Peter Ackroyd's novel THREE BROTHERS has a lot to recommend it, particularly to admirers of the author. However, like his earlier book THE CASEBOOK OF VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN, one might be inclined, on reaching the last page, to wonder why he bothered. Both books, in my opinion, end with a whimper. On the plus side fans will find Ackroyd indulging in a lot of his obsessions such as London, the literati, suggestions of the supernatural (here in the shape of nuns that appear and disappear) and mysticism (at least two encounters with the Virgin Mary). But to what end? True, some of the incidents in the novel are superbly described and it is impossible not to be carried along by the narrative but, hopefully, towards some end. For me that end never came. Perhaps the fault lies with me. Did I miss something?

Three brothers are born on the same day in successive years in Camden Town. One becomes a reporter, one has an academic career, and one drifts aimlessly. Their mother mysteriously leaves home when they are young but unexpectedly re-emerges into their respective lives as they encounter crooked newspaper tycoons, a Rackman like slum landlord, corrupt politicians, murder, an Artful Dodger-like rent boy and South London gangsters. The lives of all the characters begin to interweave in fascinating twists and turns and then, it seemed to me, Ackroyd couldn't find an ending. I say "as it seemed" to me as I'm pretty sure that Ackroyd ended the book just as he wanted and had a point to make. I didn't see it. I can't say I didn't enjoy the novel but I wish I understood it.

Peter Ackroyd is one of my favourite modern authors. I have a lot of his books, although it is far from being a complete collection as he is remarkably prolific. I'm not sure how I first encountered his work but am content to believe it was on the recommendation of Iain Sinclair, whose poem LUD HEAT was the inspiration for Ackroyd's premier novel HAWKSMOOR. The two writers share a fascination/obsession with London which runs through both their careers. I find both quite fascinating although Ackroyd is the more accessible to me (and, I suspect, many others.) His novels have (just) a recognisable narrative flow and are packed full of challenging idea. If I had to pick favourites among his fiction, my top five would be. HAWKSMOOR, FIRST LIGHT (imagine Thomas Hardy rewritten by Nigel Kneale - or vice versa!), DAN LENO AND THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM (recently filmed), THE HOUSE OF DR.DEE and CHATTERTON.

SAX ROHMER AND THE TRAVELLING BOOKS

Arthur Sarsfield Ward (alias Sax Rohmer)

I don't think of myself as a book collector, although I probably am by any sane definition. Rather, I see myself as someone who acquires a lot of books. The author who takes up most space on my shelves is Arthur Sarsfield Ward, better known as Sax Rohmer. Back in the early Seventies a girlfriend gave me a paperback copy of THE MASK OF FU MANCHU which she found unreadable.I, on the other hand, loved it for a couple of  reasons. First was probably it evokes the Boris Karloff film which was based on it (a film I had not seen at the time), secondly I loved the no nonsense pulpy style. I wanted more. Over the next couple of years I read as much Rohmer as I could find. Luckily, at that time, they were easily available in nice English and American paperbacks. Fu Manchu, Sumuru, Gaston Max, the Si-Fan, Egyptian witch queens, sacred slippers - I encountered them all in the pages of Rohmer's pages. Inevitably my interest waned as I turned my attention to other writers and interests. In a moment of madness I sold all my Rohmer papersbacks to my bookseller friend, Alan Austin. Little did I know at the time but neither Rohmer or Alan Austin were finished with me or with my bookshelves.

Years later I received a phone call  from a friend asking me if I would like her late mother's collrction of Sax Rohmer books. Yes, of course I would happily give them a home. I was also intrigued as I was aware that most, if not all, these books were purchased from my friend, Alan. My Rohmer's were all paperbacks and I expected some of my own books would be returned to me. Nothing was further than the truth for when the box of books eventually arrived they were all hardbacks. I had been warned that some of the books were, due to circumstance, not in very good condition but that was an understatement. These books had been sadly neglected and mistreated. Physically many were so poor that there was little to do but dispose of them and these were joined by those badly stained with and smelling strongly of cat's urine. The rest, after a lengthy period of well ventilated quarantine, were acceptable. Despite my ability to talk myself into keeping any book I like, however poor the condition, in the hope that a better copy will present itself, I had to say goodbye to about a third of the Rohmers. What remained was fascinating.

