To the Dark Tower - a Magnum Gothic original

This is another one of those Gothic novels that I picked up because of the cover - in this case, it has a very slight resemblance to the Rudy Nappi cover of the Nancy Drew book, The Sign of the Twisted Candles.  Both books have a single candle prominently displayed on the cover, with the head of a woman next to the candle, and when I saw this book at the used bookstore, my mind immediately went to the Nancy Drew book, so I bought it.  It has been sitting on my shelf for several years, so I figured it was about time I read it.  The back cover blurb cries out "Witch Cult!" and goes on to give a brief synopsis of the story awaiting the reader inside.  Knowing how most Gothic novels of the '60s and '70s often hinted at supernatural tales (but by the end reveal it to be merely a pretense used by a vile villain to achieve his or her goals), I anticipated the same here.  Boy, was I wrong!

 

To the Dark Tower is a somewhat lengthy novel for a Gothic that is not labeled as "Queen-Size" or "Empress Size."  At 187 pages in length, it provides the author with plenty of space to flesh out his story and characters - and yes, I said "his" story.  Lyda Belknap Long is actually a pseudonym for American writer Frank Belknap Long (1901-1994), whose writing includes horror, fantasy, science fiction, and Gothic novels, as well as comic books and non-fiction.  "Lyda" is the name of Long's wife, and so he used her name for his Gothic novels (which is funny, because this particular book has a dedication at the front that reads, "To the untiring help and teachings of my husband, Frank Belknap Long."  I was surprised to learn Long wrote scripts for DC Comics, including stories with Congo Bill and the original Green Lantern, as well as scripts for Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel stories (later known as Shazam!).  When I learned that Long was also a close friend of H.P. Lovecraft, the nature of this story made a lot more sense.

 

When the back cover says "Witch Cult!," it really means it.  The opening Prelude, which is an impressive 18-pages long, does not even introduce readers to the main character.  Instead, we follow a young man named Willie who witnesses a ceremony deep in the Kentucky woods, watching in horror as a young woman is sacrificed to some unseen good.  When he tries to escape, hoping to find salvation in the nearby house of Dr. Wilfred Allen, he is stopped when a robed stranger steps out and leaves an object on the front door of the doctor's house - an object that the doctor finds and with great anxiety throws it into the woods.  Willie finds the object, which is a doll in the likeness of the doctor's female friend, Joan; but the doll has needles sticking into it, and before Willie can do anything about it, he is chased, ultimately meeting his untimely end.

 

Long then jumps to our main character, Joan Lambert, who is driving her car along the desolate backwoods Kentucky road, trying anxiously not to allow her fear to overwhelm her.  An archeologist, Joan has just returned from Spain, where she found some ancient cave writings that revealed a witch cult that existed centuries ago - and her exploration of those caves released an unholy, unseen terror that has followed her across the ocean to Kentucky!  She hopes Dr. Allen can help her get these terrors under control, but the sudden appearance of a man in a monk robe standing in the middle of the road causes her to swerve up an embankment.  What follows is a rather lengthy story of dark horror that wavers between the real and the imaginary.  Are Joan's fears grounded in reality, or are they all really just in her head?  Dr. Allen has invited a group of specialists to his secluded home in the hopes of helping Joan.  But when Willie's body turns up, and a young couple on their honeymoon wind up dead in their car at the bottom of a gully, it is clear there is more going on here than imaginary fears.

 

I do give Long credit for making the cult very real.  The deaths of Willie and the young couple (as well as another couple who stop to help them) are rather brutal and unexpected, making the book all that much darker.  What has me confused, however, is the title and the cover to the book.  To the Dark Tower would seem to hint that there is some tower of a great mansion involved in the story somehow - even the cover has painted a dark mansion in the background, behind Joan's floating head.  Yet, nowhere in the story is there any tower (not even mentioned in passing!), nor is there any house that would resemble the one on the cover.  In fact, there is also no candle used anywhere in the story!  The tale is set in the modern time, with motor vehicles, electricity, and such, so there is no need for any candles.  So, this begs the question - what prompted the title and the cover art?  I'm aware that many publisher used (and re-used!) cover art for their Gothic novels that had no real relation to the story inside; they simply wanted covers that would attract those who were hooked on the Gothic craze that had taken over store bookshelves everywhere.  But the title?  It has no connection whatsoever to the story, so one is left to wonder why...

