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Post by allthingshorror on Apr 23, 2009 12:56:58 GMT
Pearson (1916)Weird one this - has Uncanny Stories on the front board and spine - but inside has Uncanny Tales on the actual pages. Plus all stories have been unnatributed so it took a little bit of detective work, but here you go: CONTENTS:
The Unknown Quantity - E. R. Punshon The Armless Man - W. H. Litt The Tomtom Clue - C. Morgan and S. Jarvis The Case of Alister Moeran - Margaret Strickland The Kiss - M. E. Royce The Goth - Roy Vickers The Last Ascent - E. R. Punshon The Terror by Night - Lewis Lister The Tragedy at Lupe Noir - Gladys Stern.Will no doubt attempt a blow-by-blow hatchet job of this book in the future!
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Post by pulphack on Apr 23, 2009 16:35:21 GMT
very interested to see what you say anout this, johnny, as i only know of Vickers and Punshon as middle-ranking detective story writers from between the wars. good, but not spectacular. so it'll be a fascinating look at their other work.
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Post by allthingshorror on Apr 23, 2009 16:47:06 GMT
tell you what pulp - I'll read theirs over the weekend and write them up.
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Post by pulphack on Apr 23, 2009 17:34:35 GMT
now that, sir, is what i call service!
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Post by allthingshorror on Apr 23, 2009 19:36:01 GMT
The Unknown Quantity - E.R. PunshonProfessor James Maynard is a man in dire financial straits. So he kills his rich, elderly cousin who would normally have around twenty years or so of life left in him so Maynard can get his hands on a sizeable lump of cash. Maynard needs to publish ' The Secondary Variations of the Differential Calculus' and his lifes work, the seminal 'The History of Higher Mathematics' - works that the world could no doubt do without. He actually quite liked his cousin, so the tears he shed at the funeral were real. But he's still a murdering bastard. A month later and the Professor bumps into the Rectors wife, a lovely lady, who on this day is sporting white kid gloves. She likes the Professor, as do all of the community. She's about to shake his hand, when she starts and notices that there is a big globule of blood on it. Strange, he isn't cut, but he wipes the blood off, and the Rectors wife declines to shake his hand anyway.. Then another month passes and he is with a colleague, who notices a spot of blood on his hand, the Professor wipes it off, but doesn't pay too much attention to it. A month later and he is in a great mood and is having breakfast. His maid comes in to take away and empty jug, and as she grabs and lifts it, she screams and drops the jug. A sackable offence in my book, back to the slums with her. Her excuse is that there is a large drop of blood on the Professors hand! This unnerves him, so he buggers off to Switzerland and climbs a big mountain peak to test his manliness and is quite relieved to discover he is all man. He stays in Switzerland for a month though. He can afford it. Then that timof the month comes around again - and he is playing bridge with the ladies when one of them screams and points to the blood. He takes a sample of it and sends it off to his colleague to test on. But being a man who likes to solve puzzles, he gets out a sheet of paper and writes X on it, X being the UNKNOWN QUANTITY. He doesn't get any further as he doesn't know where to start. He goes back to England, and his colleague tells him that the blood is strange as it has a rare cavillis of an unusual and obscure disease. THE SAME DISEASE THAT THE PROF HAD KILLED HIS COUSIN WITH!!! Maynard goes straight hoe, and even though he has row upon row of books - they are mainly mathematical, and while some of them touch upon X - the unknown quantity, he doesn't have anything that can explain what is happening to him. He develops OCD and washes his hand mentally. But the month is drawing to an end, and he knows something is going to happen. But what? Will the unknown quantity be revealed? # Loved this story - a weird take on womans bleeding. It HAS to be! My notes may be longer than the actual thing... Definately a good start to the anthology though and the ending is suitably downbeat.
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Post by allthingshorror on Apr 24, 2009 7:20:26 GMT
The Goth - Roy Vickers
Tryn yr Wylfa, Wales. And no heavy eyeliner or pierced mandibles in sight. The Goth in this story certainly implies someone who is caddish in nature.
There is a legend that states that if you should be on the Bay, in a boat and look at the clear waters and see the remains of a sunken villiage, you will surely be dead by the year. A local publication lists all who have looked and perished. The last person drowned was a Southener named Roberts. He was a lardy drunk. He drowned three days before Midsomer.
