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Book Review: The Fatal Move and Other Stories by Conall Cearnach

cover art for The Fatal Move and Other Stories by Conall Cearnach

The Fatal Move and Other Stories by Conall Cearnach

Swan River Press, 2021 (reprint, originally published in 1924)

ISBN: 978-1-78380-037-7

Available: Hardcover  ( Swan River Press )

 

 

Reprinted for the first time in nearly one hundred years, The Fatal Move is a slim collection of six ghostly tales penned by Conall Cearnach (the pseudonym of F.W. O’Connell, a peculiar and versatile Irish clergyman and scholar).

 

Thus, lovers of ghost and supernatural stories have the opportunity to get a taste of a different author rather than keep reading the classic works of the usual suspects.

 

The title story, “The Fatal Move” effectively portrays two bachelor friends, both passionate chess players, in love with the same woman. In a final chess game, an ingenious trick bound to bring death to one of the players will select the survivor(and winner of the woman’s heart).

 

The excellent “The  Fiend That Walks Behind” describes the obsession of a psychiatrist whose fame has usurped that of the real author of a scientific discovery, and becomes the object of a paranormal haunting and vengeance.

 

“The Homing Bone”,  a traditional type of ghost story– featuring an anatomist stealing a femur from a grave site– is  so well-told it entices the reader despite its predictable outcome, while “Professor Danvers’ Disappearance” is an intriguing, clever mystery, with a supernatural veneer.

 

The volume is enhanced by a number of quite enjoyable short essays by the author, addressing topics such as dreams, sleeplessness, nervous children, and the power of languages, plus an Irish alternative view of Dante’s Divina Commedia, “ The Vision of Merlino”.  The book is prefaced by an exhaustive, learned introduction by Reggie Chamberlain-King. “F.W. O’Connell: Master of Strange Tongues”.

 

A delightful change from the usual stuff published nowadays.

 

Reviewed by Mario Guslandi

Posted on June 25, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Echoes of Home: A Ghost Story by M.L. Rayner

Echoes of Home: A Ghost Story by M.L. Rayner

Question Mark Press, 2020

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8553179045

Available:  Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition ( Amazon.com )

 

Les Wills is alone in the world. His brothers aren’t keeping in touch, he’s just buried his mother, and he’s depressed by it all. One night his brother Jonathan unexpectedly turns up, gifts him the deed to a remote cottage in the Scottish Highlands, and tells him that if he wants it he’ll need to be there by the next evening. With nothing keeping him, Les optimistically takes off to his new property. Jonathan’s description of the cottage wasn’t exactly accurate, though, and instead of a sales agent meeting him with the keys to a cozy cottage, he discovers a dark, chilly, isolated residence, luckily with the keys in the door.

 

After an uneasy night in his new home, Elphin Cottage, Les drives into town for supplies and breakfast, where he meets Michael Coull, an elderly resident who warns him that the cottage has a “dark past” and that many locals have seen things on the property “they dare not speak of.” Although he is entranced by the beauty of the area, Les starts to wonder if he is seeing and hearing things: a mysterious figure at the edge of a brook, tapping on the window that has no apparent cause, flickering lights in an abandoned cottage, and voices; he has vivid, unsettling dreams.

 

Proving to have the worst survival skills ever, Les wanders the area on his own despite poor weather, an unfamiliar environment, a house clearly unprepared for winter, and the feeling that he is being watched and his home invaded in his absence by… something. His terror is enough for him to flee Elgin Cottage on foot in a blizzard through several feet of snow and through a wooded area in hopes of reaching the closest inn. While there, he once again encounters Coull, who finally gives him the details of Elphin Cottage’s dark past and how to free it of its hauntings. M.L Rayner took inspiration for the story and names for the characters behind the haunting of Elphin Cottage and the surrounding area from his own family genealogy. Although it takes place at the time of the Irish Potato Blight, the story is set in the Scottish Highlands, which I did not know was also affected.

 

Rayner’s lyrical prose brings the remote environment to life, and draws vivid pictures of the starving families and blighted crops during the crop failures that led to the deaths of the ghosts haunting Elphin Cottage. The cruelty of the landowner towards his tenants and the complicity of his guests is heartwrenching.  Rayner also does a great job of creating creepy and suspenseful situations and making the reader question the mundane: did the door blow open on its own, or was it something supernatural? Les, the narrator, is less compelling, and it’s only through the relationship he builds with Michael Coull that we get any sense of him.

 

The unique backstory and creepy, suspenseful atmosphere make Echoes of Home worth checking out.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on June 11, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Bloody Britain by Anna Taborska, illustrated by Reggie Oliver

 

cover art for Bloody Britain by Anna Taborska

Bloody Britain by Anna Taborska, illustrated by Reggie Oliver

Shadow Publishing, 2020

ISBN 978-0957296299

Available: Paperback ( Bookshop.org )

 

The legends and lore of ancient Britain are an essential part of its history, and in Bloody Britain, Anna Taborska shows us that its dark past is never really dead. In a disturbingly calm, conversational tone, Taborska reports the details of torture, murder, revenge, and punishment that evolve from familiar stories and settings into new short story plots with a contemporary feel.

 

Some of the best stories in this collection find horror in the midst of everyday encounters while their innocuous titles belie the violence to come. Who would expect the nice man collecting money for a cancer charity in “Teatime” to be a serial killer who revels in making people suffer their greatest fears? What would make anyone think that a giant worm would be waiting for an opportunity to pop out of a church crypt like the monster in “Cyril’s Mission” does?

 

Two of the most inventive tales, “Rockstar” and “Daylight Robbery,” also give us something deeper to think about as we ponder the characters’ behavior. When the singer in “Rockstar” secretly pays an anonymous writer for lyrics that end up describing real murders, it calls to mind the bad choices some people make for fame and profit. “Daylight Robbery” also focuses on status. It paints the picture of a futuristic, divided society, one in which designer babies become privileged adults who drive around in electric cars wearing “smart suits” while poor immigrants are literally blind and persecuted as terrorists.

 

There are also traditional ghost stories in Bloody Britain. The ghosts include a woman who died in a meat packing factory (“The Haggis Queen”), a young wife and her servant, falsely accused of being her lover, who were both murdered by her husband (“The Gatehouse”), and even ghost dogs that roam around a pet cemetery (“A Walk in the Park”).

 

Although the events are rather predictable in a few of these short stories, they are still  entertaining due to Taborska’s writing style and skillful use of dialogue and description. For example, in “Night of the Crone,” a gang of degenerates gets what’s coming to them when they disturb a monolith in a stone circle. There is also a man who gets into trouble when he dares to inspect a shipwreck at “Formby Point,” and an innocent person imprisoned in the Tower of London who has an encounter with the ghost of Lady Jane Grey. In “The Cat Sitter,” a woman is targeted by a witch who haunts the woods nearby, and in “The Lemmy/Trump Test,” people of low social status are killed for sport. Even the curious student in “Out of the Light” can’t avoid disaster when he becomes addicted to reading a fascinating, evil book he’s borrowed from the bowels of the Bodleian Library.

 

So, light the fire, lock the door, and curl up with a diverting story and a nice cuppa. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

 

Editor’s note: Bloody Britain is a nominee on the final ballot of this year’s Bram Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection. 

Posted on April 8, 2021 by , Reply
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