 

I did like the fact the story was set in Kentucky, my home state.  I wish Long had narrowed down a location within the state, even if it was simply to have the characters drive through a specific area or mention a nearby town.  Instead, Long keeps it vague, simply keeping it in a small town with plenty of wooded area.  Even his references to Joan's time spent in Spain does not narrow down the location to any particular area of that country.   There are, however, a few names in the book that caught my eye.  When Joan meets the specialists at Dr. Allen's house, the men's names (which I'm guessing were arbitrarily chosen by the author) brought a smile to my face.  The first is John Claymore (p. 132), whose last name is also the name of a city used by Mildred Wirt Benson in her Madge Sterling series, her Penny Parker series, and a few other of her books.  The second is Joseph Moulton (p. 133), whose last name was the middle name of the creator of Wonder Woman (William Moulton Marston).  The third is Helen Traven (p. 133), whose last name is shared by novelist B. Traven, which was a pen name of an unidentified activist who authored a number of books between the 1920s and 1960s.  It is doubtful Long pulled those names from those particular places, but it is a fun coincidence.

 

The story is very heavy on exposition and very light on dialogue, which is one aspect that I did not enjoy.  The majority of the book focused on Joan's fears of the unseen terror that seemed to lurk just out of sight, always following her, always leading her to wonder if death might not be a better option than living the rest of her life with this fear overpowering her.  Long stays inside Joan's mind, with her obsessive fear completely taking her over, and after a while, you (as the reader) wish the author would ground the book in some level of reality with conversations and interaction with other people.  However, finding out after I finished reading the book that Long was friends with Lovecraft, it gave me a new point-of-view with the story, and I think I can appreciate his writing style a little more.

 

This is far from your typical Gothic novel of that era.  If you are expecting a story of a young, innocent woman being whisked away to a foreboding mansion with two men vying for her affection with dark secrets surrounding them at all every turn - this is not one of those stories.  But, if you want something a bit different, a bit darker, and a bit morbid, then this one is for you.

 

RATING:  8 peculiarly shaped musical instruments out of 10 for giving readers a completely different side of the Gothic tale. 

 

A Zebra Mystery Puzzler #10 - The Final Pose

Marc Baker a/k/a Marcia Blair comes back with his third Zebra Mystery Puzzler, bringing his nurse, Tory Baxter, back for yet another murder mystery to solve.  The one thing I really like about Baker's (Blair's?) mysteries is that he always starts them right off with a murder.  Unlike some of the other books in this series, we do not have to wait several chapters for that murder to take place - no, Baker takes us right into it from the get-go, and as such, his protagonist is thrust into the mystery right from the beginning.  This means, for the reader, that there is page-turning excitement and suspense right away, and so we must begin to search for clues in those first first few pages (not to mention in the cover art, as well as the internal illustrations).   And for this third go-around, readers follow Tory Baxter to the magical, mysterious land of Spain...

The Final Pose opens with Tory Baxter getting ready to board her plane to Palma, Spain to care for Ann Blaine Milton (who is called "Mrs. Robert" by her family and staff), who has an unexplained sleeping illness.  Despite warnings from everyone about the "Badluck Blaines," Tory takes the job, not believing all of the superstitious nonsense.  Just because the one sister (Edith) is crippled by a boating accident ... and Ann's husband and daughter die in an airplane crash ... and their nephew falls down the stairs, greatly injuring his leg ... it does not mean the family is cursed by bad luck.  But when a man calls out to Tory at the airport, just before she boards the plane, to ask for her help - then falls down dead at her feet ... when a young woman sitting next to her on the plane quickly changes seats when she finds out where Tory is headed and why ... Tory begins to wonder if perhaps taking this job was not the best idea.

