Sax Rohmer's The Green Eyes of Bâst

The Green Eyes of Bâst is a 1920 potboiler by Sax Rohmer. It’s a lurid mystery which may or may not deal with supernatural happenings.

It begins with a policeman receiving an odd instruction to visit the Red House to check that the garage has been locked properly. What’s odd is that everyone knows that the Red House has lain empty for some considerable time. Inside the garage is a large packing case marked with the design of a cat-like figure.

The narrator, a journalist named Addison, had accompanied the constable on his strange errand. And on that same night he had the impression of being followed by a figure that seemed both female and perhaps slight feline. What struck him most were the startling green eyes.

Shortly afterwards the body of Sir Marcus Coverly is found at the docks, in that very packing case.

A short time before Addison had been involved in a romantic triangle involving a pretty actress named Isobel and Eric Coverly, brother of the late Sir Marcus.

It will soon become apparent that another romantic triangle had formed, involving Isobel and the two brothers. Also, Eric Coverly has now inherited the baronetcy.

Inspector Gatton of Scotland Yard being an old friend our narrator is asked to consult, unofficially, on the case.

A significant clue appears to be a cat figurine. It is fact a representation of the Egyptian cat-goddess Bâst. There are other possible connections to Egypt. There’s a second rather striking and mysterious woman mixed up in the case. There’s a possibly sinister doctor, who seems to have an interest in things Egyptian.

There was a third Coverly brother, Roger, now deceased. His mother has possession of the family estate which will now eventually pass to Eric Coverly.

Quite a few of the characters have some connection to Egypt.

There’s a sprawling ancient house, once an abbey, now inhabited by Roger Coverly’s mother. And perhaps by a mysterious doctor. He may be a mad scientist but he is a student of the occult as well as being a student of science and those two interests can overlap in disturbing ways.

Madness of various kinds might be involved.

This could be simply a story of a family feud over an inheritance, but it could be something much stranger. There is evidence that points to unimaginable horrors and creatures that are neither human nor non-human. With Sax Rohmer you never know. You might get an entirely rational explanation at the end. Or you might get an explanation that challenges our entire understanding of the natural world. And in this case the weirdness might not necessarily be the kind of weirdness we’re expecting.

In this tale he demonstrates great skill in feeding us just enough hints of serious weirdness to keep us interested but he has no intention of revealing the truth until the end.

This is Sax Rohmer at the top of his game. Very highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed many of Sax Rohmer’s books. The Bride of Fu Manchu and The Mask of Fu Manchu are fine mid-period Fu Manchu books. The Dream Detective is a terrific collection of clever occult detective stories. The Leopard Couch and Brood of the Witch-Queen are typical of his excellent gothic horror fiction/weird fiction. The Sins of Sumuru introduces us to his final creation, the glamorous sexy female diabolical criminal mastermind Sumuru. Sumuru is a diabolical criminal mastermind with a genuinely objective in mind.

Richard Deming’s Kiss and Kill

Richard Deming’s Kiss and Kill was published in 1960. It can be described as moderately hardboiled and very noir.

Richard Deming (1915-1983) wrote an enormous number of novels under his own name and a bunch of pseudonyms and his output included a lot of TV tie-in novels.

The protagonist in Kiss and Kill is a con artist and I have to say up front that I seriously love stories about con artists. In this book we get detailed accounts of several fairly clever cons. But this novel is in fact the story of how two bunco artists get into the murder business.

Sam is working on a long con when he meets a dark-haired girl in a bar. Her name is Mavis. There’s something odd about her. Sam figures she’s a meek little receptionist on vacation trying desperately to appear rich and sophisticated and badly overdoing it.

By the hotel swimming pool he runs into her again and he is vastly amused when he realises she’s a fellow bunco artist and she’s selected him as her mark. She’s rather devastated that he sees through her at so easily. This is obviously her first time and she’s a bungling amateur but it just so happens that Sam needs the services of a young woman for the con he’s working at the moment. He persuades her to be his assistant.

She’s a very quick learner and she has a natural flair for the con game.

Mavis wants to be Sam’s regular partner. He’s agreeable to that but suggests that they might as well make it a personal partnership as well by getting married. She’s happy with that suggestion.

They’re quite successful but Sam feels that the bunco game is too risky. The mark might call in the police. And might give evidence if there’s a trial. Sam comes up with a variation which he considers to be superior. If the mark is no longer alive there’s no danger. And murder is risk-free if you know what you’re doing. This at least is Sam’s view.

