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Post by dem bones on Jun 13, 2008 9:58:24 GMT
Virgil Finlay Thorp McClusky is one of the unsung heroes of Weird Tales. I know nothing about him beyond the half dozen stories of his I've read. Here are three that are well worth looking out for, and I'll try add something on his blob of slime outing The Crawling Horror when I've had a swift refresh. The Graveyard Horror: (WT, March 1941: reprinted in Kurt Singer's 2nd Ghost Omnibus) Karl Maerckleun jumped off a bridge into the river with a steel weight tied to his ankles when Sven Nurmi swore that he would never allow his daughter, Jorma, to marry a Pennsylvanian Dutchman. Jorma follows him to the grave shortly afterward, allegedly having died of a broken heart, but Chris Petersen, the local undertaker, thinks there's something far more sinister to it than that. The narrator, Kurt, sceptical at first, is eventually recruited to dig up the dead Karl's body after it becomes apparent that Jorma's sister, Hildur, is wasting away in the same fashion. Crucifix are torn from breasts by their wearers, undead bodies exhumed and staked, and still they won't lie down. The rousing, doom-laden finale - in which an undead, spurting embalming fluid from her staked breast rises from the tomb - marks this as one of my all-time favourite pulp vampire romps. The Lamia In The Penthouse: (WT, May 1952) When he leaves his vicious, depraved slut of a wife, Mary, Jack Winters, a successful pulp writer from Idaho, moves in with New Yorker McClusky and attempts to exorcise her memory at the typewriter by composing The Lamia In The Penthouse, which comes true even as he's working on it. "I had one terrible desire- to meet a woman more evil than Mary, to make her fall madly in love with me, and then to spurn and humiliate her as Mary had spurned and humiliated me. I didn't care how evil she was. If she had been a demoness straight from Hell, I would have worshipped the challenge. In fact, I felt cheated that lamias and succubi don't exist". Famous last words .... He receives a telephone call from one 'Innocente Lamia', inviting him to her penthouse. What happens there causes the death of the pulpster and McClusky's incarceration in an asylum for his murder (!) after he is discovered wandering in Stuyvesant Square Park, where Innocente's flat would have stood had it ever existed, the body of Winters close at hand. The Considerate Hosts: (WT, Dec 1939: Reprinted in Phil Strong's The Other Side) On the way to Rock Falls, Marvin's car breaks down at midnight during a dreadful storm. He chances upon an isolated house and is ushered in by an odd couple, John and Grace Reed. They're ghosts. Reed fried in the electric chair 21 years ago for a murder he didn't commit, and his wife took her own life shortly afterward. Now they're intent on destroying Governor Lyons who framed John. Marvin, initially believing himself to be in the company of maniacs, talks them out of taking their revenge. When next he drives past the house it is a ruin, obviously not having been lived in these past two decades.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Jan 21, 2023 16:22:18 GMT
LOOT OF THE VAMPIRE: The Occult Cases of Police Commissioner Ethredge and Detective-Lieutenant Peters Vol. 1 Blurb: A COMPULSIVELY-READABLE AND INNOVATIVE TERROR NOVEL FROM THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE LEGENDARY WEIRD TALES, THE SUPREME SHUDDER PULP OF ALL TIME. All the New York newspapers blare the headlines when the city's leading jeweler is found dead in his office and his vault looted of all its best jewelry and most valuable gems ā but there are no signs of forced entry or tampering with the locks. Because of the eminence of the victim, Police Commissioner Ethredge is immediately called to the crime scene, accompanied by his able assistant, Detective-Lieutenant Peters. After a brief examination, the coroner states that the jeweler has died of massive, sudden blood loss although there is no blood at the scene and no needle marks or stab wounds to explain it. Ethredge is baffled, but when they are alone on the ride back to police headquarters, Detective-Lieutenant Peters, who is widely read, offers a possible theory that would explain the crime. But it is so outrĆ© and horrifying in its implications that Commissioner Ethredge dismisses it out of hand. But that night when he and his fiancĆ©e, Mary Roberts, who is as beautiful as she is brainy, attend a society party, Ethredge begins to change his mind when he meets Count Woerz, a powerful hypnotist and prognosticator, and master of the super-smooth veiled threat. Commissioner Ethredge and Detective-Lieutenant Peters investigations of Woerz, assisted by Mary Roberts, lead to chilling discoveries, and finally a desperate chase by aeroplane and a final murderous confrontation aboard a yacht far out to sea. As a special bonus this rare reprinting of "loot of the vampire," horrormeister Thorp McClusky's classic two-part serial from Weird Tales is accompanied by its sequel, "The Woman in Room 607," the second Commissioner Ethredge and Detective-Lieutenant Peters occult adventure. 111 pages, Kindle Edition It says volume 1. I don't see a volume 2. Does Ethredge appear in any other stories?
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Jan 21, 2023 16:25:11 GMT
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