THE DIVINERS by Libba Bray

This was another library find, picked up at random. But when I got home, I found it on a list of recommended books that I'd jotted down long ago and almost forgotten. This is an entertaining tale of murder and the occult set in 1920s New York.

Evie O'Neill is a wealthy flapper from the town of Zenith, OH (nice tip of the hat to Sinclair Lewis there) who has a psychic power: she can hold a person's possession and get psychic impressions of them and see their secrets. Blurting out a local's dirty secret at a party, she's shipped off to New York to stay with her Uncle William, who runs a museum of the occult with his assistant, Jericho.

Evie makes friends with the downtrodden Mabel, the child of social-reformer parents, Theta Knight, a Ziefeld showgirl, and her best friend, gay pianist Henry, pickpocket Sam (who's more than he appears to be) and Harlem numbers runner Memphis Campbell. Everyone has their secrets, people sometimes clash, but everyone's lives converge.

A series of murders is striking New York, with serious occult overtones, and Will is called in by the police to assist. Evie uses her psychic powers to get information, and investigates. Evie is madcap and goofy, but inside is haunted by the death of her older brother in WWI and her parents' rejection of her. She has repeated dreams of him and it becomes clear that he's trying to communicate something to her, but she can't tell what. Memphis, who plays a large role in this, is haunted by his memory of having healing powers as a child, but is also protective of his younger brother Isaiah, who has psychic powers of his own, and is dealing with the death of his mother and his family's seeming abandonment by his father.

Their paths converge as more murders occur, and clues point to a racist church in the suburbs, then to a former cultist's compound upstate (actually a fairly accurate depiction of such cults back in the day). There's fake (and real) spiritualists, weird revelations, and hints of government conspiracies and shady operations.

It's interesting that there's a lot of world-building going on here, and lots of wheels are set in motion that are still turning by the end of the book. In fact, after the main threat of the novel is resolved, there's still a lot going on that will presumably be continued in a sequel, Lair of Dreams, and one presumes there's an entire series in the works.

It's long, nearly 600 pages, but it moves quickly and I was able to complete it in a few days. It's certainly fun, if sometimes uneven, and so much left hanging at the end. (I tend to prefer books that are self-contained.) Still, it's new and different, and the Roaring 20s setting is well-researched. Worth checking out.

Two from the Library

My holiday reading was pretty shuddersome, as usual. I scrounged in the interlibrary loan database and found Hugh Lamb's first anthology of Victorian reprints, and dived in.

It runs the gamut of Victorian style. M. P. Shiel's "Xelucha" and de Maupassant's "The Mother of Monsters" are both on the Decadent side, while Elizabeth Braddon't "The Mystery at Fernwood" and Mrs. Molesworth's "The Shadow in the Moonlight" are rather sentimental. There's "My Favorite Murder" by Ambrose Bierce, always in a class by himself, and the same goes for Le Fanu's "Madam Crowl's Ghost."

It's a good anthology, although now a couple of the stories, namely "Madam Crowl's Ghost" and Grant Allen's "Wolverden Tower", are now familiar staples. Some are ghostly, like "The Black Lady of Brin Tor" by Guy Boothby, "The Dead Man of Varley Grange" by an unknown author.

To run them down quickly: "Xelucha," by M. P. Shiel, is a story of Decadent fascination and a femme fatale who may or may not be supernatural in nature. Charles Dickens' "The Black Veil" is a tale of madness and obsession. Braddon's "The Mystery at Fernwood" is a gothic story of madness and family secrets. Boothby's "The Black Lady of Brin Tor" is a ghost story with a tragic twist.

"The Mother of Monsters" by de Maupassant is fairly nasty and cruel, but also amazingly good. "The Murderer's Violin" by Erckmann-Chatrian has a visit by a ghost but is mostly about madness and inspiration. Richard Marsh's "The Mask" has a man stalked by an insane murderer who is a master of disguise. The anonymous "The Dead Man of Varley Grange" is a supernatural tale of ghosts and curses. Bierce's "My Favorite Murder" is a sardonic tale of murder and cruelty.

