Maker Of Shadows by Jack Mann

[pulphack]

vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/6102/gerald-biss-door-unreal

[helrunar]

So, I just read Grey Shapes--now available in an electronic edition, and I'm definitely a fan of Gees and hope to read more of the novels. I have The Ninth Life and Maker of Shadows on order, the Bookfinger editions. While looking through the internet yesterday, I noticed that a complete set of the Bookfinger Gees reprints is or was for sale on the Richard Dalby's library site. I forget the price but I think it was a couple of hundred dollars (or pounds, perhaps).

I would say that what made the book so extremely readable for me wasn't anything to do with the plot--I had figured out the "mystery" by the third or so chapter, and I suspect most Vault residents would have done the same. I do wonder if Biss and Mann both independently got the basic plot from something they found either in Baring-Gould, or "Reverend" Monty Summers' monographs on the Werewolf. Alfred H. Bill's The Wolf in the Garden has a similar premise--I found the latter book quite engaging (I read it in an old Centaur Press paperback I found in one of my boxes many years ago--their "Time-Lost" series really was fabulous). That novel was originally published in 1931. From reading Pulphack's review of the Biss novel, it doesn't seem as if the Mann story shared all that much with the earlier story beyond the central idea, but the only way to see for myself would be to read Biss.

I enjoyed Grey Shapes, but found the ending oddly anti-climactic. I also think the pacing was far too leisurely and devoted to long passages of word-painting and tales of old local history and lore for most 21st century readers. Hardly necessary to say that those were the elements that I found particularly engaging in the book. I also found the frequent references to Gees' "big hands and big feet" mildly amusing because of something gay men used to say way back when, "big hands, big feet" and there's a second line I won't bother recounting in this space. Anyone interested can guess it easily enough, knowing the characteristic proclivities.

H.

[cauldronbrewer]

Apr 8, 2021 12:58:23 GMT helrunar said:

So, I just read Grey Shapes--now available in an electronic edition, and I'm definitely a fan of Gees and hope to read more of the novels. I have The Ninth Life and Maker of Shadows on order, the Bookfinger editions.

I thought The Ninth Life and Maker of Shadows were both big steps up from Grey Shapes--particularly Maker of Shadows. I'd recommend Nightmare Farm and Her Ways Are Death, too.

[helrunar]

Thanks, Cauldron! I'll probably wind up getting them all. 

H.

[dem]

Apr 8, 2021 12:58:23 GMT helrunar said:

I would say that what made the book so extremely readable for me wasn't anything to do with the plot--I had figured out the "mystery" by the third or so chapter, and I suspect most Vault residents would have done the same. I do wonder if Biss and Mann both independently got the basic plot from something they found either in Baring-Gould, or "Reverend" Monty Summers' monographs on the Werewolf. Alfred H. Bill's The Wolf in the Garden has a similar premise--I found the latter book quite engaging (I read it in an old Centaur Press paperback I found in one of my boxes many years ago--their "Time-Lost" series really was fabulous). That novel was originally published in 1931. From reading Pulphack's review of the Biss novel, it doesn't seem as if the Mann story shared all that much with the earlier story beyond the central idea, but the only way to see for myself would be to read Biss.
H.

Alfred H. Bill - The Wolf In The Garden (Centaur, Feb. 1972: originally Longmans Green, 1931)

Virgil Finlay

Blurb:
WEREWOLF THRILLER
Here is a marvelous werewolf thriller set in up­state New York in the days close after the American Revolution. A series of bizarre and horrifying events besiege the village of New Dortrecht with the advent of the French Comte de Saint Loup and his hound DeRetz. A giant wolf, possessed with evil intelligence and savage fury, sates its desire for blood in a series of horrifying and supernatural killings.

THE WOLF IN THE GARDEN is destined to be­come a classic werewolf tale. First published in 1931, this long-forgotten novel may be the finest werewolf thriller ever written.

Bought from the Fantasy Centre several centuries ago. Can't remember a damn thing about it.