I now own forty-six Sax Rohmer hardbacks, easily the most books by any one author on my shelves. These date from the teens of the Twentieth Century right up until the 1950's. They include editions published by the regular Rohmer publishers, Methuen, Cassell and Herbert Jenkins. While condition is not of the finest they are tight copies. Best of all are the first editions which include two copies of TALES OF EAST AND WEST and singles of QUEST FOR THE SACRED SLIPPER, THE BAT FLIES LOW, SHADOW OF FU MANCHU, THE GREEN EYE OF BAST etc and a couple of the later SUMURU books.  I really do not actively seek out Sax Rohmer any more but I would certainly pick up any I came across and I'm more than pleased that these books that made the journey from Essex to Devon and back again via a small chain of friends now live with me.

Illustrations are not from my collection.

ETERNAL CHAMPIONS

Michael Moorcock

Back in the 1960's I was a big science-fiction/fantasy fan, well, to be honest, I leaned more towards fantasy. I first encountered the work of Michael Moorcock through his Elric of Melnibone tales in the pages of Science Fantasy Magazine. I loved them and read everything I could by the writer. Of course Elric, the albino with the mighty sword Stormbringer was one of many heroes that Moorcock created : Corum, Dorian Hawkmoon, von Bek, Oswald Bastable etc - although, actually, as his many readers will know, they are actually all the same person - Moorcock was probably ahead of his time in using the multiverse theory which allowed his characters to sometimes encounter alternative versions of themselves. While I enjoyed all these books I eventually moved on to other writers and fictional genres and my Michael Moorcock collection, or most of it, was sold. I did keep, however the books feature my favourite incarnation of the writer's "Eternal Champion" - the English Assassin : Jerry Cornelius (THE FINAL PROGRAMME, the first Cornelius novel was an alternative of the first Elric story, THE DREAMING CITY - or vice versa, I can't remember which) who swaggered through a warzone that bore a remarkable resemblance to swinging pop culture London. I always suspected that Moorcock took the name Cornelius from a Notting Hill greengrocer shop called "Cornelius O'London" which was near to his London home. I used to pass his house, then in Ladbroke Grove, on a regular basis and once peered down through the basement window to see a large model rocket-ship (tin plate, I believe) on a table top.. Over the years I've had three encounters with Moorcock. The first was a brief meeting at the World Science Fiction Convention in 1965. The second was a book signing at the Dark They Were and Golden Eyed bookshop in Soho when, presenting a book to be signed, Moorcock asked me if I wouldn't have much rather had one of the rarer unsigned ones!

The third meeting was the most memorable as far as I an concerned. During a break from work my friend Colin and I visited The Fantasy Centre at 157 Holloway Road. As we browsed the door opened and in walked Michael Moorcock and a man who I recognised as American fantasy author Karl Edward Wagner. I knew the owners of the shop and before long we were all chatting away happily. My friend, Colin, was most impressed to meet Moorcock but, as an Edgar Rice Burroughs fan, more impressed to be meeting Edward P. Bradbury (one of Moorcock's pseudonyms), author of a trio of Martian pastiches in the style of Burroughs. I actually grabbed a book by Wagner of the shelves to get it autographed. Both writers were extremely friendly and happy to talk to a couple of fans.

Karl Edward Wagner

Michael Moorcock's work has brought me great pleasure in the past and although my taste for science fantasy or speculative fiction has waned over the years I still occasionally read his books and have tremendous affection for his back catalogue. A career which encompasses Tarzan comics, Sexton Blake, editing the ground-breaking magazine NEW WORDS, writing novels, literary criticism and being a rock musician is pretty impressive.

