tabori.

Paul Tabori (1908- 1974) was a prolific Hungarian-born British writer who also occasionally wrote under the pseudonym Peter Stafford.

The Green Rain is a wild ride. This is humorous science fiction with a definite satirical edge.

Everything goes wrong when the first C-Rocket is launched. The destination is the Moon. The C-Rocket is the brainchild of a brilliant but seriously eccentric scientist. It carries a kind of proto-chlorophyll with rather extraordinary properties. Within a few months the Moon will be a living planet, with an atmosphere and abundant life.

The only problem is that the C-Rocket malfunctions and deposits its cargo on Earth. With unexpected results. When mixed with rainwater it turns people green. Permanently green, all over. Anyone caught out in the rain at the time of the disaster is now green. They don’t suffer any other ill-effects but the political and social consequences are profound. The newly green people are considered by some to be a superior race. Others regard them as inferior mutants.

As you might expect the author indulges in a lot of political satire. That’s usually a bad thing but this book’s saving grace is that Tabori makes fun of absolutely everybody. Whites, blacks and Asians. Christians, Jews and Muslims. Communists and capitalists. Republicans and Democrats. The Americans, the Russians, the British, the French, Africans, the Irish, even Norwegians and Poles. Everybody is fair game. By being offensive to everybody the books ends up being, in my view, offensive to nobody. It’s just totally nuts and fun.

A crazy crooked communist and a crazy crooked anti-communist get together to take advantage of the situation by establishing a new religion. They make use of middle-aged lady evangelist Gloriana and glamorous movie star Madge McMamie. They come up with a cool stunt - Gloriana will die and be reborn.

The objective is not just to start a new religion but to gain political power as well. The reborn Gloriana will run for President.

And then the book changes gears in an interesting way. It suddenly becomes a whole lot darker. The world becomes green, but in a different way. A nightmarish way.

The ending is not what you might be expecting.

I’ve now read three of Tabori’s novels and he really is an intriguing writer. Wildly original and crazy and definitely full of surprises. None of the books of his that I’ve read can be easily slotted into a particular genre. He’s also inclined to mix humour and darkness in interesting ways.

The Green Rain is a fun ride and it’s best to just allow yourself to be swept along with it. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed his bizarre but brilliant and lurid Demons of Sandorra and his sexy horror witchcraft romp The Wild White Witch (written as Peter Stafford).

Paul Tabori's Demons of Sandorra

Demons of Sandorra is a 1970 science fiction novel by Paul Tabori.

Paul Tabori (1908- 1974) was a prolific Hungarian-born British writer who also occasionally used the pseudonym Peter Stafford.

There’s quite a bit of sexual content in Demons of Sandorra but this is definitely not a sci-fi sleaze novel. It’s a dystopian novel with some post-apocalyptic overtones. The setting is one of those utopias that is really a dystopia (of course all utopias inevitably become dystopias) but no-one will admit that their society is dystopian.

The setting is Sandorra, a tiny independent country only it isn’t really independent because there’s a single global government, but nobody admits that. Everybody pretends that independent nations still exist.

This is the story of an attractive young woman named Yolanda Vernon who seems to have a bright future in front of her. She has however started to display disturbing and distressing signs of sanity. Sanity is of course a disorder that usually responds well to therapy. The important thing is to spot the symptoms early and seek treatment immediately.

This is a world that, in the wake of a nuclear war, proceeded to build a perfect new society. The basis of this society would be Synthetism, a psychological theory which rejects reason entirely. Instinct rather than reason should be the guiding principle of both individual and group behaviour. This is also a society that has rejected normality. In this society sanity and normality are regarded as serious mental illnesses.

Marriage and monogamy are also regarded as dangerous deviations. Heterosexuality is tolerated although exclusive heterosexuality is considered dangerously eccentric.

The Synthetists have created a society in which all sexual pleasures can be indulged. Even sexual predation is permitted although you do have to buy a licence. The Synthetist have found ways in which all citizens can open the Gates, the Gates being the pathway to fulfilment. This includes the ultimate Gate.

The end result is a soft totalitarian society in which non-conformism has become compulsory, so non-conformism is now conformism. Sanity is insanity and insanity is sanity. Normality is abnormal and abnormality is normal.

This is a world of therapy, but the therapy is intended to keep people insane.

Privacy has been abolished. It’s considered undemocratic.

Yolanda has a good job at the Lethe Institute. It’s very satisfying being able to help people. Her job is to open the ultimate Gate to those who have passed the appropriate tests and have waited patiently for their turn. The ultimate Gate is of course Death.

This is clearly satire. It’s meant to be amusing and it is. But there’s a serious purpose as well. It does raise all kinds of questions about conformity and authoritarianism and social engineering, and sexual indulgence versus sexual repression. And what it means to be sane or insane, and the conflict between the overwhelming human desires for both freedom and conformity. Also the ticklish problem that there is a need for order but order always leads to repression.

And it develops these ideas in surprisingly complex and nuanced ways. It doesn’t present the various opposing concepts in a simplistic black-and-white manner. Readers are left to make up their own minds. Life is messy and every attempt to reduce the messiness of life just creates new problems. And revolutions don’t always turn out they way you’d hoped, and you can’t predict where they’ll lead.

As the story progresses it becomes crazier, but in interesting ways.

This future society does of course have some unsettling resemblances to the world of today.

Demons of Sandorra is wild stuff but it’s inspired wildness and I was sufficiently impressed to order several more of Tabori’s books. Highly recommended.

The author’s witchcraft potboiler, The Wild White Witch (written as Peter Stafford), has a similar deceptive feel - it seems trashy on the surface but has more substance to it than you’re expecting. I recommend it as well.

Alexei Tolstoy’s Aelita

Alexei Tolstoy’s celebrated Soviet science fiction novel Aelita was published in 1923.

Alexei Tolstoy (1883-1945) was a distant relative of the more famous Count Leo Tolstoy, writer of War and Peace. Alexei Tolstoy was quite an interesting character. He was born In Russia and lived for a time in Germany and in France. He returned to Russia in 1909.

He opposed the Bolshevik Revolution and went into exile. By 1923 he was back in Russia. Under the Soviet regime Tolstoy was lionised and lived like a millionaire. Reading between the lines of Aelita one gets the impression that he regarded revolutionaries with a certain amount of scepticism.

Aelita opens with an eccentric amateur scientist named Los who has constructed an egg-shaped spacecraft. He believes it can reach Mars. He persuades a soldier named Gusev to accompany him.

Mars turns out to be inhabited, by people who seem rather human. Mars has been home to a number of civilisations. The histories of Mars and Earth were at one time intimately linked, thanks to an event that occurred when the terrestrial civilisation of Atlantis was destroyed. There is a good reason that the Martians are so human-like.