[helrunar]

Thanks for the nice scan, Kev. I loved the way those little books were designed and the artwork chosen.

I wouldn't call it the finest werewolf thriller ever written by a long chalk. It was a fun and diverting read, in some ways a throwback to the Sheridan Le Fanu or Wilkie Collins style of storytelling. Again, the solution to the "mystery" was pretty blatantly obvious from very early on.

Steve

[cauldronbrewer]

Apr 9, 2021 20:02:15 GMT dem said:

THE WOLF IN THE GARDEN is destined to be­come a classic werewolf tale. First published in 1931, this long-forgotten novel may be the finest werewolf thriller ever written.

Bought from the Fantasy Centre several centuries ago. Can't remember a damn thing about it.

It's a blank to me, too, though I read that same Centaur edition.

Apr 9, 2021 20:45:51 GMT helrunar said:

I wouldn't call it the finest werewolf thriller ever written by a long chalk.

Agreed, but then what is? The Door of the Unreal, Grey Shapes, and The Wolf in the Garden are all out. Maybe The Undying Monster?

Edit: Darker Than You Think is another good one.

[helrunar]

Saki's story "Gabriel-Ernest," while a short story as opposed to a novel, gets points from me for sheer uncanny atmosphere. 

There's a werewolf yarn in Algernon Blackwood's "John Silence" series, and it's novella length--while interesting, I did not find it all that effective. There were however facets of it that made the story quite memorable to me. 

I'll keep thinking of werewolf stories I have read--have read hardly any of the huge mass of these published since the 1970s. Ignorance is said to be bliss but sometimes it is simply inanition.

H.

[cauldronbrewer]

Apr 10, 2021 2:34:16 GMT helrunar said:

I'll keep thinking of werewolf stories I have read--have read hardly any of the huge mass of these published since the 1970s. Ignorance is said to be bliss but sometimes it is simply inanition.

The Werewolf Scrapbook thread features many other candidates. Sticking with old-school novels, there's also Franklin Gregory's The White Wolf. I'm a little embarrassed to say that I've never read The Werewolf of Paris.

[helrunar]

Cauldron, thanks for reminding me about that thread.

I'm trying to recall the title of the short story--which I think was written by Guy Endore--about an indigent lady in 1920s or 1930s Paris who winds up entertaining a werewolf. It had a, um, shall we say rather savory, quite macabre finish. I read it back in my teenage years which you must realize was sometime in the late Bronze Age...

cheers, H.

[cauldronbrewer]

I also forgot Greye La Spina's Invaders from the Dark (a.k.a. Shadow of Evil). For now, though, I'll go with The Undying Monster as my favorite classic werewolf novel and Darker Than You Think as my favorite revisionist werewolf novel.

[Dr Strange]

Apr 10, 2021 2:34:16 GMT helrunar said:

There's a werewolf yarn in Algernon Blackwood's "John Silence" series, and it's novella length--while interesting, I did not find it all that effective. There were however facets of it that made the story quite memorable to me.

That's The Camp of The Dog. I vaguely remembered reading somewhere that Blackwood had based his idea of the werewolf being some sort of "astral projection" on some occult work that he had read, but it took me a bit of googling to track it down.

Here's what Dr Silence says in The Camp of The Dog: "a werewolf is nothing but the savage, and possibly sanguinary, instincts of a passionate man scouring the world in his fluidic body".

And this is from Eliphas Levi's Transcendental Magic (1856): "a werewolf is nothing else but the sidereal body of a man whose savage and sanguinary instincts are typified by the wolf".

[helrunar]

Yes, Dr Strange--that was the aspect of the Blackwood tale that engaged my interest. French occult researcher Claude Lecouteux published a monograph (English translation appeared 2003) with the title Witches, Werewolves and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages. He assembled an impressive amount of folkloric and learned material to support the kind of aetiology John Silence provides for this case in his story.

Various motifs in stories by Blackwood strongly suggest that he had had actual occult training, presumably in one of the magical lodges active in London in the early 20th century, but I do not know if this aspect of his life has ever been investigated by a biographer. His stories certainly show that he was very widely read on occult topics, and had studied serious works on the subject, not just the kind of tabloid publication that had already begun to appear in his day.

