HALLOWEEN SPECIAL, part 1: Dark Ways to Death - Peter Saxon

It may say #2 on the cover,
but this is definitely the first book.

There was a time when trash fiction was all I would read to entertain myself. I’m sure it was the logical progression for someone always interested in macabre and lurid stories. I drank up the goriest of the Grimm fairy tales as kid in grade school, moved on to horror movies then horror comics, and finally was lured by trash paperbacks sold in the spin racks still seen in the Woolworth’s of my 1970s teenage years. It’s rare I find myself dipping into the kind of thing that most people try to hide behind a newspaper when riding the bus or train, but here I go again. Dark Ways to Death (1968) was chosen for one of my many Halloween reads this year not because it’s trashy. That was just a coincidence. I knew it to be the first of the series featuring occult detectives The Guardians. Having introduced myself to the series a while ago (The Curse of Rathlaw) and enjoying its unusual use of arcane Celtic folklore, occult legends and genuine supernatural content I tracked down all the other books and planned on reading them in order. This first book is nothing like the other which I think is the penultimate book in the series.

I thought I was going to get a 1960s version of the Jules de Grandin novel The Devil’s Bride. Instead I get grotesque horror that outdoes anything Poe dreamt up, cruel sadism, graphic accounts of torture and rape, along with a heavy dose of Hammer horror movie influenced black magic and voodoo shenanigans. Oh! and let’s not forget the overly generous supply of blaxploitation and xenophobia put on display like that garish show of Christmas lights your neighbor down the street thinks is an expression of the holiday spirit. This is the nadir of Halloween reading, gang. Ready to wallow in it for a couple of paragraphs? Let’s go!

Dark Ways of Death begins with a bang and continues like a pistol packin' mama (or papa) trying to kick a meth habit. It’s a relentless story heavy on action and ghoulish incidents told episodically like a verbal comic strip. We meet the whole Guardians gang led by the mysterious Gideon Cross and his would be paramour Anne Ashby, both of whom seem to be the reincarnations of an ancient warlock and his witch lover. There is anthropology professor Stephen Kane serving as the ostensible leader though it is Gideon Cross who controls all the cases and oversees the investigations into the forces of darkness bent on wreaking havoc with the modern world...or at least the greater portion of London. Rounding out the five person team of ghostbusters and exorcists are Father John Dyball and Lionel Marks. What’s a battle against the powers of darkness without at least one person of the cloth armed with the Bible, loads of holy water, a consecrated host or two, and the law of God behind him? Lionel, on the other hand, is a private investigator and the only down to earth guy of the bunch. He's in it to make a honest buck…or rather British pound. For that extra added all-inclusive 60s vibe Lionel also serves as the token ethnic member of the Guardians. He's Jewish and we're constantly reminded of that for one reason or another as if "Peter Saxon" was reminding us that he's hip and not at all racist. The bad guys may be a West Indian voodoo cult of maniac killers but one of the good guys is a Jew. Take that, you decriers !

The crux of the plot is the rescue of a cat not a person and the whole thing just seems a self-parody of pulpy, occult-laden adventures for much of the book until two humans are put in peril. That's not to say the rescue of the hordes of caged cats isn't an admirably heroic effort (couldn't help but find an analogy to a similar scene in a Jonathan Stagge detective novel), but it's not the kind of thing that makes for gripping adult reading no matter how many stomach wrenching scenes of gore and horror are described. Inexplicably added for comic effect are scenes featuring of a cadre of thrill-seeking titled aristocrats who gatecrash, so to speak, the black magic rituals of the West Indian voodoo cult who perform their secret rites and sacrifices in the abandoned tunnels of the London underground. Inadvertently, one of the snobs manages to help rescue two of the Guardians with their inane antics by accidentally causing a blackout with perfect eleventh hour timing. My favorite lines came from the superficial Duchess of Derwentwater who says things like, "An orgy is an orgy is an orgy. Don't go all cynical and rational. How could anyone enjoy it if they thought it was just a game?" and who wants to report the voodoo revelers to the RSCPA for animal cruelty noticing only what's being done to the cat and somehow managing to overlook completely the obvious torture of the two victims before her eyes intended for human sacrifice. Ludicrous!

I know I’m making it sound like I loathed reading this book, but I didn’t. You can’t take this kind of book seriously. Ever. It’s a potboiler and it's meant to entertain and -- hopefully -- shock. Dark Ways to Death does what it's supposed to do even if it takes more than the halfway mark in its brief 143 pages to get to the genuinely thrilling moments with real human lives at stake, all of it imaginatively rendered and not without ample doses of occult lore and voodoo history dropped in to edify the ignorant masses.