Martian civilisation is fairly advanced. They have airships (which are always cool) and they have televisual communication. They also have what appears to be a kind of anticipation of nuclear power.

The Martians are reasonably friendly towards their two visitors from Earth, on the surface at least. In fact they’re suspicious. Mars has seen disastrous wars in the past. Once again Martian civilisation seems to have entered an era of instability. The two Earth men will be caught up in the turmoil, and Gusev will contribute to that turmoil. Gusev dreams of leading a socialist revolution on Mars. Like so many revolutions it will end in slaughter and widespread destruction.

One of the factors impelling Los to build his spacecraft was his loneliness and despair after his beloved wife’s death. On Mars he thinks he has once again found love, in the person of Aelita. She is the daughter of the Chief Engineer (the effective ruler of the Martian civilisation).

Los has a slightly mystical and rather pessimistic outlook on life. Gusev thinks the revolution will usher in a golden age.

There are plots and counter-plots, revolutions and counter-revolutions.

You might be put off reading this book, assuming that it’s going to be heavy on Soviet propaganda (Tolstoy was later to be very much in favour with Stalin) or that there’s going to be a lot of socialist utopianism. That isn’t really the case. There’s a certain degree of cynicism in this novel on the subject of political solutions. Revolutions just lead to chaos and suffering.

The novel also does not reflect a view of history as an inevitable progression towards a socialist promised land. In fact it reflects a very dark and pessimistic view of history as an endless cycle of violence and destruction.

Gusev has political enthusiasms but Los just wants to find love. Love is the only thing that ever brought him happiness. There is very definitely a love story at the heart of this book.

There’s some wild and intriguing alternative history going back 20,000 years or so into the pasts of both Earth and Mars. We get a detailed history of Atlantis.

It’s fast-moving and action-packed.

Aelita is a must-read for anyone with an interest in the history of science fiction, and it’s rather entertaining as well. Recommended.

The 1924 film adaptation is also regarded as a classic, although in my view t's a flawed classic.

Don Tracy’s Criss-Cross

Criss-Cross is a 1934 noir novel by Don Tracy, an American writer who seems to have been overshadowed by Hammett, Cain et al.

I confess that I know little about Don Tracy (1905-76) other than the fact that he wrote quite a few noir novels, some historical novels and some TV and movie novelisations.

Noir fiction had not yet been given a name and at the time this would have been thought of as hardboiled crime. But noir fiction already existed and Criss-Cross is the real deal. It’s also a heist story.

The protagonist-narrator is a washed-up boxer who goes by the name of Johnny Thompson. Johnny is a total loser and he’s as dumb as a rock but he thinks he’s pretty smart, which is of course very noir.

He does admit that he’s not smart when it comes to Anna. He’s crazy in love with her. Anna goes out with him when he has money. When he doesn’t have money he can forget about it. They have a good time together but Anna’s idea of a good time with a guy always involves money. And even when he has money she won’t go to bed with him. There’s clearly no future in this for Johnny but he’s obsessed with this dame.

Johnny has a rival for Anna’s affections, Slim. Slim always has plenty of cash. Johnny can’t figure out where Slim gets all this money.

Johnny works as a security guard in an armoured car. It pays OK, but not enough if he hopes to get Anna. He also has a kid brother to worry about.

Then Johnny is offered a chance to make some real money. It’s highly illegal and it involves that armoured car but the plan is fool-proof. This story is full of guys who are dumb but think they’re smart.

You know that in a heist story the heist will not go off the way it’s supposed to but in this case things go off the rails in an interesting and devious manner.

The Anna situation gets complicated. She gets married to Slim but as soon as she’s married she starts sleeping with Johnny. Johnny convinces himself that this means she’s starting to love him. The Anna situation is definitely going to complicate the heist.

Johnny is not really evil, he’s not even by nature criminally inclined, but he just can’t think straight where Anna is involved. And he keeps thinking he’s got things all figured out.

There’s only one decent character in this tale. Bertha is a whore but she’s a really nice girl and she’s crazy about Johnny. She’s decent and honest but Johnny doesn’t want her.

Anna is of course the femme fatale. The femme fatale had not yet been given a name but she definitely existed. In movies she was called the vamp. The most interesting femmes fatales are always the ones that the reader can’t be sure of. They might turn out to be evil spider women or they might turn out to have valid reasons for their actions or they might turn out to be good girls who have landed themselves in a jam. Anna is one of the ones with this touch of ambiguity. She appears to be heartless and scheming but you just never know what she might do.

There’s a bit of action and a bit of violence but mostly this is a twisted tale of unhealthy love and lust, and betrayal. And double crosses. With a nicely twisted ending.

There’s also plenty of noir desperation, delusionalism and typical noir bad decision-making and poor judgment.

Criss-Cross was filmed in 1949 by the great Robert Siodmak. Obviously some changes were made but it’s a superb example of film noir. I've reviewed the movie here.

Criss-Cross is top-notch noir fiction. Highly recommended.

Stark House have re-issued this novel paired with another Don Tracy title, Road Trip, under their Staccato imprint in their Jazz Age Noir series.

Darwin Teilhet’s Take Me As I Am

Darwin Teilhet’s Take Me As I Am was published by Gold Medal in 1952.

Darwin Teilhet (1904-1964) was an American novelist and screenwriter, writing under his own name and several pseudonyms. Take Me As I Am was one of several novels he wrote using the William H. Fielding pseudonym. It falls into the “couple on the run” sub-genre.

The novel starts with a guy named Monk and two other hoods carrying out an armoured car holdup. With a bazooka, which is a nice touch. Their boss, a guy known as Gramma (short for Grammelini), planned the heist and with half a million dollars in that armoured car Monk’s share will see him set up for life. The robbery goes horribly wrong, and worst of all there’s only a hundred grand in that truck. The police will be closing in at any moment. Monk was supposed by be picked up by his girl Alma and they would take the money to a specified drop-off point. Now there’s just one chance. Monk will lie low and maybe Alma can bluff her way through the roadblocks. She’s a cute blonde and cute blondes can bluff their way out of tight corners.

Then fate intervenes as it tends to do in noir fiction (and we’re definitely in noir territory in this story). Alma picks up a hitchhiker. His name is Bill and he’s eighteen, four years younger than Alma. Alma figures that if she can persuade Bill to pretend he’s her kid brother they can get through the roadblocks. The coppers are not going to be looking for a young brother and sister. And Bill is naïve enough to agree. He thinks Alma is such a nice girl that it never occurs to him that she could be in trouble.

Bill possibly should have noticed that the story Alma tells him is a bit odd, and she has a tendency to change her story. A couple of odd things happen, involving other blondes. Bill becomes slightly uneasy but he’s falling in love with Alma and he puts his doubts aside. And really they’re only tiny niggling doubts and he’s only eighteen.

