R. R. Ryan

[timothymayer]

This author has managed to elude me for 25 years, every since I saw the name on a "Best Of" list. Now I see there is one expensive reprint of ECHO OF A CURSE.
Has anyone had the opportunity to read any of his books? I'm told they fetch astronomical prices when they do turn up.

[dem]

Hi Rummah

See the Charles Birkin Bibliography thread from this point onward. Not only Ryan but Frank Walford, J. U, Nicolson .......

Love your Dark Sanctuary blog, by the way!

[jamesdoig]

Hee's the link to the Bloomsbury auction - I was wrong on two counts: the books is The Subjugated Beast and the price was 1,700 quid. If the price isn't a one-off it means Ryan is one of the more collectable twentieth century authors - quite extraordinary really.

www.bloomsburyauctions.com/detail/672/992.0

[timothymayer]

*cough*cough* gag*gag*
1700? How much?
I really need to check back here more often.
I did manage to get one of limited edition reprints of ECHO OF A CURSE, but SUBJUGATED is really our of my price range.

[jamesdoig]

Did the post I just sent disappear without trace? Anyway, what I said was you can read an article on RR Ryan in the October issue of the Book & Magazine Collector: www.collectors-club-of-great-britain.co.uk/magazines/issue.asp?issue=151

[timothymayer]

Now I'll have to find that issue, which probably won't be too easy on this side of the big pond.

[jamesdoig]

It's pretty well distributed here in Australia, so it must make its way to the US. It often has articles on supernatural/horror/fantasy authors - Richard Dalby has been a contributor since it started 25 years ago.

[timothymayer]

Figured I'd give this thread a bump. It still amazes me that the deceased horror and fantasy writer Karl Edward Wagner had three of RR Ryan's books on his "Best of" lists. How in gawd's name did he find those copies?

[ramseycampbell]

Oct 12, 2010 13:13:01 GMT timothymayer said:

Figured I'd give this thread a bump. It still amazes me that the deceased horror and fantasy writer Karl Edward Wagner had three of RR Ryan's books on his "Best of" lists. How in gawd's name did he find those copies?

By searching obsessively, I think! After Karl died I bought his copies and based my essay on Ryan on them. I sold them a few years ago to a collector.

[jamesdoig]

Here’s another golden age British thriller that’s quite bizarre.



This dust jacket image is from Mark Terry’s amazing Facsimile Dust Jacket site: www.facsimiledustjackets.com/cgi-bin/fdj455/index.html Mark travels around the world visiting book collectors and scanning rare dust jackets. It's a fantastic database and well worth a browse.

R.R. Ryan, The Subjugated Beast (Herbert Jenkins, 1938)

This is from the author of Echo of a Curse, that Midnight house reprinted about 10 years ago.

In the first chapter we learn that for hundreds of years various members of the Rock family have either committed murder in the nastiest way or influenced others to commit murder, one even consorting with Sawney Bean, the legendary Scottish cannibal, and is described as “tall, gaunt, darkly evil – and smelling of blood.”

The narrator of the novel is Kyrle Rock, known affectionately as Curl, a young, attractive girl who has been raised by her cheerful and lovely mother after her father, one the dour Rocks, died when she was young. Grandfather Rock leaves Curl as the only beneficiary of his will, but she can only get the money if she lives with her uncle, Paul Rock, a brilliant but reclusive scientist who in some quarters is considered a bit of a nutter. This seems understandable when you learn that on his wedding day he castrated himself by falling down a flight of stairs, and is henceforth known by local wags as the Eunuch of Camberwell Green (how do you castrate yourself by falling down a flight of stairs? Maybe they were snagged on a stray nail).

Curl is engaged to John Glover, a medical student who is deeply suspicious of Uncle Paul and his motives. When Curl’s mother dies suddenly and mysteriously, he is dead set against her living with him and his wife, Beatrice, in his dismal Camberwell mansion. Curl, however, agrees to live with them, not because of the money, but because she feels sorry for Aunt Beatrice who is desperate for Curl to move in with them.

To the reader Aunt Beatrice is clearly a few snags short of a barbecue - nervous and distracted, clearly in thrall to her domineering husband, and disturbingly her skin is icy cold one moment and burning hot the next, which seems to match her changeable personality. Curl doesn’t seem to mind and moves in one morning, asisted by by John and the family lawyer.

