GRANT,
John Linwood, & Dave BRZESKI, “Occult Detective Magazine #7, Spring/May
2020”, Cathaven Press, Peterborough UK, 2020.
Given
that postal services across the planet are clogged at the moment, I sent off my
order for this without really expecting to see it anytime in the short term.
Consequently, it showed up unexpectedly and – even better – at a point when I
really needed the time to just chill out and lose myself. A day spent picking
slowly through a copy of Occult Detective Magazine (ODM) is definitely a
day well spent. And this issue certainly doesn’t disappoint!
The
first cab off the rank – “Uxmal” by Debra Blundell - was guaranteed to
delight me. An agent of the shadowy “Smoke Throne” cabal, overseeing the
Yucatecan dominion, goes to the city of Uxmal to investigate the overnight
appearance of a strange pyramid in the heart of that conurbation along with its
new, dwarfed king. He takes with him his adopted family of investigative agents
in order to get to the bottom of things and mayhem (of course) ensues.
For
various reasons, I have recently been devouring everything I can lay my hands
on about the Maya civilization and reading this tale was like ticking off boxes
in my newly-acquired knowledge set. Everything here resonated, everything rang
true, in ways that the ‘Holmesian-Victorian pastiche’ form of occult detection
often does not. There was no extensive ‘info-dumping’; there were no laborious descriptions
of the obscure; there was no soap-box delivery of required knowledge: bliss! Even
the difference between chultuns and cenotes as regional
water-sources was effortlessly conveyed as an essential clue, without breaking
the narrative. There was a moment when a prophecy was delivered – an injunction
for our main character to do a specific thing when a certain set of
circumstances occurred – and my heart sank a bit. Often whenever something like
this happens, the remainder of the story becomes a simple train-ride to the
inevitable; however, Ms. Blundell throws in a well-planted twist that saves the
moment from being an ending with fizz and turns it into one with bang. This was
a truly excellent piece – everything was handled with precision, knowledge and
grace – and it was the perfect way to kick things off.
A
more total change of pace could not be asked for in turning to the next story.
With Paul St. John Mackintosh’s “Ghost in the Machine”, we encounter an
insurance company investigator sent reluctantly to check out an instance of
ghostly manifestation at an Edinburgh server farm, a circumstance that the
computing firm involved most definitely bought insurance against. Here,
corporate cynicism and wry Scots humour sits with nice contrast alongside the
traditional notions of the Scottish ghost. Our detective discovers that the
head programmer’s spirit spontaneously regenerates each night as a species of
code within the operating system, continuing the work that he did before his
untimely demise. Wrangling corporate lackeys and Scottish Society for Psychical
Research boffins, our investigator is suddenly forced to acknowledge an
actual haunting and to deal with it… without forcing his own company to pay out
on the claim.
This
is a well-executed story and remarkable for the way that it convinces the
reader of the way in which an insurance agency might well suddenly be offering policies
against spectral intrusion. If there was a criticism it lies with one character,
the setting on whose Scots brogue increases from ‘barely noticeable’ to ‘almost
incomprehensible’ by the tale’s end. A re-write might find the sweet spot
between these two extremes but for now, this is a great yarn.
A
common criticism of the occult detection story is that, often, they aren’t
particularly scary. Yes, horrifying things happen, but the raison d’être
of the detective is to explain, whereas fear lies in the unknown, so rarely
does the emergence of a truly chilling narrative arise from the premise. This next
story - “Pause for Station Identification” - is one time that it does.
I
have heard a lot about Jonathan Raab’s Sheriff Kotto fiction but have
never read anything of it myself – I think this pairing with Matthew Bartlett is
an excellent introduction. Borrowing concepts from “The Blair Witch Project”
and “The Ring”, this story has Kotto and his deputy Abraham Richards
settle in at the Sheriff’s Office to watch some filmed footage. The imagery on
the tape is raw and inexpertly spliced - allowing the writers to indulge in
some experimental and edgy narrative techniques – and slowly winds its way
towards a chilling conclusion. Our heroes are bent on learning the whereabouts
of a bunch of missing students, following a strange circulating cassette tape,
which leads them to Cold War numbers stations transmissions, the FCC, and
finally to a remote radio broadcasting outfit in a hilly forest where an evil
plot is uncovered. The creeping horror is revealed – not just by the terrifying
imagery on the tape and its delivery – but by the fact that neither of the two
men viewing the footage have experienced the events on display, and yet they
are patently involved in the action. Is it a warning? A premonition? They both
decide to contemplate things in the secure haven of insobriety…
I
have read a few pieces by Aaron Vlek in the pages of Occult Detective
Quarterly and Occult Detective Magazine (“Baron of Bourbon Street”,
ODQ#1; “The Case of the Black Lodge”, ODQ#4) and, to be honest, I find
them a bit bloodless. Ms. Vlek has a tendency to write her action off-stage, as
it were, and is generally content to have it described by a character to others
within the narrative frame, almost like watching a stage performance where the
characters speak about world-shaking events happening elsewhere. Action is
always at a distant remove in these stories, although the quality of the
writing is generally quite high. Having gotten several of these stories under
my belt, it feels a bit like standing on the roof of St. Paul’s Cathedral with
a snifter of brandy and looking out across an Edwardian London peppered – not
with gentlemen’s clubs – but with arcane, endlessly-battling, occult lodges.
