The Sandalwood Fan

Jim Bradford – so handsome, so charming. But why was he so insistent that Nan wed him immediately? Why was he so violently opposed to her seeing her aunt?

Aunt Elizabeth – Beautiful and fabulously rich, she had provided for Nan’s upbringing. But why had she refused to see Nan all these years, and sent her sinister business partner to try to keep Nan away?

Philip Fenton – Was he a dissipated beachcomber or a brilliant painter? What hold had he on Elizabeth that she supported his outrageous conduct even as he mocked her?

Nan didn’t know. She only knew that one of them did not want her to live to learn the secret of  - THE SANDALWOOD FAN.

Written by Katherine Wigmore Eyre. First Dell printing August 1970. This Dell edition Second printing January 1971.

The Sandalwood Fan opens in a dreary tenement room in San Francisco’s Chinatown, where orphaned Nan Allen is looking after the dying Ah Sam, the faithful family servant who has looked after her since she was a baby.

When Ah Sam dies, Nan returns to her gloomy Victorian mansion, made even more melancholic since Ah Sam’s illness and subsequent absence from the house. Now Ah Sam is gone, Nan is left with nothing but an Oriental fan and an indecipherable message of garbled Cantonese linking her to her past.

Overcome with grief and loneliness, Nan decides to track down the one remaining person connected to her family, the elusive Cousin Elizabeth (mistakenly referred to as Nan’s Aunt on the book’s back cover). A self made millionaire who has pulled herself up from humble beginnings in a prisoner of war camp, it was Elizabeth who rescued Nan when her birth mother, a fellow inmate at the camp, died in childbirth.

Though Cousin Elizabeth has been providing limited financial support to Nan, she refuses to visit, so Nan decides to travel to Elizabeth’s home in Hawaii. When she gets there, Elizabeth seems warm and welcoming but behind all the friendly smiles and Mai Tai cocktails, Nan suspects something more sinister may be afoot.

What though, I couldn’t say as I didn’t quite make it to the end of this book. It wasn’t so much that a beach house in sunny Hawaii didn’t really work as a gothic setting, nor that in terms of atmosphere or suspense there was very little of anything gothic happening, it was just that this book was so slow. I gave up about two thirds of the way through as I was getting bogged down by page after page of self reflective rambling and I decided that the action, if there was any, just wasn’t going to be worth waiting for.

I looked up other titles by Kathrine Wigmore Eyre and discovered from the Pony Mad Book Lovers site that she is the author of a couple of Pony Books. These were a childhood favourite of mine before gothics took over. A couple of clicks later and I was getting all misty eyed reminiscing on the Pullein-Thompson sister’s books. And how exciting to find out Josephine Pullein-Thomson has written a gothic! Called A Place with Two Faces and written under the pseudonym Josephine Mann, the blurb on the back promises witches rituals and black magic dances of death so it is one I am now looking out for! There is a review of it over at the wonderful Pullein-Thompson pony books and more Blog.

Going back to The Sandalwood Fan - The cover art is lovely, though different from most gothic romances of this era. Unfortunately  I couldn’t find a credit or signature for the artist. Two out of five stars.

The Bridge of Strange Music

Three

Women

Loved

John Hardacre….

Prudence – Who felt the evil of Pen Farm embrace her – yet remained bound to a man who could never return her love…

Laura – Beautiful and wilful – whose desire for John Hardacre made her leave the glitter of London for the isolation and lonely terror of Pen Farm…

Violet – Sensuous and provocative who offered first her body and then her soul to possess the master of Pen Farm…

In the ominous silence of the house lay a hidden horror that would soon erupt – which one of the three women would survive the emotional holocaust?

Prudence? Laura? Violet?

An Ace Star Book. Written by Jane Blackmore. Copyright  1952.

Three women. One man. Sowing the seeds of sexual frustration on an isolated farmhouse where there is not much else to do but count chickens and watch the corn grow.

Welcome to Pen Farm,  a hormonal hot-bed of lust and jealousy, home to a pregnant wife who hates her life, a governess desperate to get pregnant and a slatternly milkmaid who is just, well, desperate.  Poor John Hardacre. I was feeling genuinely sorry for the bloke by page 15. Of course,  I soon figured he would end up happy ever after with the goody two-shoes governess, but it was enjoyable reading how he got there.