Obviously, this is not literature at all. If you're a fan of this kind of stuff you get what you pay for and then some. But I say it's not worth your time or money in reading this debut unless you are really curious about the origins of the occult detective group or prefer your horror to be of the torture porn variety with an emphasis on perversity and cruelty rather than supernatural creatures and occult phenomenon.

The Guardian series definitely improves in the later volumes with the best told story coming in the last book, The Vampires of Finistere. That one will be reviewed very soon. Another "Halloween Special" review on a much more rewarding and spooky book will be posted on Halloween Day. A definite rave versus this middling book. Stay tuned.

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The Curse of Rathlaw

This is a series of books published from 1968 through 1970 in various paperback and hardcover editions centering on a group called The Guardians who run an occult detective agency. Though easy to find via online sources I rarely find them in bookstores out here. So when I came across a copy of this second book in a series I've always wanted to read I immediately grabbed it. "Peter Saxon" is a house name for at least five different writers all of whom contributed to the Sexton Blake series for Amalgamated Press. The Saxon name was also used, with two writers dreaming up the plots and three others writing the books, to market these occult thrillers featuring the Guardians. If this book is any indication of what the others are like then I am eager to read them all.

The Curse of Rathlaw (1968) is at its core an elaborate revenge story with two supernaturally powerful brothers plotting their other worldly vengeance on the Rathlaw family. Fergus Trayle, the elder and more evil of the two brothers, was caught in the act of raping a young woman by some men on a hunting expedition. They bring Trayle (known to the locals as the Hermit of Black Loch) to Sir Alistair Rathlaw, laird and bigwig in this part of Scotland, for punishment. Rathlaw sickened by the Hermit's act resorts to a rather medieval punishment and has Fergus publicly whipped and beaten. Humiliated and enraged by the brutal severity of his punishment Fergus curses Sir Alistair's family and promises that his only son will be the end of the Rathlaw line. Sir Alistair will know the prophecy is approaching fruition with the passing of two omens: 1. Alistair's brother will be struck blind and 2. a kelpie (a water spirit in the form of a horse) will appear in the area of the Rathlaw estate. Following those two events Sir Alistair should be prepared for the worst -- the death of his son. Sir Alistair is frightened enough after the fulfillment of the two omens to seek out the Guardians hoping they will be able to prevent the third and final act in the Hermit's revenge.

Kelpie statues in Chicago (©2012 Andy Scott)

Fergus and his brother Cosmo are thoroughly wicked men ready to use and abuse everyone they encounter. Cosmo makes his living as a medium and he thinks nothing of using his hypnotic powers to manipulate a woman still in love with her long dead lover into believing he wants her to join him in eternity. So she offs herself, but not before signing over her entire fortune to Cosmo in order that "he might continue his good work in psychical research." Poor woman. That's only a sampling of the nastiness the Trayle brothers indulge in.

The real highlight of the book is the emphasis on Scottish folklore, Celtic superstition and weird occult practices. Among the many included are the Su-Dith, a superhuman dwarf; frequent divination using radiesthesia; and a mute boy who has the uncanny power called "The Horseman's Word" that he uses to summon a water kelpie. The scenes with the boy and his mentally unhinged mother are the best in the book I think. Too bad much of the story is spent on the somewhat tiresome evildoing of Cosmo and Fergus of a kind we've all read of before. Overall, the book is more in line with an action horror movie from the 1960s and has many sequences that will seem all too familiar with anyone well versed in the genre. The finale, especially, brings to mind the occult ritual scenes in The Wicker Man, The Witches, The Devil Rides Out and many, many other horror flicks and stories.

Below is the correct series order by original publication date. Anything else you may find on the internet purporting to be the order of this series is incorrect. Part of the problem is that a number order for the series was printed on the covers of US paperback publisher Berkley's editions of the books. All of these editions were published in the 1970s and they are mostly second printings of the books. The Killing Bone cannot possibly be the first book because Dark Ways to Death was published in hardcover in the UK in 1968. Caveat lector!

The Guardians series
Dark Ways to Death (1968)
Through the Dark Curtain (1968)
The Curse of Rathlaw (1968)
The Killing Bone (1969)
The Haunting of Alan Mais (1969)
The Vampires of Finistere (1970)