The house is almost comically gothic – insufferably damp, dark and gloomy, and Aunt Beatrice is behaving in her usual screwball way. Uncle Paul makes a dramatic appearance – “Saturnine, sallow, strange” with “uncanny, meaningless, empty eyes” (Ryan lathers on the adjectives preferably in groups of three) – which makes poor Aunt Beatrice even more jittery than usual. Over dinner a huge portion of almost raw beef is served, which Aunt Beatrice bolts down in unpleasant jerks under the watchful gaze of her husband. Curl argues with John who suspects Uncle Paul of nastiness – “You listen to me!” he snapped. “That neuter’s after something…” and storms off in a huff.

A curious chapter follows in which John is evidently pursued by the malignant ghost of Grandfather Rock (!) which eventually drives him to distraction and he is run over by a taxi and admitted to hospital in critical condition. The whole purpose of the chapter seems to be to get John out of action for pretty much the rest of the book.

Beatrice’s strange behaviour and curious eating regime continue apace, and while she’s industriously gnawing on a hunk of raw meat that Uncle Paul tells the women that they’re all going to Wales for a holiday. Beatrice isn’t impressed, apparently knowing what’s in store.

They arrive in the wilds of Wales (which to Ryan is some sort of prehistoric dog-eat-dog fantasy world) during a deluge and are taken to the Wheel House, another demented gothic creation - infested by rats, giant black snails, poisonous horse-flies, and an enormous black cat named Satan. Out on a walk, Curl is informed by the neighbour that four people have died at the Wheel House , one of them eaten by rats.

A truly bizarre scene follows when Curl secretly witnesses Uncle Paul and Satan engaged in a tooth and claw stand-up fist fight. Uncle Paul, covered in scratches and blood and frothing at the mouth ends up crushing Satan’s head under his heel with Curl in the firing line – “I retched and swayed. Some of its brains spattered my feet.” Shortly afterwards Uncle Paul demurely comes down to dinner behaving as if nothing has happened, though the bandaids all over his face are a dead give away...

Beatrice continues her slow descent into madness on her diet of raw meat, and things don’t get any easier for Curl when she wakes up one morning and finds that both her legs are paralysed – is it the result of a poisonous horse-fly or Uncle Paul up to no good? My money is on Uncle Paul because he immediately inflicts a series of tedious lectures on morbid psychology on the discommoded Curl and poor Aunt Beatrice. Eventually Uncle Paul recites the whole sorry history of the Rocks and Duttons (Beatrice was a Dutton before marriage), especially Dr Hector Temple Rock who in the reign of William IV fed his wife, Alma Dutton, raw meat with the purpose of mastering her mind and filling it with his own murderous impulses. Indeed, she ended up going on a murderous rampage, killing anyone within reach with an axe. Uncle Paul’s grand design is then revealed – by feeding his wife raw meat he intends to suppress Beatrice’s mind and bring back Alma Rock, and Curl, unable to move, will be the object of Beatrice’s homicidal mania. Beatrice knows what is going on but has no control over her mind and Ryan makes suspenseful mileage waiting for her to lose it completely and take up the recently acquired and carefully sharpened hatchet.

Poor Curl’s only release from mounting horror is a small kitten to which she forms a deep attachment, but Beatrice reveals to her one day that she longs to kill the poor little bundle of fun – clearly the Alma personality is starting to take over. Next morning Curl wakes up to find that the kitten has disappeared – in fact there are some quite creepy passages as the increasingly deranged Beatrice sleeps in the living room with Curl and creeps around at night making strange noises.

Beatrice starts to change physically, shoulders stooped, talks to herself, head lolling about on her neck, dirty fingernails (God forbid), and her eating etiquette gets even worse – shovelling raw meat into her mouth without bothering to chew (all this must have shocked 1930s middle class sensibilities). Finally the day comes when Uncle Paul exhorts her to chop up Curl with the hatchet, but in the struggle for her body and mind Beatrice holds on just long enough to cleave Uncle Paul’s head to the chin.

End of story you'd think, but another strange and unexplained episode follows when Uncle Paul’s spirit seems to possess Beatrice’s body and continues to lecture Curl on the psychology of murder and brings her plates of raw meat. Eventually his spirit or personality or whatever it is departs and Beatrice returns, now hopelessly deranged. Curl is stuck in the house with the mad woman for four days until she is rescued by the now recovered John Glover – six months later he proposes and Curl starts to feel her legs again.

[jamesdoig]

Another batty R.R. Ryan novel, in fact even more demented than usual – I’d say he was a devotee of the US Terror Tales school of pulps.



Another dust jacket image from Terry's Facsimile Dust Jackets, but not really mad enough for the book...