Daniel Stashower's acceptance speech at The Edgar Awards in 2014

A MESSAGE FROM SERENA CAIRNS

Thank you so much, for your review of FATHER OF LIES. It is so difficult for Indie authors - and those with small publishers, as in my case - to get known. Sometimes positive reviews are all that keep us from giving up. Yes, I am currently working on SET IN TIME, the sequel to FATHER OF LIES. I hope it won't disappoint.  www.serenacairns.co.uk

ONE FROM THE CRYPT...

Deep in the crypt of an old Norfolk church something very ancient and very nasty is stirring. A young Anglican priest finds herself being drawn inexorably into a world of dark, eldritch secrets hidden from the world by organised religion, testing both her own faith and, indeed, the faith of millions of believers. Yes, with Serena Cairns' first novel, FATHER OF LIES, we are, once again, in the field of religious conspiracy. It is a field well ploughed in recent years thanks to Dan Brown. But whereas Brown simply recycled the exposed hoax of HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL, Cairns goes for something more original and creepier. Brown's DA VINCI CODE had conspiracy but FATHER OF LIES has conspiracy, supernatural horror and sex. Serena Cairns is a good writer whose stories have been anthologised. She lives in the West Country and is currently working on a sequel to FATHER OF LIES.

Serena Cairns

It is at this time I must declare an interest in FATHER OF LIES. Serena Cairns has been a friend for more years that either of us care to remember. I have watched her novel grow from an idea into what it is today. I gave some background information in the early stages of writing and was privileged to read an early draft of the book.

DANIEL STASHOWER - THE SEQUEL.......

Daniel Stashower with the Anthony Award he received for his book HOUR OF PERIL.

After writing my previous post about writer Daniel Stashower I was delighted to receive the following comments from him:

"This is very kind of you -- thank you! And all the more flattering when I see that your previous subject was the great Irwin Shaw! I came to him late, long after he was gone, and I thought The Troubled Air -- about an era in which I take a particular interest -- was outstanding. Hope you're well, and thank you for the kind words -- you've made my day." - Daniel Stashower.

Always good to pass on recommendations so :  Irwin Shaw's novel about the McCarthy era is definitely worth a read.

                                                                                                        

DANIEL STASHOWER

Daniel Stashower

                Daniel Stashower, born 1960, is an American author of mystery novels, biographies and historical non-fiction. He is also the man responsible for my fascination with the magician, escape artiste, Harry Houdini. I had, of course, been aware of Houdini since the 1950's when I saw the Tony Curtis film HOUDINI but I'd never really thought that much about him. Then, a couple of years ago I discovered Stashower's mystery novels that featured Houdini and his brother Dash as the central characters.

Houdini and his brother, Dash Hardeen

About five years ago I was thrilled by Glen Gold's novel CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL which shared a similar background to Stashower's Houdini books and this led me to appreciate both  novel THE PRESTIGE and the subsequent film version and to a lesser extent the film THE ILLUSIONIST, so it was probably inevitable that I would eventually turn my attention to Houdini, albeit in fiction. I liked the Houdini mysteries so much I did a rare thing (for me) and wrote to Stashower via his Facebook page. I even had the cheek to correct the author's knowledge of London geography as it appears in one of the books. Much to my surprise, Stashower answered personally and with good humour and also recommended to me his non-fiction book, THE BEAUTIFUL CIGAR GIRL : MARY ROGERS, EDGAR ALLAN POE AND THE INVENTION OF MURDER, which again was right up my street as I am a big Edgar Allan Poe fan.

I recommend without reservation all Stashower's books both fiction and non-fiction. The titles of the Houdini mysteries alone must encourage murder mystery fans to seek them out. Sadly, I expect Daniel Stashower's career has moved on and he won't be doing more books about the egotist young Houdini.

