RogerBW's Blog

2015 Lovecraftian horror novella. In 1920s London, ex-boxer Harry Stubbs gets a job bodyguarding (and spying on) a Chinese visitor who clearly knows more than he's saying.

The Lovecraftian influence is laid on with a lighter touch this time, with an admixture of genuine spiritualism, true original theosophy (rather than the corruptions of that Blavatsky woman), and less-genuine but period Chinese secret societies, all of which help to flesh things out. The centre of the plot is an investigation of the death of "Roslyn D'Onston" (Robert Donston Stephenson), historical suspect for the Ripper murders, amateur occultist, and here plausibly expanded into the pre-Crowley eminence noir that he clearly wanted to be in reality.

The research, in short, is lovely. The pacing is better than in the first book, since while each chapter is still a discrete incident they come more closely in time and follow directly from each other. Stubbs is still largely in the dark as to what's going on until the end, and he perhaps relies a bit heavily on being told things by other people rather than finding them out himself, but that's the sort of person he is; if he started to assemble clues and deduce things, he'd be a different sort of character.

I still wouldn't call the first volume pastiche, but this one establishes a distinctive voice, and I look forward to more.

Followed by Alien Stars.