"The Shadow in the Moonlight" by Mrs. Molesworth is a nice little tale of a haunting. Mrs. Riddell's "The Last of Squire Ennismore" is a tale of hauntings and a visitation by Old Nick. "The Red Warder of the Reef" by J. A. Barry is a conte cruel of an escaped murderer getting his just punishment. "Wolverden Tower" by Grant Allen is a chilling gothic ghost story, as is Le Fanu's "Madam Crowl's Ghost," which also deserves notice as a dialect tale that's actually readable. (I normally LOATHE dialect tales.) And last comes Dick Donovan's "The Cave of Blood," a tale of supernatural revenge and really quite lurid.

This is a fun collection and worth hunting down, as is any anthology edited by Lamb, in my opinion.

For something of a more recent vintage, I dived into Kim Newman's The Man from the Diogenes Club.

In Kim Newman's universe, the Diogenes Club (introduced in the Sherlock Holmes tale "The Greek Interpreter") is actually a super-secret arm of the British Intelligence services, focused on investigating the weird and outre. The stories in this book center on a 70s agent Richard Jeperson, and his assistants, the sexy Vanessa and former cop Fred Regent.

Jeperson is gaudy, flashy dresser and is obviously a nod to the BBC program Jason King, which featured Peter Wyngarde as a novelist turned sleuth who was also quite the 70s dandy. The Diogenes Club employs people with "Talents", e.g. psychic powers, or those able to cope with dealing with the supernatural or abnormal.

The first story, "The End of the Pier Show," introduces Fred Regent as an undercover cop infiltrating a skinhead gang, who gets caught up in supernatural hijinx at a seaside resort. He's called in to join Jeperson and Vanessa as they investigate a weird bit of time slippage, and it turns out to be some people trying to drag Britain back in time to the 1940s...and there's a nice speech about how yeah, it was good in some ways, but very bad in others.

"You Don't Have to Be Mad...." involves a series of bizarre deaths connected to a mental hospital/corporate retreat that turns out to be a recruiting ground for psychotic assassins. This story introduces a character named only "Mrs. Empty," a woman devoid of compassion or feeling, and her identity comes clear in a later story. "Tomorrow Town" is a rather straightforward murder mystery story in an outre setting, a futuristic utopian community that's not quite working out. Both these stories have big weirdness going on but are essentially mundane, lacking any supernatural content.

But it comes back in "Egyptian Avenue," when some hauntings in a picturesque cemetery turn out to be a warning of present danger. In "Soho Golem" a series of murders in London's red-light district seem to be connected to the activities of an anti-smut crusader. "The Serial Murder" has the sleuths moving forward into 1980 and investigating a weird set of deaths that happen simultaneously with depictions of similar deaths on a TV soap opera. Jeperson, Regent, and Vanessa all turn the tables on the killer, who is using supernatural forces and setting up an occult murder-for-hire racket.

"The Man Who Got Off the Ghost Train" is a flashback to Jeperson's first real adventure in the 1950s, as he sets off with some fellow agents to investigate a supposedly haunted express train to Scotland. Not only does he battle an unearthly menace, but it also chronicles his first encounter with Vanessa, and give a humorous glimpse into early Cold War politics.

The last story (and longest) is "Swellhead", set in roughly the early days of the 21st century, as a retired Jeperson is called on to join a team investigating some odd goings-on connected to a remote island near the Faeroes. Joining them is a mysterious man who has weird mental powers, and the island hides a bizarre retro-hi-tech installation that resembles something from one of the more flamboyant James Bond movies. The story is actually quite thought-provoking and hearkens back to some of my adolescent imaginings...and ends with the promise of Jeperson returning for more in the modern world.

So this is a definite go-and-read. It's tons of fun. Sadly, it's out of print, but used copies and library copies are out there, and one can only hope that an ebook edition will come along sometime...

THE FIGURE IN THE SHADOWS by John Bellairs

It's 1949, the autumn after the events in THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS. Lewis Barnavelt has a new best friend, Rose Rita Pottinger. He also has a bully problem, in the form of tough Woody Mingo, who wants to make Lewis miserable.

Trying to cheer Lewis up after an encounter with Woody, Uncle Jonathan opens up Grandpa Barnavelt's trunk, containing things from his Civil War days, including a "lucky" coin that he won in a poker game, and was wounded over. Lewis hangs on to the coin, hoping in some vague way it will bring him luck. However, in the night he hears a piece of mail being delivered; puzzled, he goes down into the hall and finds a postcard with his name on it, and a single word: "Venio," which Lewis knows means "I come." The card quickly vanishes.