Flames burst upwards from Bloomsbury; strange lightning flickers over Mayfair…
In this story, “The Case of the Signet Ring”, again, direct action takes
a back seat to extended narration as Aleister Crowley (whom I loathe) has a
little attempted fun at the expense of our occult sleuth, Geoffrey Sykes Vermillion.
The
conceit here is that Crowley sets up a spooky story about the dead husband of a
young widow and an arcane ring, trying to draw Vermillion into taking the case
on board. We see the steps taken to establish the joke before an inevitable
conclusion wherein Crowley explains the gag – saying, “I got you!” - and Vermillion reveals how he saw through it
all along and says, “oh no, you didn’t!”. Tiresome really, and the moreso
because it involves that loathsome waste of good skin, Crowley. I was left
wondering at the end why these events had happened at all? And to what purpose?
(There’s
also a classic problem here of the late-Victorian pastiche model falling over
abruptly due to an incorrect piece of information. Our supposed widow comes to
Vermillion’s home, bangs on the door, and demands entry; Vermillion’s butler
tells him that she awaits without and is asked to admit her; she immediately
confronts Vermillion and proffers her calling card. Boom! Wrong. Calling
cards have an intricate and well-defined usage and this is way off-piste.
While it’s believable under certain circumstances that the ‘widow’ would stand
her ground at the front door and demand entry, in this situation she would have
given her card to the butler for him to announce her presence to his
master. Ordinarily, cards were left with servants who would place them on a
tray to be brought in with the day’s mail so that the occupants of the house
would know who had called and to whom they should address responses. Further,
in this case, a widow would also have handed over her dead husband’s card –
suitably marked, or re-printed, to indicate his demise – along with her own, if
indeed she had her own cards; otherwise she would have written her name upon
one of her dead husband’s. Under NO circumstances would a woman of any
social standing give her card directly to a man not of the servant class!
To do so implies that she’s not the lady she claims to be. I know I’m a
‘calling-card tragic’, but this kind of stuff is crucial to building realistic
pastiche narratives. In contemporary fiction of the period, these niceties are
often overlooked in order to facilitate the action – in this instance, for
example, it would be understood that the card had been passed to the
butler who then announces her - and the readers of the time would have factored
this in as a fait accompli. Bringing up calling cards is deadly
for the modern writer: yes, they had them back then, but if you don’t
know how they worked, then don’t use them.)
Where
were we? Oh yes – “Carry On Carnacki” aka. “The Thing in the Bedroom”
by David Langford. This is the tale – told to a bibulous audience at a seedy
pub - of a haunting at a grotty British seaside B&B, haunted by the
separated member of a previous tenant lost in a slamming door accident,
resolved by a cross-dressing occult detective (our narrator), all to facilitate
a pithy comment by a beery listener, viz. “Well, bugger me!”. Have I mentioned
before how tedious these shaggy-dog tales are? Oh yes, that’s right: I have.
At
first I thought this might have been an offering by Rhys Hughes who gave us “The
French Lieutenant’s Gurning” in issue 4 of ODQ, but the Benny Hill
levels of humour stood against him in that regard (the actual author is the one
provided – I’m guessing – on the publication details page). This has been
written by someone with a solid and working knowledge of William Hope Hodgson’s
oeuvre (especially the Carnacki stuff), but with the puerile sense of
humour of a fifteen-year-old. It hits all the marks and lampoons them
mercilessly. All that was needed was a smirking Kenneth Williams at the end to
say “oo! You are naughty!”. It’s obviously someone’s idea of a good time;
not mine, particularly.
