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Post by dem bones on Sept 30, 2017 10:28:16 GMT
Andrew Klavan - The Uncanny (Little, Brown, 1998). Blurb: A LOVE STRONGER THAN DEATH
A MYSTERY OLDER THAN TIME
The ominous and melancholy ruins of an ancient abbey ... A silent, cowled spectre movirlg with awful majesty among the headstones ... A persistent. rhythmic, spinechiiling sound ... From the bestselling author of the award-winning TRUE CRIME comes a reinvention of the classic ghost story.
Richard Storm is a producer of Hollywood horror films, inspired by the classic British ghost stories he has always loved. Now, with his life beginning to unravel, he has come to England on a desperate quest: to find evidence that the great old stories contain an element of truth, that the human spirit lives on after death, that in this all-too-material world there still may be a reason to believe.
But his search uncovers more than he bargained for: Sophia Endering,haunted, beautiful, mysterious, as dangerous to herself as she is to those who love her. Harper Albright, eccentric, pipe—smoking editor of Bizarre! magazine, whose investigations into the paranormal disguise her deadly pursuit of an age-old evil. And Saint Iago, unspeakable, whose acts of cruelty may well transcend not only the imagination but the laws of nature.
Richard Storm's nightmares are about to step down off the screen into real life. He is about to begin a journey - down a trail formed by the classic ghost stories themselves - through his deepest passions and his darkest fears, to a secret over a thousand years old which lies at the very heart of the uncanny.
Full of gothic atmosphere and palpable tension,THE UNCANNY is a breathtaking blend of Hollywood-style excitement and literary tour de force.Another book I bought, based on the review in G&S, is Andrew Klavan's "The Uncanny", which opens with a very good pastiche Victorian story called "Black Annie", before becoming a 90s set thriller involving an American producer of horror films based on classic English ghost stories travelling to Britain and getting involved in a plot involving Nazi art treasures, cults, sacrifices and the supernatural. The main plot lurches between being great fun and being really atrocious (one of the worst sex scenes I've ever encountered is in here, though the sex involved is meant to be pretty poor, so I don't know how deliberate this is), but it's a decent enough page turner. The thing that lifts it, though, is that a major plot point is contained in, of all places, "The 14th Fontana Book Of Great Ghost Stories". Sadly, it's not the genuine contents of that edition, since, apart from the afore-mentioned "Black Annie", the other (genuine) story that is supposedly included is definitely not in that volume. And I know, because I was compelled to check this very site when I got to that bit.  Unlike vast majority of the books in this section, this one is not a Fontana, but Lurker's fascinating comments from way back on Vault MK I (currently deceased) suggests here is as good a place as any to post it. The concept haunted me, Mr. Klavan's novel went straight to wants list, but a decade-plus on I'd still not set eyes on a copy .... until this morning. Have a feeling we're going to get along just fine ...
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Post by Michael Connolly on Sept 30, 2017 12:58:06 GMT
Andrew Klavan - The Uncanny (Little, Brown, 1998). Blurb: A LOVE STRONGER THAN DEATH
A MYSTERY OLDER THAN TIME
The ominous and melancholy ruins of an ancient abbey ... A silent, cowled spectre movirlg with awful majesty among the headstones ... A persistent. rhythmic, spinechiiling sound ... From the bestselling author of the award-winning TRUE CRIME comes a reinvention of the classic ghost story.
Richard Storm is a producer of Hollywood horror films, inspired by the classic British ghost stories he has always loved. Now, with his life beginning to unravel, he has come to England on a desperate quest: to find evidence that the great old stories contain an element of truth, that the human spirit lives on after death, that in this all-too-material world there still may be a reason to believe.
But his search uncovers more than he bargained for: Sophia Endering,haunted, beautiful, mysterious, as dangerous to herself as she is to those who love her. Harper Albright, eccentric, pipe—smoking editor of Bizarre! magazine, whose investigations into the paranormal disguise her deadly pursuit of an age-old evil. And Saint Iago, unspeakable, whose acts of cruelty may well transcend not only the imagination but the laws of nature.
Richard Storm's nightmares are about to step down off the screen into real life. He is about to begin a journey - down a trail formed by the classic ghost stories themselves - through his deepest passions and his darkest fears, to a secret over a thousand years old which lies at the very heart of the uncanny.
Full of gothic atmosphere and palpable tension,THE UNCANNY is a breathtaking blend of Hollywood-style excitement and literary tour de force.Unlike vast majority of the books in this section, this one is not a Fontana, but Lurker's fascinating comments from way back on Vault MK I (currently deceased) suggests here is as good a place as any to post it. The concept haunted me, Mr. Klavan's novel went straight to wants list, but a decade-plus on I'd still not set eyes on a copy .... until this morning. Have a feeling we're going to get along just fine ... Years ago I tried to read THE UNCANNY. I can't remember exactly why, but I wasn't able to finish it. |
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