More odd things happen. Bill has entered a nightmare world but he doesn’t know it yet. There doesn’t seem to be any possible connection between the odd events.

Gradually Bill starts to see a pattern, but it’s a constantly shifting pattern. The reader sees almost everything from Bill’s point of view. The seasoned crime reader will certainly be a step ahead of Bill in connecting the dots but there are still plenty of twists to come.

Then the real nightmare kicks in and the story becomes a desperate chase.

This is definitely noir, but it avoids overly obsessive clichés. Bill really is a true innocent. He just wants to believe that he really has met a nice girl.

Alma is not quite a stereotypical femme fatale. To find out what actually makes her tick you’ll have to read the book.

Bill and Alma are both hopelessly out of their depth. They really have no idea what’s going on. Alma initially thought she knew what she was mixed up in but every one of her assumptions turned out to be mistaken Bill and Alma are both trapped. Bill is horrified to be involved, even indirectly, in crime. But he loves Alma. Alma is more complicated. Both Bill and the reader are left uncertain until the very end as to whether she’s a good girl or a bad girl. Maybe she’s a bit of both, but she’ll have to make a choice.

There’s plenty of suspense and excitement and quite a bit of action towards the end. There’s romance but it’s a twisted love story. It’s not just that Bill is out of his depth with a woman like Alma. He’d be out of his depth with any woman. He’s also very conflicted. He wants to have sex with Alma, he’s resentful when she won’t sleep with him but disappointed in her when she does. He’s an innocent farm boy who thinks nice girls don’t have sex. Alma wants to have sex with Bill but she’s sure he won’t respect her if she does. There’s plenty of tortured 1950s sexual guilt in this novel.

There’s a background of corruption. There are plenty of references to the moral decay of America and the ubiquity of organised crime.

This is a good solid noir novel that moves along briskly. Highly recommended.

Richard Telfair’s The Bloody Medallion

The Bloody Medallion, published by Gold Medal in 1959, was the first of Richard Telfair’s Monty Nash spy thrillers.

Telfair was actually Richard Jessup (1925-1982), an American novelist and screenwriter who wrote crime and adventure fiction as well as spy fiction. Jessup was apparently quite influenced by the existentialists and there are signs of that in this book. I wouldn’t quite call this an existentialist spy novel but I would call it a spy novel with an existentialist tinge. And spy fiction and existentialism are not a bad fit.

Montgomery Nash (known always as Monty) is the first-person narrator. Monty works for a secretive American counter-intelligence agency. The teeth of this agency are it’s two-man Fox pursuit squads. It’s not explicitly stated but it’s implied that they’re more or less US Government assassins.

Monty has just had the bad news that his partner Paul Austin is dead. Worse than that, Austin is now suspected of being a double agent. And worst of all, Monty is now under suspicion as well. He decides, in the best pulp fiction tradition, that the only way to clear his name is to escape from custody and find out the truth about Paul Austin.

The most promising lead he has is Austin’s mistress Helga. If Austin had turned traitor it’s likely there was a woman involved. Women were Austin’s big weakness.

Monty picks up a vital clue from Helga. It is a medallion, supposedly containing a piece of a battle flag stained with the blood of revolutionary martyrs killed at Stalingrad. There is a shadowy organisation, every member of which carries such a medallion. Interestingly enough although this is a revolutionary communist network it seems to have no links with any Soviet or Chinese intelligence agency. No official links, and no unofficial links either. The medallion-carriers are a totally independent ultra-radical revolutionary group with their own agenda.

Monty Nash does some fast talking and infiltrates this network. He has given an assignment - he has to steal 38 million Swiss francs in bearer bonds from a safety deposit box in a bank. Robbing a safety deposit box is a formidable challenge but Monty has a plan.

Things have become complicated since he shot Maria. Maria is a member of the medallion carriers gang. She’s the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. He’s fallen for her in a big way. She likes him a lot as well and she’s not even angry that he shot her.

Maria has two formidable faithful dogs, fierce but loyal. One of those dogs will be essential to Monty’s plan. But he’ll still have to decide about Maria. She’s an enemy and he loves her.

This novel is interesting in that mostly it’s a conventional Cold War-era spy thriller of the action-adventure type with the assumption that the Americans are of course the good guys. There are however touches of cynicism and Monty starts to wonder if the spy business is as simple as he’d assumed. He’s starting to have conflicted loyalties. There’s some degree of emotional complexity. There’s plenty of action but some very dark moments. And at times there is that faint whiff of existentialism. There are also some hints of noir fiction.

Lone wolves are not exactly unusual in crime and spy fiction and the idea of a cop or spy deciding that it his superiors will never believe he is innocent and that he will have to go rogue and handle the case on his own on a totally unofficial basis is not dazzlingly original either. These clichés don’t seem like clichés here, mainly because Monty isn’t just a straightforward square-jawed hero and the dilemmas he faces have real consequences.

On the other hand Nash is breathtakingly violent and ruthless. He kills a lot of people during this case, and he does so without hesitation or compunction and feels no remorse. Oddly enough he also cries quite often. He’s a complex kind of guy.

Maria is also not quite a straightforward beautiful dangerous lady spy. Her motivations are complex and enigmatic.

An exciting entertaining read with just a bit more to it than you might be expecting. Highly recommended.

Rogue Planet by E.C. Tubb (Space: 1999 TV tie-in novel)

E.C. Tubb’s Rogue Planet, the ninth of the Space: 1999 TV tie-in novels, published in 1977. It is an original novel, not a novelisation of episodes from the TV series. It’s based on Year One of the TV series.

It captures the feel of the TV series extremely well.

Fans of the TV series will enjoy this one and it's a pretty decent science fiction novel in its own right.

My full review can be here at Cult TV Lounge.

John Taine’s The Purple Sapphire

John Taine’s The Purple Sapphire is a 1924 lost world adventure tale.

John Taine was a pseudonym used by mathematician Eric Temple Bell (1883-1960) for his science fiction writing.

General Wedderburn, a rather pompous English officer, approaches American gem dealer and adventurer John Ford with a proposal. The general wants Ford and his niece (and partner) Rosita to find his daughter Evelyn. She disappeared thirteen years earlier, at the age of eight, and the general suspects his servant Singh of some involvement in the disappearance. Ford informs the general that he is not in the business of finding lost children.

Then General Wedderburn shows him something that changes his mind. It is the most extraordinary sapphire he has ever seen. If Ford can find Evelyn he will also find a lot more such sapphires. The general is convinced that Evelyn is somewhere in the unexplored wilds of Tibet, and that those sapphires are to be found in the same place.

The general has a vital clue - a half-dead man who also has such a sapphire in his possession. This wretched wreck of a man turns out to be another English officer by the name of Joicey, a man thought to have been dead for many years.

