haunted mysteries and historical horror

July 14 to 17, 1975, no entry - maybe I was still chipping away at Michener’s Hawaii, in anticipation of actually going there that month.

July 14 to 17, 2005, I read:

No Man Standing, Barbara Seranella

This is the fifth in the Munch Mancini series wherein the former biker chick and recovering addict protagonist solves a mystery and copes with the ghosts of her past. Excellent writing, and the heroine’s grit makes her human and understandable. The previous four books are No Human Involved, No Offense Intended, Unwanted Company and Unfinished Business. There’s a sixth, Unpaid Dues, and a seventh, Unwilling Accomplice, just out, but I don’t have my hands on those.


The Colour Out of Space, Tales of Horror by Lovecraft, Blackwood, Machen, Poe, and Other Masters of the Weird, selected by D. Thin, New York Review of Books

These are the venerable masters of the weird--and I can’t resist being naughty and pointing out that none of these stories are protected by copyright, which makes them much cheaper to anthologize. If one is not used to the florid verbiage of bye gone storytelling, one might be impatient with these masters. This one was.

However, I’ve been going through some Lovecraft nostalgia. One of the things I did in Hawaii in July 1975, was to play hooky from the Buddhist convention to watch on The Dunwich Horror (with Sandra Dee!) on TV in the hotel room. Amazing. Younger readers will find it hard to imagine, but I actually did not own a TV, so this was a special treat for me.

The Masters of the Wierd anthology had some good stories, specifically the title story. I wouldn’t recommend the gratuitous sadistic cat slaughter in Bram Stoker’s The Squaw, which is also horribly contrived--the minute the iron maiden torture device is mentioned, you know the author’s going to turn twist the narrative into a pretzel to get a character in there. I sort of wanted O. Henry to come in and shake his finger at Stoker for this.