The Houdini Mysteries:

THE DIME MUSEUM MURDERS (1998)
THE FLOATING LADY MURDER (1999)
THE HOUDINI SPECTRE (1999)

There is also a stand alone mystery, THE ECTOPLASMIC MAN which features both Harry Houdin and Sherlock Holmes.

Other works include non-fiction about C0NAN DOYLE and ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Stashower has also written Sherlock Holmes pastiches short stories.

MORE ADVENTURES AMONG THE LITERATI........

1963. I'm a year out of school and working as an assistant in the publicity department of Columbia Pictures in London's Soho. Columbia are about to release a film called IN THE FRENCH STYLE starring Jean Seberg. A romantic comedy about an American girl living in Paris, nobody expects it to make a big splash. It is directed by Robert Parrish, a former assistant to John Ford, whose career has been competent without being particularly outstanding despite a few highlights (his colour Western, THE WONDERFUL COUNTRY, is worth checking out) and based on short stories by Irwin Shaw.

Irwin Shaw

Now, young as I was, I knew that Shaw was a big hitter, a writer of novels and short stories, scripts, a producer of films. He was part of that post-war generation of American intellectuals who muscled their way into the film industry after World War II. Shaw produced the Kirk Douglas film ULYSSES and wrote the novel THE YOUNG LIONS which was made into a major film production starring Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and Dean Martin. I had read THE YOUNG LIONS and I was in awe of meeting its author when, prior to the release of the film IN THE FRENCH STYLE, Shaw set up camp in the Columbia press office. This would later happen with both Richard Brooks and Stanley Kubrick - but more of those in a later post. As an office junior I was nervous about approaching Shaw, especially as it was somewhat frowned upon to bother the many celebrities who passed through the office. Of course, when you get a chance to actually meet somebody that you admire, caution in often thrown to the wind. I did get a chance to speak to Shaw and tell him how much I admired his book and he seemed genuinely pleased. Today, Shaw is probably best remember as the author of the novels RICH MAN, POOR MAN and BEGGERMAN, THIEF which were turned into enormously successful television mini-series. Irwin Shaw died in Switzerland in 1971.

Shaw asked me if I had seen the film

of THE YOUNG LIONS. "No" I said.

"Don't" he said.

ADVENTURES AMONG THE LITERATI.

Iain Sinclair

I cannot pretend that I know Iain Sinclair very well, but, although I have not spoken to him for many years, I do know him. We met before his fame as a critically acclaimed author and it is fair to say that over the years his work has influenced me quite a bit despite the fact that I find most of it unreadable in the conventional sense.

In the mid 1980s I was working as a postman in the Northern District Post Office in London and one of my great pleasures was my weekly Thursday visit to the second-hand bookstalls in nearby Camden Passage where Iain had a stall. I was into weird fiction, crime and books on London and these featured among Iain's interests both as a bibliophile and a bookseller, so conversation was inevitable. I also met Iain on occasions in the HEROES second-hand bookshop in Canonbury Lane. HEROES, run by my friend Alan Austin, was originally a comic store but over the years in morphed into a bookshop as Alan's own interests changed. Not only did I spend a lot of time there due to its proximity to my workplace, it was a meeting place for various like-minded characters such as the eccentric, Dave Giacardhi, and future prophet of Nordic Noir, Barry Forshaw, who managed the more up-market nearby Canonbury Bookshop, both of whom became good friends.

Bookstall in Camden Passage

Iain had published some poetry, notably a small volume entitled LUD HEAT which contained a prose poem entitled "Nicholas Hawksmoor, his churches" which proposed a mystical significance to the architect Hawksmoor's London churches. I found the piece inspirational and set out to visit the churches themselves. Heavily under the spell of Iain's writing and Peter Ackroyd's subsequent brilliant novel, HAWKSMOOR (which acknowledged its debt) I found the churches fascinating, not only for their architecture but for the way they seemed to map out much of the mythology and dark lore of London with their echoes of Jack the Ripper, the Ratcliff Highway Murders, Springheeled Jack and cholera. Then came Iain's novel WHITE CHAPPELL, SCARLET TRACINGS which concerned itself with not only Jack the Ripper but the second-hand book trade. One of the characters in the book, a group pf eccentric and somewhat seedy dealers searching for a copy of MRS.BEETON'S CHRISTMAS ANNUAL featuring the very first Sherlock Holmes tale, was based on the very real Martin Stone, another of the Camden Passage fraternity.