R.R. Ryan, Freak Museum (Herbert Jenkins, 1938)

The main character is Bridget O’Malley who is Irish, beautiful and an orphan. Working in Dublin she gets pregnant to her boss, Desmond O’Shay, who is a pleasant, unambitious chemist. He dies of pneumonia and Bridget is left alone, destitute and pregnant. Step in The Mary Magdalen Guild, an organisation which exists to help women in Bridget’s dire predicament. The Guild has a building in Climax Street (!), London, and would be more than happy to take her in and give her a job. She travels to London where she is examined by Dr Stettin who is the gynaecologist at the Guild’s nursing home. Stettin is an odd character, tall and narrow with flat features (Bridget called him the Tapeworm), but a skilful doctor.

After a couple of weeks, Bridget is introduced to Bruce Axe, a rich philanthropist who supports the Guild and who’s obsession is the Freak Museum which he owns. He’s a very handsome middle aged man with a gift for languages, and he’s much impressed by Bridget’s intelligence and beauty.

Birth time arrives and Bridget arrives at the nursing home with her stuff (which for some reason includes her husband’s notes and antidotes to various drugs). Birth goes without a hitch, but she’s told she can’t see the baby for 10 days – after which Dr Stettin tells her that the baby actually died in birth. Bridget is sick with grief for a couple of weeks, but then Mr Axe turns up and offers her a job in the museum.

Bridget dutifully turns up at the Freak Museum, which is evidently an exclusive and expensive freak show for the well healed. Most of the people who work there appear to be foreign, which is a bad sign. Bridget is escorted to her room and goes to sleep…and is wakened by one of the bizarre freaks, which has somehow got into her room. It’s worth describing at length: “A Thing rested on sticklike legs and webby feet, with merely the bed between it and her…Yes, reason reiterated a Thing; for by no chance could you call it a man – though its middle was the semblance of a human face, skate-like, obscene. Glaring eyes of a kind it had; nostrils of a kind it had; fishlike, open mouth…Hips it had too; thighs; calves; the web-like feet. Shoulders none, chest none. Just a vast pulp supported by those sticklike legs; and out of the pulp, weaving, groping, grew eight tentacles – evil, deleterious.” Pity it doesn’t appear more often.

Bridget tries to escape, but finds herself in a surgical theatre where a baby and new born ape are lying side by side on the operating table – she promptly faints. On waking Bridget has an interview with Axe, who seems to suggest that he’s the mastermind of some sort of international movement intent on bringing down civilisation. He also candidly informs her that “There’s quite a lot of money in the freak business!” We learn that Axe wants her to romance a certain influential young man for some evil purpose (it’s not revealed what) – evidently she’s the splitting image of his girlfriend who recently died. Bridget is horrified by the very thought of this subterfuge and refuses on the spot.

Axe’s strategy to convince Bridget to join his madcap scheme is to scare the crap out of her – firstly a half-man half-woman freak stealthily opens the door (and I mean not bottom-half/top-half, but down the middle half!), then she’s made to have dinner in the freaks refectory, watched over by a woman sitting on a dais armed with a whip, presumably to keep the freaks in order. There are some interesting freaks: “a vast Shape, like nothing so much as a monstrous, livid human belly with tiny pig-like eyes and a curious duct through which a blank-faced attendant was feeding it with a long tube.” And so on. Axe’s mental torture continues – Bridget is given a baby to hold which she’s told is hers, and then it’s taken away from her. But she holds fast and won’t give in, tough Irish woman that she is.

Later, Doc Stettin injects Bridget with a drug at particular times that correspond with the opening hours of the Freak Museum and Bridget realises she is being exhibited as a “the woman with a dog’s brain” without her knowledge. Fortunately she still has her husband’s antidotes and injects herself to counteract the effect of the dog-behaviour-inducing drug – smart girl. So, she’s there behaving like a dog when a wealthy couple and a young artist named Robert Passport are led around the exhibits by Axe and Stettin. Although the wealthy couple are horrified by her behaviour, Passport is instantly attracted to her and is able to convince Mr Axe to allow him to return the next day to sketch her. The reader is puzzled that Bridget doesn’t explain her predicament to the visitors on the spot, rather she resolves to tell Passport all during the sketching session on the morrow. This she manages to do, but the suspicious Axe and Stettin realise what is going on and imprison Passport and remove Bridget’s antidotes.

