Books! Glorious Books.

 I arrived home poorer financially, but not poor in spirit. I brought home a cargo of books, as you can see. But what, you ask, was the result?

Well!

David Wellington, 99 Coffins and Vampire Zero. If you remember Wellington, that’s because you read his Monster Island series of zombie apocalypse novels. I think I may have mentioned him in a Bookshelf, lo, these many moons past. In Monster Island, followed by Monster Nation and Monster Planet, he started off with a great idea: dude from UN shanghaied during zombie apocalypse is sent to NYC to pick up meds for a Somali warlord afflicted by AIDs, since the UN building is the only place anyone can think of where someone can reliably get said meds. Sold. Job done. Problem being, that plot didn’t quite sustain the novel, never mind the following two books. Here we have a situation where reluctant modern-day vampire hunter is, first, sent off to deal with Civil-War era shenanigans, and then, in the next novel, has to deal with her former mentor who’s gone rogue and joined the fang gang. I admit, this was a gamble purchase. I'll have to see whether it was worth the $7 or so the Strand charged me for them. [spoiler alert: ehhhhhh ... *shrug*]

Christianna Brand, Green For Danger. Classic crime from the British Library. I’ve already seen the film so I kinda know whodunit, but that shan’t stop me enjoying this one. World War Two drama in which a mysterious person is unceremoniously offed on the operating table. The person who says she knows what happened is stabbed to death moments later …

Agatha Christie Mallowan, Come, Show Me How You Lived. Period archaeology, and yes, it is that Agatha Christie. If nothing else this will be excellent research material, but Dame Agatha is always readable so I’m expecting great things.

Arthur Machen, The Three Impostors. I’m going to delve deeper into this in a separate post. Briefly, excellent horror fiction that GUMSHOE Directors should be poaching ideas from left, right and center. A group of disparate acquaintances discover that they’ve all had close encounters with mysterious forces, apparently led, coordinated or otherwise involved by the young man with spectacles – whoever or whatever he may be …Even if you've never read the novel you have almost certainly read The Novel of the Black Seal and The Novel of the White Powder, both of which are part of the Three Impostors and both of which have been anthologized in many publications since.

William Hope Hodgson, The House on the Borderland. Often called a classic of the genre, this is one I actually wouldn’t recommend to most people. It has a strong premise but no follow-through: two friends on a fishing expedition discover a mysterious house, and a diary written by the man who lived there. Expect much luminous and hallucinogenic imagery and almost no plot whatsoever. Worth picking up if you enjoy delving into the history of horror.

Bartholomew Gill, The Death of an Ardent Bibliophile. A policeman pays what amounts to a welfare check on a notorious bibliophile only to find him dead and naked. Or naked and dead, whichever way you’d prefer to read that sentence.

C. Daly King, Obelists at Sea. Another classic crime novel, with the added bonus that this is set on a classic cruise liner. Neatly involving two of my personal obsessions in one package. Job done.

Paul Halter, The Mask of the Vampire. A locked room mystery master tackles supernatural murder. This is a translation of the French original. Vampires and a Frenchman’s interpretation of the English countryside murder mystery? Oho!

Seishi Yokomizo, The Village of Eight Graves. I’ve mentioned his work before. Yokomizo-san struggled to find a market before the War and very nearly starved to death during it, but post-War found fame with his series of historical mystery novels. Once upon a time greedy villagers murdered eight samurai for the stolen gold the samurai were supposedly guarding. Nobody ever found the money; many died from the samurai curse. Now, it seems, the bloody work of vengeance is to begin anew as unlucky heir BLANK comes back to his birthplace, a village he has never seen in his life.

Ken Weber, Maximum Entertainment 2.0. Bought at Tannen’s Magic Shop, a place I thoroughly recommend to all visitors to NYC with even a passing interest in stage magic. I bought this for research purposes; I couldn’t card trick my way out of a rabbit’s hat. However, if you’re going to write about something – say, if you intend to write a novel with a magician as a main or major character – you need to know the business of performance. You need to know what it is to put on a show. That’s what Weber does, and he does it very well.

Lafcadio Hearn, Chita. I admit without shame that I'd buy/read anything Hearn ever wrote and I await the day when someone gathers all his newspaper columns in one anthology. This is his account of the hurricane of 1856 and, speaking as someone who lived through hurricanes: 110%, no error. Horror writers ought to at least read the first chapter, if you read nothing else. 

Radley Balko, Rise of the Warrior Cop If you want to understand how the US became what it is today, you need to read books like these. Balko charts the militarization of America's police, from its earliest days to the no-knock present. The downfall of the Castle Doctrine, one coffin nail at a time.