Later, Lewis and Rose Rita, poking around in Uncle Jonathan's library, finds Mrs. Zimmermann's doctoral dissertation, on magical amulets. She includes a prayer/spell that will sense a powerful amulet, and Lewis uses it to test the lucky coin...and it jumps in his hand. And things get stranger from there....

THE FIGURE IN THE SHADOWS (1975) is a decent sequel to HOUSE, and goes more into Lewis' personal problems than before. Rose Rita is an entertaining character and is well drawn; she will stick around for the rest of the series and take center stage a few times. It's a decent story, the sort of thing that would become fairly cliched in various media (bullied kid turns to magic to defend self, with horrific results), and Bellairs would recycle the concept later in another series.

It has some problems, though. There's a lot of back story around the amulet and the mysterious ghost that stalks Lewis that comes out at the end, and it's mostly conjecture on the part of the other characters. It would have been better if there had been clearer clues to what was going on and identity of the spirit. The situation with Woody Mingo is never resolved, which reflects real life, but he also never shows up again in the series. Mrs. Zimmermann loses her powers after a magical duel with the spirit....how? How did it become so powerful when she could battle Selenna Izzard and come out on top? Bellairs doesn't always seem to have a clear idea of how his universe's magic works. And I really disliked how someone JUST HAPPENS to have a magic item in their pocket that is just the right thing to use against the spirit. And although it's given to one of the characters, they never use it again and it's forgotten about. (That is a weakness with Bellairs...in some of his other books, characters end up with powerful items by the end that seem to vanish between books and never show up again.)

Still, it's a fun read, with some chilly atmosphere, as it mostly takes place in winter. Good for when the summer heat gets to you.

THE AMULET by Michael McDowell

Michael McDowell (1950-1999) was one of those great authors of the glossy paperback horror novels that were all over the place in the late 70s and early 80s. Browse your local used-book emporium and you may find a few of his works. Get them.

McDowell's been out of print for a while but is slowly being rediscovered and re-evaluated. His horrors could be schlocky but there was also a wry humor behind them. He was also a screenwriter, having wrote BEETLEJUICE and worked on THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, and taught screenwriting. He was praised by Stephen King and other notables.

The Amulet is his first published book. The first few chapters are an overview of its setting, the impoverished town of Pine Cone, AL. We're also introduced early on to Dean Howell, a character who certainly doesn't DO much, but so much of the novel revolves around him. It's 1965, and he's been drafted to serve in Vietnam, and is undergoing basic training at a nearby military base when the gun he's training with explodes in his face and maims him horribly.

He's brought home to his wife, Sarah, and his mother, Jo. Sarah is a much put-upon woman; although she never says so herself, it's more than obvious that her marriage was a mistake. Dean was obviously not mature enough to be a good husband, and was very likely to be physically abusive. His mother is bitter and hateful, and also lazy and arrogant. Sarah herself has a job on the line at the biggest employer in town, a munitions plant....the same plant that made the gun that exploded in Dean's hands.

Dean is brought home, a bandaged, vegetative mess; they have no idea if he'll ever be functional again. Jo is of course obsessive about him, insisting that he communicates with her. Sarah isn't so sure, and her dissatisfaction with her lot becomes more and more evident with each passing page.

A junior executive from the plant, who knew Dean long ago, comes to pay a visit, and as he leaves, Jo presses a strange necklace on him "as a present for the wife." He takes it home and gives it to his wife....whose behavior changes. She serves the family a poisoned dinner, then sets the house on fire and sits calmly in her bedroom as it burns down around her.

And that's just the start.

The amulet manages to go from person to person in the town, seemingly turning up of its own will, and every person who wears it becomes possessed by a violent, homicidal rage at the people who annoy them in small ways. And really, it's a violent, bloody dissection of relations between the sexes, the classes, and the races in small-town Alabama. Nobody is spared.

Sarah suspects something is up, based on Jo's behavior, even resorting to a ouija board with her neighbor. And it all comes to a head when the amulet finally makes it to the munitions plant...

It's good gory fun, to be sure, although I was annoyed by one thing: we never learn where the amulet came from or how Jo got it or was spared its curse. There's hints that Jo was responsible for at least one murder in the past, but that's all it was. I know, it's minor, but I wanted more background.