After
the African prose-poem of the previous issue (“Komolafe”, ODM #6)
I went into this next piece – “The White Sickness” by D.J. Tyrer - with
high expectations; sadly, they were not met. There’s a lot of flavour here and
good local colour, exploring the nature of tribal witch-hunters in Africa –
lots of the technical jargon is handled quite neatly in telling the reader
what’s taking place. Unfortunately, the story runs on rails to an inevitable
conclusion: at no point was I wondering if things might not turn out alright;
it was always a done deal. There are several clunkily-inserted moments of
self-doubt for our detective here and there, but they are almost immediately
resolved by some deus ex machina moment that gets things rolling again. A
couple more re-writes and this might polish up into something of real interest…
I
confess, I’ve watched wa-a-a-ay too many episodes of “Arrow”. The
moment I saw the name “Smoake” in the title of this next piece, I thought I was
about to read an occult detective spin-off from the TV show starring the Green
Arrow’s IT-partner, Felicity Smoak – but then there’s that extra ‘e’ in there… Turns
out, I was wrong, and this story could have no other title but the punny one
supplied. I rolled with it…
“Smoake
and Mirrors” by Nancy A.
Hansen is a story in the career of Chandra Smoake, an occult detective of mixed
American/Sub-continental heritage, who drives a succubus from the home of a
fretful housewife. The demon uses a wide array of mirrors – supplied by the home
keeper’s husband, a furniture dealer who claims the pieces that his clients
have defaulted upon in payment – as portals to move around the house, and our
detective has her work cut out to isolate and purge the pest.
For
the most part, this works very well. There is some powerful imagery, a good
sense that the exorcist might not be up to the task at hand, and some suitably
icky moments involving swarms of blowflies and oozing ectoplasm. My main issue
was in trying to pin down exactly when this story was set. Establishing
the fact that the housewife’s husband would be racially-intolerant of Chandra’s
presence should he walk in upon the magical happenings didn’t help – that’s as
true today, sadly, as at any time in US history. The slang terms used by
Chandra’s erstwhile assistant didn’t help either (and only caused me to wonder
if perhaps Chandra’s English was a second tongue), while the behaviours of the
housewife and her demonically-obsessed daughter – given the generational-divide
– only obscured things further. Even the clothing descriptions didn’t help. I
spent too much time looking for clues on this matter rather than letting the
story roll over me. If at some point Ms. Hansen had just said ‘it’s the 1950s’,
say, or referenced a headline, or current event, I could have let the issue
slide and gotten on with things; as it is, I was constantly distracted.
(Something
as innocuous as this can absolutely kill a story. For a comparison, Kiwi crime
fiction queen Dame Ngaio Marsh wrote the adventures of a sleuth named ‘Roderick
Alleyn’. At no point in her life did she reveal how this name is pronounced –
some thought it was ‘Allen’; others ‘AWL-en’; still others ‘a-LAIN’. She didn’t
clarify things, and, after her death, her literary society announced, in their
expert opinion, which pronunciation was ‘correct’, instantly dividing the
readership into rancorous camps. Personally, I don’t read her books because,
the moment I start, I also begin wondering which version is right – and I
inevitably put the book aside in annoyance. And I’m sure I’m not the only one…)
In
“The Spirits in the Air” by Aidan Hayes, we don’t have to worry about
names at all. We meet an unnamed journalist who can see spirits in the world
around him, not only of dead people but of animals whose flesh has been served
up as food, or as leather clothing. He has arranged to meet a nameless young
woman in a diner – magically enhanced to keep chicken spirits to a minimum –
and to enlist her as his new student, learning how to negotiate a world overrun
with the dead (pro-tip: don’t tell anyone your name, not even your prospective
teacher of the arcane arts). There’s nothing dramatic about this piece: the two
characters talk and swap observations, warily circling each other conversationally
in order to avoid any lurking traps, or hidden agendas. Finally, the girl
agrees to taking on her new mentor and the stage is set for shenanigans down
the line in later narratives. It’s a good introduction to a fascinatingly
nuanced, spirit-populated world, with possibly more instalments waiting in the
wings. I wonder how long he can go before he has to reveal someone’s – anyone’s
– name, however…
The
next story is where things get GOOD (again!). “Mama G” by Tanya
Warnakulasuriya is the bomb – a snappy, engaging, entertaining, supernatural
romp with all the bells and whistles, cunningly plotted, pleasingly retailed,
and full of colour and interest. I haven’t seen magic and mental illness
conflated with this much skill or sensitivity since Simon Avery’s “Songs of
Dwindled Gods” in ODQ#4 (also amazing) or in Matt Wagner’s “Mage”
comics before that. This is the story of a homeless woman living in London
around the time of the Brixton Riots and conversant with the West Indian
folklore of the Windrush Generation. She acknowledges her mental issues and
uses her medication to create a metaphoric light around her to keep demons at
bay. These creatures emerge into the world through an internal “tear” in our
heroine’s soul, crossing over to cause harm to others, and a particularly nasty
one sneaks out to start killing children in the Brixton neighbourhood, taking
the form of her recently-deceased guardian Mama G.