Joicey slowly recovers his strength and his sanity. He knows where the sapphires come from because he has been there. It is the land once inhabited by the Great Race, whose knowledge of science was so far in advance of our own that it beggars belief. Their descendants still live there although almost all of their ancient knowledge has been lost. It was a perilous journey to that land and an even more perilous journey back but it can be done. He has never seen Evelyn Wedderburn but he has reason to believe that she is safe and well. He also knows something about the mysterious Singh. Singh was a descendant of the Great Race.

Ford, Rosita and Joicey set off to repeat Joicey’s earlier journey. They do indeed find a lost world and the remnants of a lost civilisation and they slowly piece together the history of that civilisation and of the disaster that befell it.

The descendants of the Great Race have lost most of their ancient knowledge but they hope to regain it and the three adventurers are also rather attracted by the idea of unlocking the Great Race’s ancient secrets.

The motivations of the three adventurers are complex. They certainly hope to return with a bag full of sapphires but there’s also a sincere desire to rescue Evelyn Wedderburn. There’s also a lust for both knowledge and adventure. They are somewhat unscrupulous but also strangely decent. They rely on cleverness rather than violence. They don’t mind using deceit.

This is a lost world that is certainly no utopia. It’s a priest-ridden society in which there is no actual religion, just superstition. It’s a society obsessed with a past that it doesn’t even understand. People know how to follow rules but they don’t know how to think. They dream of regaining the immense powers over nature that their ancestors possessed but they have no idea how to go about it. All the information they need still exists but nobody can read the ancient texts. It’s also questionable whether they could be trusted with those immense powers. In fact it’s questionable whether their all-powerful ancestors had the wisdom to wield such powers.

It’s also a story about how civilisations can decline and ultimately destroy themselves.

There’s an almost complete lack of violence in this story but there’s plenty of danger and excitement.

An absorbing story, fairly complex characters and an interesting lost civilisation add up to a very fine novel which I highly recommend.

Armchair Fiction have issued this novel, in paperback, in their wonderful Lost World-Lost Race Classics series.

I’ve also reviewed another excellent lost world adventure by the same author, The Greatest Adventure.

Robert Tralins The Cosmozoids

The Cosmozoids is a 1966 science fiction pulp paperback written by Robert Tralins and published by Belmont Books.

Sandor Robert Tralins (1926-2010) was an American writer of over 250 pulp fiction and science fiction books, published under a number of pseudonyms.

Major James W. Keith is an American astronaut and a national hero but he’s now been forced take an extended leave. The Space Agency is worried about him. He’s been a bit strange since his last trip into space. He’s been having strange dreams and he claims to be able to predict the future. What worries them is that it appears that he can really can predict the future. If they knew he could read minds as well they’d be even more worried.

The Agency wants noted parapsychologist Dr Burr to figure out exactly what is going on with Major Keith, and if possible to find out why.

Remember that this was 1966. Extrasensory perception and similar paranormal topics were all the rage. And the study of paranormal phenomena was still considered to be marginally scientifically respectable. The C.I.A. believed in this sort of stuff. In 1966 The Cosmozoids was very topical and would not have seemed anywhere near as far-fetched as it seems today.

Major Keith and his fiancée Dottie have been settled into a rooming house not far from Dr Burr’s clinic. His fiancée has already figured out that Keith’s claims are not crazy. She has reason to know that he can predict the future.

Keith notices a few odd things going on and people around him behave strangely, as if in a trance. Even Dottie starts to seem a bit odd.

Slowly Keith figures out that he’s dealing with something not of this Earth, and that his paranormal powers are not of this Earth either. He’s dealing with cosmopaths, and (even more terrifyingly) cosmozoids. He is forced to coöperate with the cosmopaths. They need his creativity. They need him to show them how to promote hair growth treatments, but the treatments are not what appear to be. Their real plan is much more horrifying.

He really has no choice at all. Dottie’s life depends on his coöperation. If only he could find a weakness in the cosmozoids. He does find such a weakness, quite by accident, but the odds are still stacks against him.

There’s some silliness here, some delightfully goofy technobabble, plenty of action and some paranoia. This is not exactly serious science fiction.

It’s one of those alien invasion stories in which the aliens are amongst us and nobody knows they’re here. An idea that’s been done many times but it works if it’s done right. It’s done reasonably well here.

The early part of the book has a nicely spooky vibe to it, as Keith tries to work out exactly what is happening to his mind.

Tralins has a very pulpy style, but this is hardly a book with aspirations towards literature. What matters is keeping the story fast and exciting and Tralins does that.

Major Keith is a standard square-jawed hero which is fine in what is after all pulp fiction.

Tralins also wrote the Miss From S.I.S. sexy spy thrillers. I’ve reviewed the second book in that series, The Chic Chick Spy (which is a lot of fun).

The Cosmozoids is long out of print but used copies are not outrageously expensive.

The Cosmozoids isn’t great but it’s harmless fun. Worth a look if you can find a copy.

The Chic Chick Spy

The Chic Chick Spy dates from 1966. It’s the second of the three spy thrillers featuring the Miss From S.I.S. which were written by Robert Tralins. It’s a mixture of spy action and sleaze, which is a mixture I’m starting to find rather seductive.

Lee Crosley is a beautiful young woman who appears on the surface to be a successful travel writer. In reality she’s a counter-espionage field agent for S.I.S., a top-secret intelligence and counter-intelligence agency. All of S.I.S.’s agents are beautiful young women.

This time Lee is investigating a beauty salon. Beauty salons don’t sound very sinister but the Queen of Sheba beauty salon in downtown Washington is rather unusual. It’s run by a woman who claims to be the Queen of Sheba reincarnated. The staff consists almost entirely of lesbians. And if a woman goes to this salon to get her hair done she will be ordered to strip naked. There are Queen of Sheba salons all over the world and now they’re intending to open branches throughout the United States. The salons seem to be a cover for some sort of scheme for world domination.

Lee decides to make an appointment to get a dry and set. She soon finds herself totally nude and surrounded by lesbians in strange turbans. There is an attempt to hypnotise her and an attempt to drug her. The few men working for this beauty salon organisation seem a bit odd as well.

Lee gets into the usual scrapes you expect in a pulp spy caper. She gets captured and of course she escapes. Her sidekick David Dudley gets captured. Both Lee and David end up in various foreign cities chasing up leads, which involves attending conferences. What makes it a bit different from a standard spy thriller is that just about all of the scrapes Lee gets into involve her having to take all her clothes off.

Lee finally starts to suspect what is behind all this beauty salon stuff, and she’s horrified. This is much more diabolically twisted than your standard evil genius aiming for world domination stuff.

