Review: The Hounds of Tindalos...

BELKNAP-LONG, Frank, The Hounds of Tindalos, Granada Publishing, Ltd./Panther Books, Ltd., Frogmore, St. Albans, Herts., UK, 1975

Octavo; paperback, illustrated wrapper; 171pp. Very minor chipping to edges, else fine

I know that I’m on shaky ground with this one – it’s “The Hounds of Tindalos” after all! However, there’s the concept and then there’s the telling of it. Frank Belknap-Long (now there’s a name to publish beneath) has a way with the Mythos, but that’s where it ends.

The Hounds is a worthy tale; what follows is less convincing. The author has a way of implying what happens without letting the reader know what actually occurs, which is frustrating in the extreme. This happens again and again with boring regularity.

That being said, Long’s style meshes well with the tradition established by HPL: the ‘olde worlde’ charm he evokes is suitably doom-laden and his characters are nicely cut from Mythos cloth. The mysterious Visitor in “A Visitor from Egypt” is replete with Lovecraftian menace, rugged-up in shambolic clothing to hide his true nature (I was almost expecting him to be one of the Mi-go, à la “Whisperer In Darkness”). Sadly, his true nature, once revealed, was not overly explained, so I was left feeling somewhat unfulfilled.

Not, of course, that I expect complete chapter and verse on every occurrence in a horror tale – I understand completely, that some of the fear comes from not having everything explained. However, in the best of tales, enough vital information generally appears that the reader can draw their own conclusions and, finally, get the point. I find that Long doesn’t seed his material with enough clues to really round out the narrative: scared? Check. Confused? Much.

Long has a great ear for speech patterns and the rhythm of local dialect. His backwoods characters and the speech patterns of the elves and fairies that make their pesky presence felt in “The Refugees” are very convincing and give the tales satisfying weight. It’s when he tries to write ‘modern’ characters that he falls a little flat. In “Grab Bags are Dangerous” the dialogue between the hip playwright and his girlfriend is leaden and clunky, their actions are anachronistic and out-of-touch with the milieu, and the final twist is a weak joke at best. Not a high point (although it does reinforce my theory that Long has issues with dogs).

So, there’s a nice core of Mythos material here (“The Hounds of Tindalos”!) but it all just seems a little fuzzy to me in terms of execution. I’m giving it three-and-a-half tentacled horrors

What I’d like to segue into at this point is this particular format of publication. The DAW novel, the TOR paperback, the Star Horror product: these are fast becoming collectors’ editions and are being priced accordingly (I’m not even going to tell you how much my copy of this book cost). Some people buy them as much for the cover art as the contents and that’s fine – in fact, with some of these, the cover is the best part of the book. Unfortunately, they are what they are – cheap reads – and finding them in good condition is very rare and getting rarer. All I’m saying is, if you have these types of books in your library, take them out and dust them off; keep them out of direct sunlight and make sure they’re standing upright on the shelf. Who knows? If you keep them well, one day they might return the favour!