Peter Haining - Supernatural Sleuths

[elricc]

oooer hit a nerve sorry, pull your neck back in, the smile and comment was ironic, I really wouldn't bother to argue with someone who has cromagnon as a name ... it would be a lost cause

As for female heroines in dark fantasy, I have to be honest and say I haven't read any really except when I was stuck without a book and read a bit of one at the airport, a fairy woman had to get pregnant to avert a curse but only certain sperm worked so she had to sex with loads to find one that would work, erm not really my cup of tea

[cromagnonman]

May 14, 2017 21:56:36 GMT elricc said:

oooer hit a nerve sorry, pull your neck back in, the smile and comment was ironic, I really wouldn't bother to argue with someone who has cromagnon as a name ... it would be a lost cause

Whereas styling yourself after an androgynous insipidly blooded elf makes you a paragon of reason, obviously.

Look, this forum is supposed to be fun and to provide a haven from the aggravations and stresses of the real world. I, for one, have no interest in seeing it turned into a rialto for the trading of insults. Cultivate your sarcasm and whatever agendas make you happy, but leave the gender politics at the door eh. Don't expect the rest of us here to contribute the vinegar to go with the chips on your shoulder.

[andydecker]

May 14, 2017 21:56:36 GMT elricc said:

As for female heroines in dark fantasy, I have to be honest and say I haven't read any really except when I was stuck without a book and read a bit of one at the airport, a fairy woman had to get pregnant to avert a curse but only certain sperm worked so she had to sex with loads to find one that would work, erm not really my cup of tea

Mine either. But this sounds like what I call the second wave, when the well became dry and the concepts ever more constructed. The first writers like Charlaine Harris, Kim Harrison or even Laurell Hamilton - even if Hamilton doesn't sit right in this crowd, as Paranormal Romance wasn't invited yet as a marketing category, when she became successful - developed the concept and the formula. Especially Harris captured the imagination outside the tiny borders of genre, but the novels are much more subdued than the later gory tv-series. Some of these novels were really fun. It is not horror, mind, still they are well written. After they became a cottage industry for a short while the quality got lost on the way. But this is a natural pattern. I think the worst I ever had to read of this stuff was a series of so called Werewolf Romances. 100% irony free.

For my two cents the grandmother of the horror heroine is still Nancy Collins at the dawn of the nineties with her Sonya Blue series. She is Patient Zero, even if she is rarely acknowledged.

[dem]

Fans of the psychic sleuth sub-genre might like to investigate this exciting new publication, Occult Detective Quarterly

Meanwhile.
Far as I can tell the Sax Rohmer was the first Moris Klaw story I've read so have added The Dream Detective to the wants list that knows no sanity.

E & H. Heron - The Story Of The Moor Road: (Pearson's Magazine, March 1898). Something awful is going down in the vicinity of Low Riding near Nerbury. Top athlete Lane Chaddam is assaulted and pushed over the quarry by a lanky, hairless entity with a tiny head and a cough like a sick cow. Meanwhile Mr. Scully wastes away from a mysterious illness. Flaxman Low blithely deduces that a recent earth tremor has released an elemental. Atmospheric but as with the Rohmer story ultimately let down by anti-climactic ending. The Story of the Spaniards, Hammersmith remains personal pick of Low's adventures.

Gordon Malherbe Hillman - Panic In Wild Harbour: (Ghost Stories, Sept 1929). According to his Watson clone, Cranshawe's all-time ghastliest case, and it's a corker. Two years ago Cap'n Starbuck's ship collided with a schooner off the New England coast, resulting in the loss of ten men. Starbuck's equivalent aboard The Golden died a particularly agonising death. Each Friday night a phantom bell tolls once for each casualty, and an ooze-green spectre walks abroad seeking vengeance. Can Cranshawe save Starbuck from his nemesis?