Lee Crosley is an engaging enough heroine. She’s basically your standard sexy lady spy. She isn’t defenceless when she enters the beauty salon. She has all kinds of gadgets concealed on and about her person. There are gadgets in her lipstick, her mascara pencil, her ballpoint pen and of course in her bra. The latter came as no surprise to me. Having read the first of Gardner Francis Fox’s delightful The Lady from L.U.S.T. spy thriller series I knew that lady spies always have secret devices hidden in their bras (and usually in their panties). Of course to use the gadget Lee has to take her bra off but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for her since she spends a lot of her time nude or semi-nude. In fact pretty much all of Lee’s underwear is deadly.

David Dudley is very much a sidekick. He’s quite resourceful and useful but he’s strictly a subordinate. In S.I.S. only women can become fully-fledged field agents. Men are purely employed in subordinate capacities. I suppose you could try to interpret this as an indication of some kind of feminist message but I think it might be a mistake to push this too far. This was 1966 and the book reflects the world of 1966. S.I.S. employs women because women make very useful agents. And the book is about lady spies because, let’s face it, lady spies are sexy and glamorous. That’s not to say it’s anti-feminist. If you’re the sort of person who sees political incorrectness everywhere I imagine you’ll find lots of it here.

There’s a reasonable amount of action. The violence is very low-key but people do get killed. The sleaze is also very low-key. There’s no sex. The sleaze mostly amounts to Lee getting naked a lot. A real lot. The book is sexy but in a lighthearted almost innocent way.

The front cover assures us that this is the most absurd book you will read this year. They’re not kidding. The plot is definitely crazy and goofy. It all kind of makes sense, if you accept some really outlandish assumptions.

If, like me, you enjoy books that mix espionage and sleaze then you really need to check out Gardner Francis Fox’s The Lady from L.U.S.T. and Cherry Delight thrillers. I’ve reviewed the first Lady from L.U.S.T. novel, Lust, Be a Lady Tonight, and the first Cherry Delight book, The Italian Connection (which is a total blast). They’re more frenetic and more overtly sleazy than The Chic Chick Spy but they belong broadly to the same sub-genre.

The Chic Chick Spy is silly fun. I liked it. Highly recommended.

The Smile of Cheng Su

E.P. Thorne’s thriller The Smile of Cheng Su dates from 1946.

E.P. Thorne (1896-1988) is one of those writers who enjoy fairly successful careers during their lifetimes and then disappear completely into oblivion. Thorne wrote at least seventeen mystery/spy thrillers in addition to a considerable number of other books and published them over a span of at least thirty years, which certainly suggests that he was successful enough to encourage him to keep writing. He is now so obscure that all I know about him is that he was English.

Fourteen of his spy thrillers (written between 1946 and 1966) feature Brains Cunningham, an agent for Special Department of the British intelligence services. He investigates a wide variety of crimes and plots. Brains is clearly upper-class and sports a monocle.

The Smile of Cheng Su is the second in the Brains Cunningham series. Although it was published in 1946 the events of the novel take place in September 1939, on the very eve of war.

In the very minor British colony of Saiwei, somewhere in the East, a fisherman is murdered. That’s not so startling but when a senior British police officer is murdered as well the case takes on a distinctly sinister aspect. Brains is despatched to Saiwei to find out what the devil is going on.

On the ship headed for Saiwei Brains gets some hints of at least some of the factors at work in the case. He finds out that there’s a rich businessman named Dimitrios whose activities may well be less than entirely legal. There’s an unsavoury character named Verrier who seems to have an extraordinary passion for oranges. And there’s a ravishing young lady named Daphne. Dimitrios and Verrier will be worth further investigation as they’re obviously up to no good. Daphne will be worth further investigation as well, simply because as far as Brains is concerned ravishing young ladies are always worth investigating.

When he gets to Saiwei he finds some interesting puzzles. Such as the swamp devil. This is of course just a native superstition. Or is it? Brains isn’t convinced. There are all kinds of romantic entanglements which would provide plenty of motives for murder, but those motives unfortunately don’t seem to apply to the actual victims chosen. There’s an English painter who has shocked the local Europeans by shacking up with a native girl and succumbing to the temptations of opium. There’s a luckless young army officer who’s made a fool of himself over both women and gambling. There’s Simone, the glamorous man-eating wife of Dimitrios, who has led a series of men to their ruin.

There’s also an opium-smuggling racket, and possibly other rackets. On the surface Saiwei is a proud little outpost of the British Empire but under the surface there’s a seething ocean of sin and crime. And then there’s Cheng Su, who runs the Mandarin Restaurant, the colony’s m

None of these things would really justify the sending of a secret agent of Brains Cunningham’s calibre to the island but that swamp devil is another matter.

This book seems at first to be merely a mystery novel in an exotic setting. The spy thriller part of the plot doesn’t kick in until late in the book but it is there.

While it was published in 1946 this book has very much the feel of the thrillers of the interwar years. This is an entirely different world from that of the James Bond spy thrillers, the first of which was published just seven years later. Not just different thematically but in style and tone. Cunningham is a gentleman. One could imagine Brains Cunningham lunching with Lord Peter Wimsey at his London club. One could not imagine James Bond doing that.

The background is light years away as well. The Bond novels represented a desperate clinging to the belief that Britain was still a Great Power although both Bond and Ian Fleming knew in their hearts that this was an illusion. The world of The Smile of Cheng Su is a world in which the greatness of the British Empire and the superiority of the British to all other nations is still taken for granted. It is a world of sublime confidence. The British at Saiwei know that Saiwei will remain part of the Empire forever and that the sun will never set on that Empire.

It is also a world in which the deference of the lower classes to their social betters is taken for granted, and the deference of the natives to the sahibs is similarly taken for granted.

This is a world that by 1946 had already passed away.

Personally I like the thrillers of the interwar years and I find their jingoism amusing. In fact I like them because they take place in a vanished world.

The Smile of Cheng Su is a great deal of fun. Recommended.

Hake Talbot’s Rim of the Pit

I’m not by any means obsessed with locked room or impossible crime stories but it’s a sub-genre I do enjoy when it’s done well, and Hake Talbot’s Rim of the Pit has the reputation of being one of the very best examples.

Rim of the Pit belongs to another crime sub-genre, and one I really am obsessed with - detective stories involving stage magic and illusionism. It also has hints of the gothic and involves ghosts (or possible ghosts) and a séance and that just makes the whole thing sound even more attractive to me.

Using the Hake Talbot pseudonym Henning Nelms (1900-1986), an American amateur magician, wrote just two detective novels, The Hangman’s Handyman in 1942 and Rim of the Pit in 1944.