This book’s blend of witchy mysticism and earthy, farmyard fecundity reminded me a bit of the Nick Roeg film Puffball (based on the book by Fay Wheldon).  I wouldn’t describe the setting nor the story as a gothic romance but I did like the otherworldy, trippy quality threaded throughout Jane Blackmore’s prose – Pen Farm is a place where even something as mundane as frying an egg becomes an exercise in mind-altering metaphysicality:

“The egg fell sizzling, into the fat. She watched the transparency coagulate and tried to think what she should say to him but there seemed to be a heaviness inside her head. She could neither think nor feel. It was as if she were halfway under anaesthetic in that twilight stage where objects take an unexpected vividness, where the whole of existence focuses into a single point.

It was like that now with the egg. The golden globule was huge and magnetic. She knew that the room was around her. That ahead of her waited – decision. But no, in this fateful moment, everything was drawing together, rushing in headlong suction down into the heart of an egg. Perhaps this was how the unborn infant felt in the moment of birth. This aching plunging into space – this unbearable feeling of change.”

Three stars out of five stars with bonus points for use of the word empurpled.

Image of a Ghost

There – in Paris Match – were photographs of THE GHOST OF HER MOTHER!

The first photograph showed a swirling mass halfway down a staircase. In the next, a shape began to emerge. There, in the third, stood my mother, who had died eighteen months ago, wearing a dress from the Forties. I remembered that dress! In the fourth shot, the image swirled again, dissolving.

The accompanying story reported that these pictures had been taken by a respected artist in Maine. His wife had seen the ghost, and the shots had been developed and printed before witnesses. It was no hoax. I must go to Maine and discover for myself why my mother’s spirit had returned…

Written by Dorothy Daniels. First printing December 1973. This Third printing May 1976. Cover art Vic Prezio.

A former actress and schoolteacher, Dorothy Daniels wrote some 150 novels. I have already reviewed the Strange Paradise series, which I enjoyed and Romany Curse (written as Suzanne Somers) which I didn’t.

A quick flick through the pages shows Image of a Ghost has all the right ingredients for a gothic – a beautiful, orphaned heroine,  a haunted house by a lake and a handsome love interest living in the woods called Steve.

Here’s an excerpt from inside the front cover:

“Look,” I cried. “Don’t you see her?”

There on the path to the lake backgrounded by tall pines, stood my mother. She was enveloped in a strange, blue green light that came from nowhere. She smiled and nodded as if in approval of the love between Steve and me.

Suddenly from inside the lodge came a wild scream, so high-pitched as to be a shriek of plain terror. I looked back into the living room. Someone was on the gallery and the screaming was louder. I turned back. Where my mother had stood, bathed in that weird light, there was nothing but solid darkness.

I’m still on the fence as to whether I will read this one or not but I wanted to post it anyway as the cover art is by Vic Prezio, who created the gorgeous artwork to Curse of Deepwater by Christine Randell.

Uncle Silas

WAS THERE NO ESCAPE FOR MAUD RUTHYN FROM HER SINISTER UNCLE SILAS?

“When I closed my eyes I saw him before me still, dressed in deathly black, ashy with a pallor on which I looked with fear and pain.

…And those hollow, fiery, awful eyes! It sometimes seemed to me as though the curtain had opened, and I had seen a ghost.”

Maud Ruthyn was obliged to live with her mad Uncle Silas in his isolated, terrifying old mansion for four years if she wanted to receive her inheritance. If she ran away she would be penniless. If she dared to stay, then one night she would be found lifeless!

UNCLE SILAS ranks with THE MOONSTONE, THE WOMAN IN WHITE and WUTHERING HEIGHTS as one of the most haunting, terrifying Gothic novels in the English language.

Written by Sheridan Le Fanu. This Paperback Library Edition – January 1967.

Known as the father of the modern ghost story, Sheridan Le Fanu is a Victorian novelist and short story writer whose prose continues to  chill and inspire to this day. Virginia Coffman, creator of the fantastically gothic Moura series, cites him as a major influence of hers, so I was very pleased to happenchance upon this gorgeous Paperback Library edition of Uncle Silas on a day out in Eastbourne the other week.

This is a classic gothic story -  where an orphaned teenage heroine, duty bound to the wishes of her dead father, finds herself having to live with her strange Uncle Silas until she is old enough to claim her inheritance.

So all she need do is live long enough to come of age and claim her money.  How difficult can that be? Well, for Maud Ruthyn it’s an isolated, scary existence, trapped in a gloomy old mansion, haunted by sinister secrets and strange visions,  with naught but the usual cast of crackpots for company. I’m about two thirds of the way through and though nothing too terrible has happened to Maud, I’ve a feeling there’s something more menacing going on behind those crazed, opium-glazed eyes of her Uncle’s than Swedenborgianism.