Mavis is hesitant at first but she trusts Sam and she can see the logic in his arguments. Her moral qualms about murder are easily overcome.

These are still cons of a sort it’s just that the payoffs are achieved in a different way.

This definitely qualifies as noir fiction. It also belongs to a sub-genre I’d describe as anti-hero crime fiction which is certainly closely related to noir fiction. The outstanding anti-hero protagonist is of course Donald E. Westlake’s Parker who made his first appearance in 1962 in The Hunter. Westlake had already experimented with an anti-hero protagonist in his underrated The Cutie, published the same year as Kiss and Kill. These anti-heroes are not quite like the violent psychos and serial killers which were also becoming popular in crime fiction. An anti-hero is oddly attractive and we can admire him for his cleverness and, as is the case with Parker, we find ourselves hoping he’ll get away with his crimes and appalled at ourselves for hoping such a thing.

Mavis is not quite a femme fatale. Sam has her figured out from the start. She is not corrupting him or tempting him into crime or wickedness. It’s more that he tempts her into getting more deeply into moral corruption. We also find her oddly admirable - she is a very shrewd operator.

We can’t help liking Sam and Mavis, apart from the minor detail that they’re cold-blooded murderers.

This is a clever crime tale with satisfying twists and a nicely cynical atmosphere. Highly recommended.

And it’s in print, from Wildside Press.

A. Merritt's The Fox Woman and Other Stories

The Fox Woman and Other Stories collects the shorter fiction of Abraham Merritt (whose work was always published under the byline A. Merritt). The stories were written between 1917 and 1948.

Merritt wrote one of the all-time great fantasy novels, The Ship of Ishtar, as well as some of the greatest of all lost world stories.

The novelette Fox Woman (from 1946) is set in China. The bandits who killed her husband are on the trail of a woman. She sees no hope of escape. She is about to flee up the stairway to a temple when she sees a fox. She doesn’t know why, perhaps she is simply mad with fear, but she asks the fox to help her. She desires only revenge. The fox vanishes. Then she sees a beautiful woman. Unaccountably the bandits turn on each other.


She is taken in by an old priest. And by the foxes. They are of course fox spirits. She gives birth to her child. And perhaps she will have her revenge.

Fox spirits are a major and fascinating feature of Chinese folklore and I love any story in which they are involved. An excellent tale.

In The People of the Pit (dating from 1917) a couple of gold prospectors in the Yukon see a strange light playing on the face of a mountain. Suddenly a man appears, horribly injured, and he tells them a story of terror. There is a vast pit within the mountain, but the inhabitants are far from human.

There have been many tales of mirrors as portals into other worlds but Through the The Dragon Glass, written in 1917, is certainly an early example, and a very good one. It relies mainly on a nicely disturbing atmosphere of decadence and obsession.

The Drone (dating from 1934) concerns shape-changers. Werewolves and fox-women and so forth. A group of explorers who have seen many strange things in many strange lands recount things they have seen. Perhaps physical shape-changing, or perhaps not physical. An interesting story.

The Last Poet and the Robots (written in 1934) is set in the very distant future. Narodny is a great scientist but he cares more about poetry and music than science. He does not hate humanity. He is merely indifferent. He has constructed a vast underground world, a world of beauty and poetry and song. But now he will have to stir himself to confront a deadly threat. Which means he will have to deal with the robots. Good story with strong hints of decadence.

Three Lines of Old French (from 1919) deals with a theme that obviously obsessed Merritt - the blurred boundary between reality and the life of the mind. In the First World War a soldier has a dream, or maybe a vision, or maybe it really happened. Maybe the true reality lies in our subconscious or our dreams.

The Women of the Wood dates from 1934. On the opposite shore of a lake a man sees something odd. There’s a forest. A wood cutter and his sons are chopping down the trees. Then it’s almost as if one of the sons is deliberately struck by an overhanging branch. The woodcutters hate the forest in a way that seems bizarre and irrational.

And then the narrator enters the forest. He gets the impression the trees are not just alive but conscious. It’s as if they’re tree-women. They want his help. He feels compelled to help them, although he is horrified by their request. Of course it might all be his over-active imagination. Or perhaps not. A story with a wonderful sense of magic, or at least of an almost magical quasi-mystical atmosphere. A great story.

The White Road and When Old Gods Wake are fragments of novels that were never written.

A superb and varied collection and a must-read for fans of weird fiction.

I’ve also reviewed Merritt’s The Face in the Abyss.