Interviewed by Axe, Passport instantly realises that he is in the presence of a supercriminal. Locked up in a room at the top of the Freak Museum he manages to signal out the window via Morse code that he’s been locked up against his will. A young boy, Charley Barr, who evidently has a fluent knowledge of Morse code, sees the signal, alerts the local Bobby and both go to the Freak Museum to investigate. The Bobby is taken upstairs where he’s dispatched by a freak. Charley manages to escape by climbing the chimney in Axe’s office, but having done the hard work, he promptly falls off a nearby roof and is admitted unconscious to hospital.

Supervillain Axe comes up with the brilliantly fiendish scheme of having Passport and Bridget fall in love with each other, thinking that he can then blackmail each to acquiesce to his awful schemes by threatening the other with death – or something like that – so he places them in adjacent rooms, and, indeed, they do fall head over heels in love.

Passport resolves to talk to the freaks to see if he can get through to them. He’s lounging about the stairwell when they all come up to the top storey – he manages to greet the Centaur and the Elephant Woman (who has a trunk, tusks etc, but is actually quite sweet – she’s from Czechoslovakia and can speak French).

Having gotten Passport and Bridget to fall in love, Axe interviews both of them separately to carry out his evil blackmail plan. He shows Passport a hole in the floor which drops to an enormous vat of acid for disposing of bodies. Later he’s successful in blackmailing Passport when he threatens Bridget with the Human Octopus.

Charley finally wakes up from his coma and tells the authorities about the Freak Museum. Detective Inspector Coder and Detective Sergeant Eyes (!) are sent to investigate – they too are killed and presumably dropped in the vat of acid.

The authorities (through Lord and Lady Moonhouse (the rich couple at the museum) and MP Waite Century) finally realise what is going on and more police are sent to the Freak Museum (6 of them this time!). They are taken to see Passport, but are killed by the Human Octopus and a bunch of men wearing “trim black uniforms” (don’t forget the book was published in 1938). Passport manages to nick the secret coded documents in Axe’s possession when Axe is unconscious.

Axe and Stettin plan their escape, including disposing of the freaks in the acid vat. Bridget and Passport are thrown into a room with all the freaks – beneath the room is the huge acid vat and the floor can slide aside. Passport tells the freaks what’s going on, and announces their only chance of escape is when Axe realises his secret documents are gone and he comes to retrieve them. Although the freaks at first agree to help, some of the more homicidal ones like The Human Octopus, The Human Tiger and The Human Swordfish lose control and rush him…fortunately at that very moment the door slides open and a huge freak/human fight ensues. Axe and Stettin end up trapped in the room and fall into the vat of acid when Bridget uses the wrong code when she’s trying to open the door to outside. Finally she guesses the right code and the book ends with them running up the stairs to freedom.

New adjectives are required to describe this book.

[cauldronbrewer]

I love the covers, and the books sound intriguing. I was all set to buy one or both of them, but then I searched online for copies . . .

[jamesdoig]

Jul 17, 2012 11:38:37 GMT cauldronbrewer said:

I love the covers, and the books sound intriguing. I was all set to buy one or both of them, but then I searched online for copies . . .

Yes, they're stupidly scarce, which may be one reason why Karl Edward Wagner mischievously put them in his Twilight Zone magazine lists of favourite horror books. A Canadian guy recently contacted me expressing an interest in reprinting them, but who knows. Midnight House was going to publish them all at one stage, but only got as far as Echo of a Curse, which is probably the best one.

[cauldronbrewer]

May 7, 2009 9:47:40 GMT jamesdoig said:

Here are brief summaries of some his books from the contemporary journal Library World . . .

RYAN (R. R.) Echo of a Curse. Jenkins, 7s 6d. net.
Terry loved Mary, but it was the beginning of the Great War and she married his fascinating comrade, Vin Border. Vin, however, is a human freak. A bizarre story of a curse which is at last dispelled, to the definite relief of the reader.

I finally had a chance to read Echo of a Curse, and though it has its flaws it mostly lives up to the hype. Terry and Mary are both vapid, and their love story is dire melodrama. On the other hand, the sadistic Vin is much more interesting. The novel builds power as it goes along with the introduction of a mysterious, murderous carnival exhibit called THE INEXPLICABLE along with cryptic references to "Black Animism," a form of sorcery that promises immortality of a sort. Ryan's writing is cliched and dull when describing ordinary human relationships, but it comes alive whenever the subject turns to violence or the supernatural.

A typo on Timothy Mayer's blog led me to expect the exhibit to be known as THE UNEXPLICABLE, which I prefer for some reason even though it's not a real word.

[timothymayer]

Thanks for catching the type...I will correct....