With three hundred and fifty pages of teensy-tiny typeface (times like this I miss my Lancer Easy-Eyes!) this abridged edition is at least twice the length of most my other Paperback Library gothics and is a treat. Stories like this are written to linger over – I’ve been buried in this book for the last ten days or so and can’t put it down.

They say appearances are everything and this was particularly true within the upper echelons of Victorian society. So long as some semblance of normality is seen to skim the surface of social interaction then all  is well – isn’t it? Sheridan Le Fanu uses this sentiment to great effect throughout Uncle Silas, interweaving deft touches of the macabre and grotesque into the story, building a real sense of foreboding and fear that is not always easy to put your finger on, therefore making you feel all the more uneasy. So I’ll be sleeping with the lights on for a few more nights yet…

Five out of five stars with extra gothic points for this copy since it looks (and smells!) as if it’s been providing  sustenance for the rats while lying on the floor of a dungeon somewhere.

The Cup of Thanatos

Dr Paul Holton could no longer ignore the facts: the mystery-shrouded Thanatos Society had sprung up from the smouldering ashes of the evil ‘Circle of Ra’ he had once helped to destroy. The name of the Satanic leader was different but Paul recognized the familiar Machiavellian techniques. Once again the insidious Dr. Blackton was pandering to his all-consuming lust for power and world domination.

Suddenly Paul found himself deeply involved for Sarah Wellington, a young and gentle friend, showed signs of drug addiction – and Sarah wore around her neck the distinctive symbol of the Society, named in honor of Thanatos – the ancient God of Death.

Paul had always known he and Dr Blackton would meet again. He knew, too, that one mistake could plunge them all into the Kingdom of Darkness…

Written by Charlotte Hunt (aka  Doris Marjorie Hodges). An Ace Gothic 1968.

The Cup of Thanatos is the second in Charlotte Hunt’s Dr Holton series, where our eponymous hero is once again fighting for freedom and the soul of a beautiful young girl against the villainous Dr Manfred Blackton and his mistress of ceremonies, the gorgeous I-am-so-evil-I-get-my-green-nail-varnish-specially-made-for-me-by-slaves-in-Cairo Madame Zerena.

Having narrowly escaped the clutches of Scotland Yard in the Gilded Sarcophagus, Manfred Blackton and Zerena are lying low in some North American desert, running a ‘nature cure’ sanatorium under the assumed names of Madame Olga and Dr Julius Grafton.

But it’s not long before they find bigger fish to fry when they are visited by Dr Mefferhossen, the leader of a secret satanic cult known as the Thanatos Society. By utilising mass-hypnosis techniques while channelling the ‘Lucifer Force’, they plan to create a new world order. To do this, Dr Mefferhossen needs our two mystic mercenaries to help him beg, borrow or steal the secrets of some of the greatest scientists in the world.

He sends Manfred and Zerena to England - to ‘soften up’ the famous English inventor Algernon Mannering and his psychically gifted daughter, Sarah. Algernon Mannering has invented an apparatus that, when combined with Sarah’s visionary powers, has the potential to pierce the ‘Barrier of the Cosmos’. The Thanatos Society believes this apparatus, combined with the right drugs, holds the key to taking control of the world.

But they have picked on the wrong victims as Sarah is an old friend of Dr Holton. When she gets drawn into the world of shady séances and drug taking rituals, Dr Holton becomes increasingly concerned for her safety. His worse suspicions are confirmed when she disappears and is presumed dead. He makes it his mission to find out what’s happened to her and what follows is an adventure that takes Paul Holton across Europe, culminating in him gate-crashing a Satanic Mass in a devil haunted monastery in the Austrian Alps.

The Cup of Thanatos is another enjoyable occult thriller in the Dr Holton series. Moving away from the first person viewpoint in The Gilded Sarcophagus, I enjoyed it better as more time is given to following the exploits of Dr Manfred Blackton and Zerena – the globe trotting pseudo-Satanists who are more than happy to lend their support to whichever world dominating, fanatical cults come their way.

There’s not much more to ask for if drug-addled, devil worshipping neo-nazis exploring the outer reaches of time-space consciousness is your thing, though I was a little disappointed by the Thanatos Society – for when one of their rituals successfully conjured a genuine supernatural spectre, most of the members ran off in terror! Hmm, not very hard these Satanists. It did however make it a lot easier for Dr Paul Holton to step in and save the day.

The cover art shares the same signature as my previously reviewed Beauty That Must Die but I’ve yet to find out anything about the artist. Four out of five stars.