Great quote from Levi, by the way, and it does look as if that was Blackwood's specific source for this.

cheers, Helrunar 

[helrunar]

Last night I finished reading The Ninth Life, and I pretty much agree with what Cauldron Brewer said in his short note in an earlier post in this thread, particularly about the "monkey wrench" in the middle and the "oblique" ending. The ending fails to explain significant parts of the preceding narrative, particularly with regards to the grisly murders (which all happen "offstage" in the book). There's one chilling touch at the end which is effective and hints at a very different angle on the whole thing from that implicitly adopted by Gees (and by the narrative of Cleo Kefra in the book--a long passage quite reminiscent of works by Haggard and Sax Rohmer).

I have already started reading Maker of Shadows, which is dedicated to eccentric and largely forgotten US author Harry Stephen Keeler. And I'm wondering, having read some notes about Keeler last night on the interwebs, if the narrative and stylistic oddities of The Ninth Life compared to the more straightforward movement of Grey Shapes are in part the result of Mann's reading of Keeler's work. There are some sample chapters from Keeler's novels available on the Ramble House website--so they're out there to check out for those curious.

While I enjoyed the occult elements in The Ninth Life (I know some would simply call this kind of thing "mumbo jumbo"), more than ever I think that what makes this series engaging and worthwhile is the character of Gees himself. Probably the most effective parts of this book in terms of storytelling are Gees' waspishly pugilistic conversational exchanges with Inspector Tott of the Yard. A weakness of the book is a (thankfully only periodic) attempt to have Gees speak in some really bizarre lingo we're told is "American slang"--I presume that the author got this stuff out of hardboiled detective mags from the US. The absurdity of these bits is such that it jars one out of the story at each occurrence.

According to an internet source, Jack Mann's legal name was Charles Henry Cannell. E(velyn) Charles (Henry) Vivian, A. K. Walton, and Barry Lynd were other pseudonyms. A biography published in 2014 by Peter Beresford Ellis is cited as the definitive account of Cannell's life and considerable career.

H.

[helrunar]

My one caveat about the Gees books is this theory that Mann repeats a few times in The Ninth Life. It shows up in Maker of Shadows in this passage from chapter 3, "Refusal." A character is speaking of the novel's antagonist, Gamel MacMorn:

And what he serves--his people created it, just as Koré-worship created Koré, who became Persephone of the Greeks, wife of the Unseen One, and survives to this day through the evil of Gamel MacMorn. Mass-thought created her, just as it created Odin and Thor and Tyr and Freya, and all the gods of the Norse mythology who seemed to die when Christianity destroyed that older worship. Only seemed--they are wakening again through belief in them by the Teutonic people, just as the apparently senseless sadism of the Bolshevists is giving new strength to Koré. It is part of the hidden purpose of God that He permits men to create their own devils by mass-thought, mass-belief in the power of evil. They make it powerful.

I think of this kind of thing as "Mme Blavatsky meets Carl Jung." I'm not sure if this reflects Cannell's personal take on the history of ancient religions, since in The Ninth Life, the dénouement seems to argue against this frequently repeated theory.

The mixture of distorted or outright fabricated history (Koré, for instance, which simply means "the Maiden" or "the Daughter" in Greek, is an epithet of Persephone in her youthful role as the daughter of Demeter the Earth Mother), and pseudo-scientific cant is annoying and repetitive. But on the other hand, I know lots of readers find passages filled with genuine occult lore in other works to be equally tedious and redundant--and thus, I attempt to have patience. I would say that Blackwood handled this kind of thing much more effectively.

I took a break from reading this book to start the 1934 novel Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout, a very different author from the same era as Cannell. And now having had a pause, I'm back to reading Maker of Shadows again. And I'm getting curious about R. R. Ryan, although I would hazard a guess that my tastes in reading are in the mainly rather different from those of the late Karl Edward Wagner.

H.