Now, there is a young chap called Cargill, who has a fancy on a lady called Betty Lardner. He wants to give her a grand gesture, show her that he can defy Fate and prove his love to her. So he takes a boat and goes to the middle of the bay and stares at the sunken village.
Once he stands on dry land again, the gathering locals look at him in an unfriendly manner, and he decides that he wont tell the Lardners, as already he is feeling ashamed of taking the gentle rise out of local legend, but by the time he sees Betty, she already knows.
She accuses him of spoiling the legend, because to the locals it is a thing of beauty (!) so Cahill says in a jovial manner, what will happen if I drown before the year is out?
'Then I will forgive you'.
SIx months pass, and he thinks little of the legend. And then he is cruelly reminded of it, when he has a near miss - and his death would have involved water.
Hence a catalogue of near misses occur in quick succesion. And poor Cargills nerves are shot to shreds. The irony being that he is the best amatuer swimmer in the land!
Then he decides what the hell, and goes on a boat trip with his mate, but there's an accident, and he gets hit on the head and goes under, and he's not found for the longest of time, but he's saved and brought back to life...
So he goes back to the scene of the crime, with only a week to go before the curse is null and void...
Will he manage to last the year? Will he win the affections OR the forgiveness of Betty Lardner? And by that same token - will he defy the Fate?
#
This story follows much the same pattern as the last one - the act - the mishaps - the dénouement. What IS different about this story is that the ending totally took me by surprise and it was a little emotional, and the young man earns the respect of all. Nice tale.
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Post by allthingshorror on Apr 24, 2009 7:59:48 GMT
The Last Ascent - E.R. Punshon
Coming only 13 years after the Wright Brothers defied gravity and 11 years after Conan Doyles' Horror of the Heights comes another tale of supernaturality involving the humble bi-plane.
A man is watching, with others, a plane in the sky. It climbs so high until it is but a spot in the sky. The man is annoyed that someone is taking a cinematograph of this event. He feels that it is a sordid, business-like thing to be foing at such a moment of tranquility. Then the plane starts its decent, and it glides down and touches terra firma. The crowd start towards the plane, but MY GOD! Where's the bloody pilot, Radcliffe Thorpe? He was there when the plane went up!
People thought he might have fallen out, but no trace had ever been found of him, and the loss to aeronautics was a severe one.
But lets rewind - to an incident when the narrator is at Radcliffe Thorpe's desk, and there is a crayon sketch of a young woman, absolutely beautiful, but the drawing had an unearthly and spectral look that makes the drawing seem disturbing.
Protag asks Radcliffe who the woman is, he tells him, and Radcliffe is hesitant to say anything. When he asks what the protag thinks of the drawing, the protag laughs and says that the fall from batchelor hood will be a good one if her beauty is anything to go by - a remark that makes Radcliffe say that the portrait is an imaginary one.
Anyhoo - back to the disappearance, and the person taking the cinematograph had developed prints of the last ascent - enlarged photos on the table. As Barnes points out the mist in the photo, the protags blood turns to ice in his veins! What has he spotted? And did it take Radcliffe?
#
I do have a fascination with early stories of aviation, with The Horror of the Heights being one of the best stories of its type. Sadly this one comes nowhere near and is a bit of a damp squib. Predictable and just very lame.
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Post by pulphack on Apr 24, 2009 17:42:57 GMT
wow, above and beyond the call of duty, johnny. i have to say, the first punshon sounds excellent, but the aviation story sounds more in line with hi usual style. his detective fiction is solid and unremarkable. the first story sounds like definite raising of the game.
roy vickers, though... i'll resist the temptation to say i thought it would be about The Sisters Of mercy, and content myself with saying that it sounds excellent. his detective fiction - the little that i've read, was always very atmospheric and with a touch of the bizarre (some of it centred around a police dept called The Deapartment Of Dead Ends, which is evocative in itself), but perhaps lacking in plot. nice ideas, well written, but not tidy. whereas punshon was the opposite.
i might see if i have any vickers lurking in old anthologies of detective stories, then report back.
i await your reviews of the rest of this volume with no little interest - it seems a real find!
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Post by allthingshorror on Apr 24, 2009 17:50:07 GMT
Ah - no worries, enjoy doing it. And bizzarely enjoy reading stories from 1914 - 1959 at the moment for some reason. I blame the Pan Horroritis myself!
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