Rim of the Pit takes place in a hunting lodge deep in the woods on the shore of a lake somewhere near the Canadian border. The events actually occur in a house called Cabrioun and in The Lodge, the two buildings being within walking distance of each other. The novel uses the time-honoured technique of taking a group of between half a dozen and a dozen people and isolating them somewhere so that when the murder occurs there is no possibility that it could have been committed by an outsider. One member of the group has to be the murderer. In this case the isolation is assured by virtue of the story taking place in midwinter with heavy snow.

Rim of the Pit does add a variation to this formula - one of the chief suspects is a man who has been dead for twelve years. Grimaud Désanat and a companion died when they became lost in the woods. Désanat’s wife had died some years earlier giving birth to his daughter Sherry. Désanat had remarried, to a woman named Irene. After Désanat’s death Irene then remarried, to Frank Ogden. Frank and Irene then adopted Sherry. Frank and Irene Ogden as well as Sherry are among the group gathered at Cabrioun for the purposes of a séance, the séance being necessary to clear up a tangled business relationship between Frank Ogden and Luke Latham. Luke and his nephew Jeff are also guests at Cabrioun. The others present are a professor of anthropology named Ambler, an ageing once-famous Czech magician named Vok and professional gambler Rogan Kincaid. When murder is committed one of these people has to be the killer, unless Grimaud Désanat has found a way to comeback from the dead. Initially Désanat actually seems to be the most promising suspect!

Before the murder though comes the séance and that’s another puzzle. Strange things certainly happen, but is it all phony or not? The murder follows the same pattern - certain clues suggest a supernatural explanation while others point to fakery. If it’s murder then the murderer could have been just about any member of the party. Virtually all of the suspects have at least some indirect connection with each other and with the victim and virtually all of them have plausible motives. And not one really has a rock-solid alibi.

Worse than all this is the fact that the circumstances surrounding the murder all seem to have been impossible. There were locked doors, there are tracks in the snow that begin and end nowhere, there’s a gun that could not have been removed from its mounting on the wall and yet it was removed, and it appears that no living human being could have escaped in the way the killer escaped. 

The reader is naturally led to suspect that the murder has some connection to the death of Grimaud Désanat twelve years earlier but that doesn’t help since all of the suspects are in some way connected to that event.

Vok’s attempts to prove that the séance was phony and his attempts to debunk the various supernatural explanations for the murder provide much of the interest (for me at least) as he explains some of the many ways in which a conjuror could have employed trickery - his only problem being that in this case none of the tricks he’s familiar with can explain these particular puzzles.

The challenge with an impossible crime story is to provide a solution that is inventive and a little outlandish whilst still being at least vaguely plausible. In this case the solution is very outlandish but it’s still just about believable and it’s certainly ingenious. The ending really is excellent.

The novel tries to keep us guessing as to whether the solution really is going to involve the supernatural or not and it succeeds pretty well in this respect as well.

The snowbound setting is used to excellent effect - quite apart from the chance of being murdered the characters also have to face the danger of becoming lost in the snow every time they set foot outside.

Rim of the Pit is ambitious, with its playful mixing of genres and its elaborate set-pieces, and it succeeds remarkably well. Great fun and highly recommended.

The Greatest Adventure

Dr Eric Temple Bell (1883-1960) was a distinguished Scottish-born mathematician who wrote science fiction novels under the name John Taine. His lost world science fiction tale The Greatest Adventure was published in 1929.

Lost world stories had been immensely popular ever since the publication of H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines in 1885 and they remained popular until the 1930s.

The trick with lost world adventures was to keep coming up with new variations on the theme and The Greatest Adventure certainly achieves that. The cover illustration might lead the reader to expect just another “lost valley of the dinosaurs” story but Taine throws in some original twists.

By 1929 it was no longer really credible to set a lost world story in Africa or South America. The idea that a lost civilisation could still be undiscovered in a world with fewer and fewer unexplored places was starting to become a little far-fetched. The obvious solution was to locate your lost world in Antarctica, which is what Taine does. Antarctica had been used as a setting by Poe and the frozen wastes of the polar regions would be used by a couple of classic science fiction/horror stories in the 1930s - Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness and John W. Campbell’s Who Goes There? In 1945 it would later be used in one of the last of the great lost world novels, Dennis Wheatley’s The Man Who Missed the War.

The Greatest Adventure is in some ways an anticipation of Lovecraft’s tale, being a story not just of adventure but also of unimaginable horror and cosmic evil.

It all starts with a sea captain trying to sell a strange specimen to Dr Eric Lane. Dr Lane is a biologist and medical researcher with a special interest in the more gruesome kinds of diseases. He is convinced that the answer to the conquest of disease can be found by studying diseases in the lower animals. As a result he has gained a reputation for being willing to pay high prices for anything strange that may be found in the sea. And what Captain Anderson has found is very strange indeed. It looks like the missing link between reptiles and birds. A well-preserved specimen of such a long-extinct creature is exciting enough but the really startling thing about this one is that Captain Anderson swears the creature was alive fifteen minuted before he hooked it. What’s even stranger is that upon examining the specimen Dr Lane is inclined to believe the grizzled old sea dog is telling the truth.

Dr Lane offers to do better than just buying the creature. He will finance an expedition to the place where Anderson found it (Dr Lane is extremely rich having been a successful businessman before taking up science full-time). Captain Anderson is delighted because for him the expedition will serve another purpose. He has reason to believe that the spot in question, on the shores of the Antarctic, contains not just strange animals but oil. Oil in very large quantities.

Dr Lane persuades his friend Drake to accompany the expedition. Drake is an expert in deciphering ancient inscriptions in the form of pictograms. Dr Lane wants him along because of some photographs that Captain Anderson’s first mate Old Hansen took, photographs of apparently very ancient inscriptions. Such inscriptions are not what you generally expect to find in Antarctica. Anderson and Hansen will be part of the expedition as will Dr Lane’s daughter Edith. Edith proves to be extremely useful, being an expert flyer. This is to be a high-tech expedition with its own aircraft.

What the expedition finds proves to be stranger than anyone could have expected although Dr Lane already has his suspicions, having noticed some very odd features about that creature Captain Anderson sold him. What they find is not merely strange but terrifying enough to threaten their collective sanity. They find dinosaurs, they find a lost civilisation, but they also discover a horrifying history of madness and evil.

The parallels between this novel and Lovecraft’s much better-known story really are quite striking. 

Taine’s prose style lacks the baroque excessiveness of Lovecraft but it’s quite serviceable. Taine adds quite a bit of humour to leaven the horror, much of the humour being provided by the first mate Ole Hansen, an indefatigable amateur scientist much given to bizarre and outlandish theories (some of which turn out to be surprisingly plausible). Hansen is a genuinely amusing character so the comic relief isn’t really irritating. 

Taine also shows himself well able to match better-known writers when it comes to flights of the imagination on an epic scale. The science is not always terribly convincing although it’s more plausible that that found in some other celebrated stories in this genre.