Wika by Thomas Day and Olivier Ledroit

Wika is a graphic novel written by Frenchman Thomas Day and illustrated by French comics artist Olivier Ledroit. The English translation was published in 2021.

Wika is a fairy princess. Her father is murdered by Prince Oberon. Wika is lucky to escape. In order to facilitate her escape her wings are cut off. She is caught up in a vast power struggle. Oberon, now King Oberon, aims for absolute power. His destiny was to unite the entire realm but that obsession has been perverted, mainly as a result of his illicit passion for his sister Titania.

Wika finds herself leader of a vast rebellion. Wika also finds time for love. This is to some extent at least a coming-of-age story.

Day’s plot is insanely complex. He has fallen for the temptation to throw too much stuff into the mix. The basic idea of a power struggle in the realm of Faerie, a struggle complicated by jealousy, lust, betrayal and revenge, is very good. Adding elements of Norse mythology was an interesting idea. He has however added bits and pieces from so many mythologies and drawn from so many sources that it all gets very unwieldy.

There are dozens of characters most of whom do very little apart from distracting us from the main theme.

It is, surprisingly, relatively free from ideological propagandising and preaching. It doesn’t even go overboard with the Girlpower! thing. Naturally the chief villain is male and the forces of good are led by a woman but there’s no way it could possibly have been otherwise in the 2020s. It does it least have positive male characters and negative female characters.

The most startling thing is that Wika is female and she enjoys being female. And her sexual and emotional interests are directed at males. She even has a totally satisfying relationship with a male.

The main problem is that there’s too much plot, too many characters, too many battles. There’s no time to develop anything in real depth. The motives of most of the individuals and factions involved remain obscure.

There is at least an attempt to explain Oberon’s motivations as being more than just a natural inclination to evilness. And there’s some attempt to explain’s Wika’s motivations.

There’s plenty of magic but it’s fairy magic, not Secret Women’s Magic.

There’s some eroticism but it’s very very restrained. Which is I think something of a flaw. It makes the character motivations less complex and less interesting.

The strength of the book lies in Olivier Ledroit’s visual style. This in insanely baroque and extravagant. The influence of art nouveau and late 19th century Symbolist art is obvious. The steampunk elements emphasise the late 19th century feel. That’s certainly more interesting than just aiming for a traditional fairy tale aesthetic.

I don’t claim to have a vast interest in or knowledge of comic book art. My interests in comics are very specialised. I do think there’s a bit of an Esteban Maroto vibe here.

Ledroit goes for jewel-like detail and complexity. Every single panel is a visual tour-de-force. It’s overwhelming and hallucinogenic but it works for me. And the style is nothing if not distinctive.

Even if it is a trifle over-complicated it’s an entertaining and ambitious story and it does achieve an epic feel.

If you’re a fan of European comics (which to my mind are mostly much more interesting than American comics) then Wika is well worth worth seeking out.

James Munro's Die Rich, Die Happy

Published in 1965, Die Rich, Die Happy is the second of the four thrillers featuring British spy John Craig written by James Mitchell under the pseudonym James Munro.

James Mitchell (1926-2002) is famous as the creator of the superb 1960s British spy television series Callan, the greatest TV spy series ever made. Mitchell was also a reasonably prolific novelist.

John Craig made his first appearance in the novel The Man Who Sold Death.

Craig, like David Callan, is an ex-soldier recruited by MI5. Both are capable of ruthlessness and both have consciences. Both are British Government assassins.

At the beginning of Die Rich, Die Happy John Craig is drunk. He’s been drunk for weeks. It’s because of a woman. The woman is dead. That’s why Craig is drunk.

But now his boss Loomis needs him for a job. It’s to do with a tiny middle Eastern principality called Haram. The British still regard it as part of their sphere of influence but the Red Chinese have other ideas. Haram has oil but there’s something else that makes it really important.

This novel is one of many spy novels of the 60s that reflect an interesting shift in the genre, with the Chinese displacing the Soviets as the chief bad guys. In fact in this case the Russians have quite voluntarily and quite happily provided the British with some very important intelligence.

While trying to get himself back into shape for his upcoming mission Craig gets mixed up in an odd adventure in the Greek islands. It involves a very pretty girl. She’s an Arab, a Tuareg. She claims to be a princess. Her name is Selina. She’s certainly spirited enough and feisty enough and troublesome enough to be a princess.

Craig’s mission is to keep a Greek billionaire named Naxos alive. It’s possible that it’s not Naxos who is in real danger but his wife Philippa. Philippa is a charming gorgeous blonde. She’s also an ex-junkie, an ex-stripper and an ex-whore. Another British agent, Grierson, is assigned to help Craig.

