The Four Corners stories by Theodore Roscoe, concerning mysterious and suspenseful happenings in the so-named town in northern NY, are legitimate masterpieces in setting and tone — and ‘There Are Smiles That Make You Happy’ (1939) is another beautiful example of the storyteller’s craft.
Continue readingRelatively late in his career, Theodore Roscoe wrote a book about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, The Web of Conspiracy (1959), and it’s difficult not to wonder if the seed for that might have been planted in this visit to the fictional town of Four Corners, NY.
Continue readingBack in August, I read the first volume of Theodore Roscoe’s stories set in the fictional town of Four Corners, and enjoyed them so much that I’m back this month for the five tales that comprise Volume 2.
Continue reading
This first volume of The Complete tales of Jules de Grandin, French detective of the occult, contains 23 stories published between 1925 and 1928. Seabury Quinn was brought to my attention on the GAD Facebook group as an author who, like William Hope Hodgson, would mix in rational solutions to apparently supernatural problems so that you’re never sure what you’re getting. Sounds like fun? Let’s see how these stories stand up to scrutiny.
Continue reading
This week, nine tales of criminous and/or eerie happenings written by Hirai Tarō who, under the name Edogawa Rampo, is widely acknowledged as the godfather of Japanese mystery writing.
Continue reading
Another author exploring the spOooOOoOky side, with rational solutions just as likely as ghosts and spectres. WooOOoOooOoo, etc.
Continue reading
With the annual Bodies from the Library collections, which have brought long out-of-print stories of crime and detection back to public awareness, proving rightly popular, editor Tony Medawar turns his attention to another facet of genre fiction with the Ghosts from the Library (2022) collection, in which authors (mostly) better known for their stories of crime and detection have a go at generating some supernatural chills instead.
Continue reading
One final, for now, trip to Four Corners, “the kind of one-horse burg where they leave the doors open at night”, and the story of ‘Daisy Boy’ Dumont and the Curlew fortune.
Continue readingWhere next for Theodore Roscoe’s tales of small own life in upstate New York? Well, how about some Suspense?
Continue reading
Another collaborative effort in the style of Behind the Screen (1930) and The Scoop (1931), with six authors each taking up the challenge of continuing this story, published in instalments in the News Chronicle in 1954.
Continue reading
The Invisible Event 