If you’re a fan of lost world adventures The Greatest Adventure is well worth seeking out. Very entertaining, and highly recommended.

Zenith Rand, Planet Vigilante

Zenith Rand, Planet Vigilante is a slim collection of three short stories by Richard Tooker published in the pulp magazine Mystery Adventure Magazine between June and October 1936. They’re science fiction adventure stories, or perhaps it would be more accurate to classify them as what would later come to be called Sword and Planet fiction.

The publication of Zenith Rand, Planet Vigilante by Black Dog Books marks the first appearance of these stories in book form.

Richard Tooker (1902-1988) was an American whose work appeared sporadically in pulp magazines during the 1920s and 1930s. He continued to write in a number of different genres throughout his life.

Zenith Rand is a space pilot of the Terran Star Patrol in the fiftieth century. He’s a Buck Rogers type hero although the stories seem to revolve as much around sex as adventure. The first story, Zenith Rand, Planet Vigilante, sets up his relationship with Sandra Yates. She figures in all three stories as both the love interest and a daring heroine in her own right. She is a Valkyr, a female space pilot, and she is as adept at blasting monsters with her pyradine pistol as any man. In the fiftieth century women have achieved equality with men, which means they get to fly spaceships and blow stuff up although they do not allow this to interfere with their femininity. They also get to wear skimpy uniforms that reveal more than they conceal.

This is not, however, a future of free love. Monogamy is the rule.

Zenith and Sandra start out as antagonists but that’s only because they haven’t admitted to themselves that they’re madly in love. 

Zenith’s first adventure takes place on Camia, the moon of the planet Orthos. Zenith is battling bloodthirsty hordes of the dreaded and implacable, and sex-crazed, Camian goat-women. He is running low on ammunition for his pyradine pistol and things are looking grim. His only hope of survival is that a Terran Star Patrol ship will come to his rescue. He is relieved when one appears, although he’s not so pleased when he discovers it’s piloted by Sandra Yates, the woman who corned him. However he’s in no position to refuse her help. Unfortunately our intrepid hero and heroine get themselves captured by the ravening and lust-crazed goat-women.

The goat-women completely dominate the small numbers of males of their species that they have allowed to survive, strictly for breeding purposes. Having captured Zenith and Sandra they have decide that the most entertaining use to which they can be put is to force Zenith and one of their own males to fight for Sandra. Sandra is imprisoned in a cage. The winner of the fight will get to join her in the cage to enjoy the spoils of victory. Zenith and Sandra having finally realised they are in love Zenith is determined that he will be the winner.

The second adventure, Revenge on Scylla, takes Zenith and another space pilot named (appropriately as we will learn) Death Lamson to the slime seas of the planet Scylla where they must do battle with the serpent-men to rescue Sandra. The serpent-men are bad enough but Zenith soon finds that he has an even bigger problem on his hands with Death Lamson, who had been a rival for Sandra’s affections. Lamson wants to rescue Sandra, but he intends to have her for himself.

The third story, Angels of Oorn, sees Zenith facing his most dangerous enemy yet, the ethereal inhabitants of the planet who look like angels but have the souls of devils. One look from these creatures transforms the victim into a lust-crazed madman. Or madwoman. A second glance is even worse, and a third results in complete psychosis and death. Zenith’s mission is to rescue the three members of a scientific expedition but he soon discovers that one of them, the beautiful Valkyr Sibyl Striker, has already had her first taste of the erotic madness induced by the inhabitants and Sibyl now has only one thought - she wants Zenith! Resisting the advances of a lust-maddened Valkyr is almost impossible and Zenith has the misfortune to get a glimpse into the eyes of one of the angel creatures. He is determined to resist the effects, but the only way he can do so is if Sandra turns up.

Now you might think this all sounds rather trashy. And you’d be dead right. These stories are incredibly trashy. They are however so unashamedly trashy that you can’t help admiring their sheer brazenness. And although there’s a lot of titillation the stories also have a great deal of action. There’s the kind of manic energy that makes even trashy pulp stories rather exhilarating.

There’s not the slightest regard for scientific accuracy but Tooker did have a knack for creating interesting imaginary worlds peopled by fascinatingly bizarre creatures. Angels of Oorn is the best of the three stories, largely because the angelic erotic mind vampires are a genuinely inventive idea.

The stories in Zenith Rand, Planet Vigilante are very trashy indeed but if you don’t mind this they’re enjoyably exuberant fun. Recommended for fans of sword and planet adventures liberally laced with sleaze.

The Necromancer

In her satire of the gothic novel, Northanger Abbey, one of Jane Austen’s characters recommends seven “horrid novels” to her friend. For many years it was assumed that Austen had made up the titles but in fact Austen knew her gothic literature (one suspects she was rather a fan) and all seven are real books. First published in 1794, Peter Teuthold’s The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest was one of these seven books.

Teuthold claimed the book to be a translation from the German of Lawrence Flammenberg (real name Carl Friedrich Kahlert). It had been assumed that Teuthold made this claim to give the book a more German flavour but apparently it really was a translation.

There has been a certain amount of interest in these “horrid novels” and all are currently in print although information on the authors is hard to come by.

The Necromancer has a bewilderingly complex structure. It is a series of tales within tales within tales. This can be seen as a flaw but 19th century gothic novelists liked to use similar structures to give the impression of a series of eyewitness accounts.

To attempt to describe the plot in any detail would only cause more confusion. You just have to go with it.

The central figure in all the tales is Volkert the Necromancer although this is not immediately apparent since he appears in various disguises and under several false names. After a while you learn to assume that any elderly man with a mysterious or sinister air to him is probably Volkert, and you’re usually correct.

Volkert is a sergeant in the Austrian Army who has dabbled in the occult for many years. He has found it to be a profitable sideline but a dangerous one as he has found himself more and more deeply enmeshed in crime as a result. Volkert is both a necromancer and a con-man. While several of the narrators believe that Volkert really possesses supernatural powers it is clear that most if not all of the supernatural events in which he is involved are elaborate frauds.

Of course there has to be a moral message, and that message is that a life devoted to such swindles will be a life of increasing moral degradation.

Jane Austen’s heroines would have been well pleased with this novel. There are ruined castles, dungeons, hidden passages, haunted inns, executions, duels and numerous ghostly manifestations. There are thrills and chills. There’s gothic atmosphere laid on as thickly as anyone could possibly desire. Necromancers were seemingly much in demand in 18th century Germany, for purposes both honest and dishonest. Usually the latter.

This is certainly not one of the classics of the genre but it has its own bizarre charm. Worth a read. It's also worth seeking out another of Austen's horrid novels, The Castle of Wolfenbach.