Still, the sociological undercurrents make this worth reading, and it is very entertainingly written. McDowell's tone when describing the town walks a delicate line between being nostalgic on one side and mocking and contemptuous on the other. That's quite an achievement.

You may be lucky to happen upon an old copy somewhere, but if not, it's available as an ebook from Valancourt, with a new forward by Poppy Z. Brite.

THE SUPERNATURAL TALES OF FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN, VOL 1

In the wild days of 1988, the honorable Jessica Amanda Salmonson edited a two-volume set of the supernatural works of Fitz-James O'Brien, one of the great overlooked American authors of the weird. And she did an amazing job, digging stories that hadn't seen the light of day in nearly a century. Volume 1 is dedicated to "Macabre Tales."

"But...but I know who Fitz-James O'Brien is!" I hear you cry. Sure, he's famous for "The Diamond Lens," a deservedly famous weird tale. Or maybe you know "What Was It?", another notable tale which was also probably the first to deal with invisibility. But really...what beyond that do you know?

Fitz-James O'Brien (1826? - 1862) was born in Ireland to a well-off family, but had a taste for high living that proved ruinous to his inheritance. Little is known of his life before he emigrated to American shores, but it is believed he was well-educated and fairly well-traveled. He came to New York in 1852 nearly broke, and set out to be a writer. He had some success, and was a noted dandy and man-about-town. He was also gay, which many don't talk about, and was a fixture in New York's gay bohemian circles, along with Walt Whitman. He was a scrapper, getting into a number of fights, and was a noted wit. He joined the Union army in the Civil War, was wounded, and died of tetanus in Cumberland, MD, on April 6th, 1862, and is buried in New York.

Now...for the stories!

"The Lost Room" is a great, nightmarish tale of a man who finds his boardinghouse quarters bizarrely altered; Salmonson wonders if it wasn't founded on O'Brien's experiences of moving here and there when he was broke and desperate. "The Child That Loved a Grave" is a short-short about a morbid child that reminds me of Lovecraft in his early poetic attempts.

"The Diamond Lens" is an inarguable classic, and becomes even more interesting in the context of O'Brien's life and his yearning for unattainable perfection. "The Pot of Tulips" is very nicely written, but lacks some of the unique bizzarerie of some of the other tales, in that it's a rather standard ghost story. "The Bohemian" tells a tale of treasure-hunting and mesmerism, still little understood at the time.

"Seeing the World" is a parable of the downsides of the artistic temperament which sees the world a bit TOO clearly. "What Was It?" is a landmark tale of a house haunted by a very tangible, yet invisible presence. "The Wondersmith" is probably the longest story in the collection, a tale in the style of E. T. A. Hoffmann, about a toymaker who plots with a witch to bring his toy soldiers to life with the aid of evil spirits and wreak havoc on New Year's morning. It's got some problematic racial views; the villain is a Gypsy who is motivated by a hatred of Caucasians, blaming whites for the death of his son, who perished of alcoholism.

"A Dead Secret" is reminiscent of Ambrose Bierce, in which a desperately poor young man trades identities with a wealthy man who dies in his presence, only to be pursued by a bizarre conspiracy that will not let him rest. "A Legend of Barlagh Cave" is a sort of faux folktale involving violence and fate in a cave in Ireland. The final tale, "Jubal the Ringer," is a nicely gruesome tale in which a hunchbacked bell-ringer (Victor Hugo, anyone?) takes revenge on a beautiful, heartless woman who spurned him.

This collection is a good read. O'Brien could be a bit of a recycler, borrowing elements from Hoffmann and Hugo, but even then he'll put interesting twists on the material. But when he's original, he's ORIGINAL. And in the best of his tales you get a glimpse of what it was like to be a Bohemian in mid-1800s New York, living in boardinghouses and hanging out in raffish bars and restaurants.

Salmonson's collection is a bit hard to find these days, but it can be bought for fairly reasonable prices. A new collection of 14 tales, published by the University of Delaware Press, is available, with some never-before-published tales, but it costs $95 in hardcover and $65 for the Kindle edition. No thank you. Search out Salmonson's instead. Her commentary on the stories, and her biographical sketch of O'Brien, are excellent.

I'll be reviewing the second volume in the near future, so stay tuned.