Paul Halter's The Phantom Passage has an audacious hook. It's London (1902), and people are reporting strange occurrences. The details are similar. A madman comes out of the fog to guide the victim down Kraken Street. This, in itself, is incredible--the street doesn't exist anymore. Along Kraken, they encounter a man selling grapes, a woman… Continue reading The Phantom Passage
Ianthe (God, we don't get many Ianthes nowadays, do we?) Jerrold's The Studio Crime is the sort of competent mystery I could learn a lesson or three from. Not that it's terribly inspired, but what it does, it does very well indeed. The familiar repartee between the fact-worshiping cop and the gut-feel-worshiping sleuth is especially… Continue reading The Studio Crime
The heart and soul of Juanita Sheridan's The Chinese Chop lies in the relationship of the two main characters, Janice Cameron and Lily Wu. Janice has moved from her beloved Honolulu to the loneliness (and frigid winters) of New York City. Desperate to find a room, she meets Lily Wu. The two move into a… Continue reading The Chinese Chop
The Strange Case of the Barrington Hills Vampire coming in May, 2020 During the bitter winter of 1896, a series of savage murders plagued the town of Barrington Hills. Mutilated corpses lay buried in the snow, bloody teeth marks on the neck. Animals were found with their insides on full display. The town disintegrated into… Continue reading August Update
I'm trying to imagine what a normie would think of Carr. (Where is the theme, the character development, the story?) His novels have little in the sense of narrative momentum. The penultimate chapter starts with a character we've never met, throwing us off the problem we're so invested in and grinding things to an unbearable… Continue reading The Reader is Warned
Done and done. This week I'll be selling books at a local author fair. It'll be a good chance to see if the covers can convert passersby into readers.
In today's edition of nobody-gives-a-damn, I've made slight adjustments to the Goodnight Irene cover. It's a bit brighter, title's bigger, my name's bigger, one new review quote, and I cleaned up the remaining quotes (removed ellipses and .coms, reformatted). Anything to take time away from working on the new book. Sigh... This should be available… Continue reading Slightly revamped Irene cover