Radio-Terror

Eugene Thébault’s 1929 science fiction novel Radio-Terror (Radio-Terreur, Grand Roman du Mystère) is pure pulp fiction fun.

This is a mad scientist story on the grand scale. I begins with Paris being terrorised by strange radio messages, messages that drive every other broadcast off the airwaves. The unknown voice threatens nothing less than the destruction of civilisation. The populace is at first inclined to treat the threats as a joke, until the voice presents with them incontrovertible evidence of his ability to translate his threats into reality.

Fortunately civilisation is by no means defenceless. The great Professor Mazelier and his talented and devoted assistant Monsieur Gribal are determined to foil the plans of the evil genius. But just who is this monster of evil? It doesn’t take long to establish the undoubted fact that the man behind these sinister menaces is the Marquis de Saint-Imier, and that the marquis is both insane and brilliant.

It is clear that the marquis is a master of the scientific arts, a man who can harness the power of radiation and project his powers over great distances. He can not only cause destruction at any point he chooses, he can also observe his enemies’ activities no matter where they might be.

Professor Mazelier is also no stranger to the powers of radiation and has technologies at his command that are the equal of anything possessed by the marquis, but he and the marquis are involved in a kind of arms race, both parties seeking to constantly improve their technologies in a deadly game of catch-up.

The marquis soon gives deadly proof of both his abilities and his willingness to use these abilities. The fate of western civilisation hangs in the balance.

This novel was translated by Fletcher Pratt, at the time a well-known author of fantasy literature, and was published in English by Wonder Stories in 1933.

It’ a fine example of the richness and diversity of early 20th century French science fiction. It’s all very breathless and exciting and it’s not meant to be taken too seriously. This is not exactly hard science fiction. As a mad scientist tale it’s great silly pulpy fun.

Unlike most of Black Coat Press’s publications this one includes only the briefest of introductions but this is is still a very enjoyable tale.

The Grifters, by Jim Thompson

The Grifters, published in 1963, is one of Jim Thompson’s later works. To say anything about the plot would be to risk spoilers, so I’ll just say it’s about a young con-man, Roy, and his mother, who works for a big-time racketeer. While his plotting is extremely skilful the characters matter much more, and in this novel he creates three memorable and exceptionally complex characters. Even the nurse, a relatively minor character, has a depth and complexity you don’t expect in crime fiction.

The descriptions of the various cons are fascinating – Roy is strictly a short-con operator, practising small-scale deceptions that rely as much as anything on confusing the victim so he ends up not even being certain if he’s actually been swindled or not. They’re small-scale cons, but if you’re skilled enough and pull off enough of them you can over time amass a very large amount of money, and Roy is very good indeed at his work. Roy’s mother is also involved in swindling people, but on a larger scale through crooked racetrack gambling operations. Doing this kind of thing for a living puts you into a world where nothing is genuine, where nothing and nobody can be trusted, where duplicity invades every waking minute of your life.

Thompson is also a master of the hard-boiled prose style, and the combination of this and his adeptness at characterisation and his gift for irony would have been enough to make him a very fine crime writer. Thompson adds other elements, however, elements you don’t expect to find in a crime novel. In both The Grifters and The Getaway, the only two Thompson books I’ve read so far, there’s also more than a touch of strangeness. One moment you’re reading straightforward genre fiction, then suddenly it seems you’re into the realm of weird fiction, or (in the case of the ending to The Getaway) even of horror. It’s like a film noir that suddenly turns into an episode of The Twilight Zone. In the case of The Grifters that happens during the brief flashback to the life that Moira (Roy’s girlfriend) led with The Farmer.

In Thompson’s work I get the feeling that the criminal plots and the underworld settings are just a convenient too for a writer who is pursuing other agendas, a writer who wants to take us into some of the darkest recesses of the human psyche. He explores some very dark corners of the soul indeed in The Grifters.

I believe this is considered to be one of his lesser novels. If a book as good as this can be considered a lesser work then I can’t wait to read some of his better stuff! Perhaps even more than Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett this is an author whose novels deserve, indeed demand, to be considered as major works of both literature and pulp fiction.

The Vampire and the Devil’s Son, by Ponson du Terrail

Pierre-Alexis Ponson du Terrail enjoyed immense popularity in mid-19th century France. This was the great age of the romans feuilletons, potboilers published in serial form. Rocambole was his best-known work. The Vampire and the Devil’s Son (La Baronne trépassée) which appeared in book form in 1852 is of exceptional interest.

The romans feuilletons followed a definite formula, combining melodrama, sensation and romance. Plot coherence or realism were not essential and these were qualities that Ponson largely ignored. As long as they provided thrills and entertainment no-one was going to complain that the stories made little sense.

The Vampire and the Devil’s Son follows the misadventures of the Baron de Nossac. He is a typical nobleman of his time - brave, dissolute, feckless and charming. And in 1723, as this tale commences, more than a little financially embarrassed. He is awaiting confirmation of his appointment as governor of Brittany, but as that seems likely to fall though he decides it might be wise to find himself a rich wife. The daughter of a wealthy tax-farmer seems a suitable choice. To his surprise he finds that she’s not only rich but also rather charming, the sort of woman with whom he could easily fall in love. As we soon discover, de Nossac has a remarkable propensity for falling in love

There is however a complication. The Baron’s mistress has extracted from an unusual promise, and being a gentleman he must keep this promise. He must agree to be her save for a period of 24 hours, at any tome of her choosing. It is particularly unfortunate that the time she dies choose is his wedding night. Very unfortunate indeed - his bride is so upset she leaves his chateau in the middle of the night, catches a chill and dies.

The Baron’s adventures now take a veery strange turn indeed. He encounters the mysterious Black Huntsman, who claims to be nothing less than the son of the Devil himself. And he encounters Gretchen, a woman who resembles his dead wife to an uncanny degree, and who proves to be a vampire. But there are many many plot twists still to come, his late wife proves to have more than one double, many of the characters he encounters are not at all who they appear to be, and de Nossac begins to seriously doubt his own sanity.

The reader is also left wondering about the reality of the events described, or at least wondering about their true nature.

Ponson du Terrail was very much influenced by the gothic fictions of Ann Radcliffe but this is gothic with added weird hallucinatory qualities.

Translator Brian Stableford proves both an introduction and an afterword to the Black Coat Press edition and makes some extremely interesting observations in this odd novel. He points out that the author was to some degree constrained by the conventions of the gothic as well as the more general literary convention of his day, and suggests that a modern reader might well interpret the story quite differently as compared to a reader in 1852. Stableford sees the author as being on the verge of several innovative breakthroughs, but being unable to carry them through in a complete manner.

A strange but highly diverting little tale, with some genuinely macabre moments. One of the many forgotten treasures of 19th century French gothic. Highly recommended.