 

Things only get curioser and curioser (as Alice would say) when Tory arrives at the Blaine home - it seems everyone is completely taken back by Tory's appearance, even though Miss Merriweather, the nurse who had originally been scheduled to take this case had notified them of the last minute substitution.  It is clear something is very off in this household.  The chauffeur and housekeeper are clearly not pleased with Tory's presence.  The Blaine's nephew seems to run hot and cold with her, doing everything in his power to keep any friendliness towards her a secret from his aunts.  Ann Milton's sleeping sickness seems to be more of an escape than an actual illness.  Edith Blaine is the only one that truly welcomes Tory, although her concern for her sister's failing health seems to overshadow everything else.  And then there's the cook...

 

Mattie, the cook, is probably one of my favorite characters from the story.  She is gruff and a rather nasty piece of work, but Tory has no problems talking back to her, which quickly earns her Mattie's respect.  "I'd thank you to get those trays down as soon as Mrs. Robert has finished pushing her food around ," says the cook, to which Tory promptly  and coldly responds, "And I'd suggest you go up and tell Mrs. Robert you want her to do her food-pushing faster!" (p. 97).  It is scenes and dialogue like this that made me smile as I was reading the book.

The murders begin with a young woman found dead after falling from the balcony of Edith Blaine's studio out behind the main house - a young woman who used to work for the Blaines, but who was fired after stealing some jewelry.  The same young woman who happened to be on the plane with Tory as she was flying to Spain.  Coincidence?  I think you know better than that!  And it's not too long before another body turns up, this time it is the family lawyer, who supposedly commits suicide over the guilt he feels from having caused the accident that put Edith in the wheelchair.  Tory, of course, suspects there is a lot more to it than that, and her sleuthing ultimately pins her as the next victim of the heartless killer!

Blair (Baker) writes a perfectly plotted murder mystery that will keep you guessing right up until the end.  I readily admit that I kept jumping back and forth between the suspects as the story progressed, and although I did ultimately figure out the culprit before that final, sealed chapter, I was completely wrong about how and why!  The author also utilizes a considerable amount of real information about Spain throughout the story - from the location in Palma to the Bellver Castle (p. 62) to the Pueblo Espanol a/k/a Spanish Village in Palma de Mallorca (p. 62), and even the pearl factories and shops in Majorica / Manacor (p. 116).  Although, the one thing I did question was Blair's use of a motorized wheelchair (p. 31).  I did not recall there being motorized wheelchairs in 1978 when this book was published, and a friend who is in a wheechair made the same comment when I told him; however, upon researching the question, it seems motorized wheelchairs have been around since 1953, when electric wheelchairs entered the market at large.

And since we are speaking of the wheelchair, I find it funny that the cover art for the book pictures Edith in a standard, non-motorized wheelchair, when the story is so blatantly clear about Edith's motorized wheelchair (even mentioning on more than one occasion how adept she was with the chair, moving around faster than someone can walk!).  I know the illustrations in these books do not always match the story, but this one seems a bit too far out of synch.  Bruce Emmett, who also did the cover art for Blair's previous two Zebra Mystery Puzzlers (book 2, The Final Ring, and book 6, The Final Lie), provided the art for this book, and I have to say - poor Tory looks completely different on each of the three covers. I am not sure if that is because the artist used different models for each book, or what the reason is, but of the three, Tory looks the worst on this cover.  In fact, Edith Blaine, as depicted on the cover, looks younger and prettier than Tory, which is definitely not the case in the story!  As far as the internal illustrations go, they are not bad, but Tory does not look anything like she has in previous books, nor does she resemble her image on the cover.  I suppose with the amount of books they were publishing in this series at the time, they could not use one artist for all of the illustrations in the books, but some level of consistency would have been nice, at least for those books that were written by the same author and featured a regular protagonist!

This is definitely one of the better mysteries in this series, and the title of this book actually gives the reader the greatest clue as to the identity of the killer.  Now I have to wait six more books before Tory Baxter returns for another murder mystery...

RATING:  9 thermoses of hot chocolate out of 10 for a wickedly good mystery with a devilishly devious killer!