Helping
her in her quest to vanquish this entity are assorted angels – particularly the
multi-faceted Jacob - and a steadfast companion dog named Tom, once owned by
Mama G. Along the way we meet Rasta boys and street cops, earnest priests and
effusive coffee shop proprietors, who all engage with our heroine in pursuit of
her quest. I don’t want to say too much about this story – I don’t want to
spoil it for anybody – but I urge you to read it!
“…And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of
God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge
concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at
any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.”
-Matthew 4:6
“Dash
Thy Foot” by Julie Frost takes
us back to the Chandleresque gumshoe narrative tropes that are a regular
hallmark of the occult detective world. The title of this story bugged me so I
looked it up – it’s from that point in
the Bible when Satan is tempting Jesus and he effectively says, ‘don’t worry
about anything that I might do while talking to you - no angel will ever let
you come to any harm’. The story involves a trademark private detective, down
on his luck as usual, who is hired by a mysterious ‘bombshell dame’ to serve
Satan with a legal summons. He, of course, thinks it’s a joke, but after being
supplied with a mystical GPS device to get him where he needs to be, he
realizes, at the point where he enters Hell and confronts the demon Gaap, that
it’s all legit.
Of
course, the moment he walks into Hell is the also the moment when his guardian
angel appears beside him to ensure that he receives safe passage. This fellow –
Khatuliel – is there ready to bear our hero up lest he dash his foot against any
Hell-formed stones.
This
is a good romp that has some interesting moral quandaries at its heart – it
turns out that Gaap arranges to confront our hero with the soul of the killer
who mutilated and murdered his mother, and offers to let him torture the name of
his accomplice out of the revenant. With Khatuliel warning him of the possible
damage of his own soul in doing this, the private eye weighs the situation up
and makes a crucial choice... The private dick tropes fly thick and fast in this
tale – even the dame with the legal papers was named “Jessica” just to short-cut
the Jessica Rabbit stereotype – but it never overshadows what this story is trying
to achieve; it’s a case of the author using the format rather than being in
slavish devotion to it. A solid tale.
In
“Beyond the Faded Shrine Gates” we meet Brandon Barrows’ dogged Japanese
demon-hunter, Azuma Kuromori, at an early stage prior to his career and before
he was aware of the supernatural influences that affect the world around him. A
rebellious and angry child, he defies his father’s wishes and enters an
abandoned temple near his home village only to encounter Things Better Left
Alone.
I’ve
read a couple of Mr. Barrows things in the past (“The Arcana of the Alleys”,
in ODQ#2, and “Shadow’s Angle” in ODQ#5) and I’ve found them somewhat
wanting. The first story is a faux-Carnacki tale which completely fails
to resemble the work of William Hope Hodgson while the second one – an Azuma
story – I found totally unconvincing in its essentials. This present story is a
little better – it at least sets itself in a reasonably definite
Japanese setting – but in no way does it read like it was written by, or about,
Japanese people. There is a complete lack of cultural identification – be it
Victorian English or Modern-day Japanese – in any of these tales. They all read
like the action-movie inspired stylings of an American guy in his 20s or early
30s as much as they read like anything. That being said, the writing is
polished, the plotting is solid and the stakes convincing; they just don’t seem
real. If this isn’t an argument to support the “Write What You Know” chestnut
I don’t know what is…
The
last story in this issue is “A Night in Gorakhpur – A Tale of the Occultress”
by Colin Fisher. In it, retired military man Makepeace Sinclair tells a
late-night colleague about a strange event that took place in his youth when he
was the Governor of East Punjab. He offers a story about a séance that
took place there, to entertain a coterie of visiting Brits and Yanks,
and of a strange woman who defied protocol mid-way through the event to unmask
a supernaturally evil undertaking.