Martin stone

When it comes to Martin Stone it is probably enough to simply make a list of biographical details and accomplishments : Born 1946. Bibliophile, book dealer, guitarist - played in Jack Parnell's orchestra during the run of WEST SIDE STORY at the London Paladium, was "Mad Dog Stone" with the groups like Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers and The Pink Fairies, toured with John Lee Hooker, moved to Paris, now lives in Versailles. Martin was great company, an excellent raconteur with, what seemed to me, to be an encyclopaedic knowledge of literature and the under belly of London. Those who know him will remember his beret, a disreputable item of adornment which legend predicted could only be removed from his head by major surgery. In later years he has been photographed wearing a variety of head gear.

You can read more about Martin here :Martin Stone

Back to Iain Sinclair. One day Iain appeared in HEROES and mentioned in passing that he had been down to Stanford Le Hope doing research for his novel DOWN RIVER. I had also been in that town on what is unaffectionately known to residents of south Essex as "The Loop" a weird diversionary branch of the main  line from Fenchurch Street to Shoeburyness,  My quest had been to find the houses lived in by the writer Joseph Conrad. I found the site of his home - a new building at the location of the demolished original,  plus an earlier cottage where he may or may not have temporarily resided, During my wanderings I met an old man trimming a hedge who claimed to have been related to John Tunstall, the employer of Billy the Kid, whose murder was the catalyst that provoked Billy into a life of violence. I told Iain the story and sometime later he presented me with an autographed copy of the novel which contained a fantasy of my story somewhat misremembered - possibly intentionally. I am described in the book as "a scholar, an ex-postman" on page 354 of the first edition.

Personally, I do not find Iain Sinclair's books reader friendly. The narratives are oblique, disconnected and, with the exception of WHITE CHAPPELL, SCARLET TRACINGS, I struggle to find anything resembling a coherent plot in what seems like me to be a stream of consciousness. But this does not mean that I do not love them. I read them in a way that, perhaps, Iain intended (I really do not know) by dipping into them randomly. I experience frustration to be sure but I continually find things  to interest me, events and situations I recognise. Like Iain I love wandering the streets of London, I love old maps, old churches, eccentric characters. I found that Iain once shared a flat with the late Michael Reeves, the film director famous for WITCHFINDER GENERAL. I knew Reeves reasonably well before his death but did not know of the connection with Iain until I read Sinclair's book, LIGHTS OUT FOR THE TERRITORY (my favourite of his books, with, coincidentally, a title taken from a line in my all time favourite Western). DOWN RIVER also features the first ever railway murder which took place on the Fenchurch Street Line in 1864 and mention of the sinking of the pleasure steamer Princess Alice in 1878  . I was, at the time the book was published, travelling to work everyday on the Fenchurch Street Line. A few years later I met my partner, Theresa, who was related to Long Liz Stride, the Swedish canonical victim of Jack the Ripper. Liz had married one of Theresa's great great uncles and had claimed (falsely) that her husband and daughters had drowned during the sinking of the Princess Alice.

                

Elizabeth Stride 1872

So, from a casual conversation with a friendly bookseller connections are made and connections beget connections, interesting people drift in and out of my life. My friend Alan Austin once asked Iain Sinclair if he considered making his books more reader friendly, his answer was a simple "No", He was right, they probably wouldn't be half as interesting. Although I have not seen Iain since the early 90's I continue to follow his career and enjoy his television appearances such as his campaigning against the London Olympics.

                                       The Mysterious Mounds of London with Iain Sinclair