This
story is loaded with myriad tiny details – of place, of time, of culture – that
quickly consolidate as an entertaining whole. The point-of-view of the clueless
Sinclair is perfect for relaying the seemingly sinister machinations of the Occultress
as she moves to unearth the villains before they do harm. There is palpable
menace in the action and in the framing device of the older Sinclair talking to
his visitor. I was left wondering somewhat at the end as to why the Occultress
appears in the modern setting and just who it could be that she had come to vanquish
– Sinclair or the listener – and it left me a little unsatisfied. That,
however, is my only quibble: an excellent story, else.
I
should also take time to salute the artists while I’m here. From the front
cover to the back, there’s a wealth of good quality visuals all resonating
nicely with the accompanying writing.
The
reviews and articles have a lot to offer as well. There’s Steven Philip Jones’
evaluation of Dirk Pitt – a character created by the action/thriller
writer Clive Cussler, who died earlier this year – as an occult investigator
and, in a similar vein, Dave Brzeski sums up the shortcomings of Grimm:
Ghost Spotter/Doctor a character from the Golden Age of American comics.
Then Bobby Derie muses upon whether Robert E. Howard might have ever read a
William Hope Hodgson story and what the likelihood of that might have been by
trawling through his extensive correspondence with other members of the
Lovecraft Circle. Finally, there are as usual a slew of entertaining reviews on
current works available in the sub-genre: I definitely pore through this stuff
– a lot of my stock purchasing for the bookshop where I work has benefited from
the finds I’ve made here!
*****
The
term “Occult Detective” is a surprisingly broad umbrella that can cover a huge
amount of genre and literary territory. There are common tropes and mainstays
to which writers can turn their hands for various effects and a huge scope to
transform a narrative into something that can transcend the Genre Fiction
tar-brushing. Every issue of this magazine contains works that are pure magic
in terms of range and execution and that trend doesn’t seem likely to stop. There
is the occasional dud, or story that just needs a bit more polish, but that’s
inevitable with these kinds of efforts.
Of
note, now that we’re at issue number seven, is the notion that many characters
in these stories seem to be part of a greater whole and that what we’re seeing
is just a fraction of the potential that can be found in a collection of
stories focusing on these players and the stages upon which they strut. I
mentioned above that Ms. Vlek’s world, in which she sets her Geoffrey
Vermillion narratives, is a case where the whole seems greater than the sum
of its parts; that might also hold true for Mr. Hayes' unnamed characters from
this issue, or of Mr. Fisher’s daring Occultress. It’s certainly been
the case in earlier issues with Melanie Atherton Allen’s Simon Wake
stories, Tim Waggoner’s Ismael Carter adventures against the encroaching
Shadow, or Edward M. Erdelac’s John Conquer series. Other stories
here are perfect as they are – “as an orange is final; as an orange is
something that nature has made just right”, which is how Truman Capote would
have it – such as “Uxmal”, “Mama G” and “Dash Thy Foot”. The
great thing about a journal such as this one is that it showcases talent
emerging out there in the wild and lets avid readers seek out more of the same.
*****
Chapter Listing:
Stories:
“Uxmal”, Debra Blundell
“Ghost in the Machine”, Paul St. John Mackintosh
“Pause for Station Identification”, Jonathan Raab & Matthew M. Bartlett
“The Case of the Signet
Ring”, Aaron Vlek
“The Thing in the
Bedroom”, “W*ll**m H*pe
H*dgs*n” (David Langford)
“The White Sickness”, D.J. Tyrer
“Smoake and Mirrors”, Nancy A. Hansen
“The Spirits in the Air”, Aidan Hayes
“Mama G”, Tanya Warnakulasuriya
“Dash Thy Foot”, Julie Frost
“Beyond the Faded Shrine
Gates”, Brandon Barrows
“A
Night in Gorakhpur – A Tale of the Occultress”, Colin Fisher
Art:
Sebastian
Cabrol, Mutartis Boswell, Luke Spooner, Bob Freeman, Autumn Barlow, and Russell
Smeaton
Non-Fiction:
“Dirk Pitt: Occult
Detective?”, Steven Philip
Jones
“Conan and Carnacki:
Robert E. Howard and William Hope Hodgson”, Bobby Derie
Cold
Cases: “Grimm: Ghost Spotter/Doctor”,
Dave Brzeski
Reviews:
“Soul Breaker”, Clara Coulson by Dave Brzeski
“Vigil (Verity
Fassbender, Book 1)”,
Angela Slatter by Julia Morgan
“Wicked Innocents”, S.H. Livernois by Dave Brzeski
“Punk
Mambo, #0-#5”, Cullen
Bunn, et.al, by Dave Brzeski