Naxos and his wife are the keys to control of Haram. It would be easier to protect Naxos if the tycoon would be more co-operative, and he might be more co-operative if he could be persuaded to trust Craig.

The women make it complicated. There are three of them. It’s not so much that Craig can’t trust them, it’s more that they’re highly unpredictable. Philippa is unstable. Selina is a princess with lots of princess attitude. Glamorous Italian movie starlet Pia Busoni is as difficult to handle as you’d expect a glamorous Italian movie starlet to be.

There’s plenty of action, and violence. There are people who are going to need killing. That’s why Craig was given the mission. Killing people is what he does. He does it extremely well.

Given that Mitchell went on to create Callan it’s fair to say that he was fascinated by the psychology of killers. Not serial killers or psycho killers but men who kill for a living, who kill for the government. They’re slightly different characters but they’re both complex and they both pay a psychological price for their profession. Both have one major weakness. They don’t just kill, they think about it, and they have a conscience about it.

Craig has another weakness. He gets emotionally involved with women he encounters on a professional basis. In this case he excels himself - he gets emotionally involved with all three women. And he hates seeing a woman get hurt.

It’s a nicely plotted exciting tale with an intriguing flawed hero and Die Rich, Die Happy is highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the first book in the series, The Man Who Sold Death.

Roy Norton's The Glyphs

The Glyphs is a lost civilisation novel by Roy Norton which was originally published in The Popular Magazine in 1919.

Roy Norton (1869-1942) was an American newspaperman who wrote a lot of westerns and a handful of science-fiction novels.

A moderately honest American big game hunter, explorer and adventurer named Hallewell encounters an eccentric and definitely not very honest Italian archaeologist. Dr Morgano has made a thrilling discovery - it is a key which will allow him to decipher ancient inscriptions in the Mayan tongue. He wants Hallewell to led an expedition to Guatemala so that Dr Morgana can get cracking on reading those inscriptions. Halelwell is not interested until Dr Morgano mentions the possibility of long-lost treasure.

A huge eccentric English explorer and hunter named Wardrop is persuaded to join the expedition, and pay the bills.

Dr Morgano might have flexible ethics in many respects but he really is a great archaeologist.

Accompanied by a guide who is a descendant of the Mayans they set off into the jungle of Guatemala.

They find an ancient road which will take them to a lost city but the road ends at a chasm. The Mayans destroyed the bridge centuries before. Hallewell does find a cave. Perhaps there is another way to reach the city.

This is a jungle adventure in which the most dangerous foe is the jungle itself. It’s a green hell. There is no action. There are no encounters with hostile tribesmen. There are no battles. 

There is however plenty of danger and excitement. An explorer who takes one wrong step could be entombed in a mountain forever. A mistake with a rope could lead to a deadly plunge into an almost bottomless chasm. There are venomous snakes and other nasty crawly things.

This is an epic of survival and endurance.

It’s also a tale that focuses on the motivations of the explorers. Hallewell, Wardrop and Dr Morgano are far from perfect but there’s a certain core decency in all three men. Morgano is genuinely driven by intellectual curiosity. Wardrop is driven by a taste for adventure but he is to some extent at least infected by Morgano’s enthusiasm for knowledge. Hallewell hopes for treasure but he can’t help being excited by the idea of being associated with what might be the scientific discovery of the decade. The Mayan guide hopes to revive his people’s past glory.

Respect and admiration has grown up between all four men. They don’t always agree but treachery is just not in their makeup.

They do reach a lost city and what they find there is not quite what they expected. Perhaps they have discovered as much about themselves as about the ancient Mayans.

This is a well-written novel that offers entertainment and excitement without relying on action clichés. Highly recommended. Norton is an author worthy of rediscovery.

The Glyphs has been reissued by Armchair Fiction in their marvellous Lost Worlds series.

I’ve also reviewed Roy Norton’s 1909 lost civilisation novel The Land of the Lost, and it’s pretty good also. Also reissued by Armchair Fiction.

Ira Levin’s A Kiss Before Dying

A Kiss Before Dying was Ira Levin’s first novel. It appeared in 1954. It was a very impressive debut for a 23-year-old writer. It was a bestseller, as were all of Levin’s subsequent books.

New York-born Ira Levin (1929-2007) was not a prolific novelist but he was an extraordinarily interesting one.

At first you think this is going to be an inverted detective story with a psychological tinge, somewhat in the mould of Frances Iles’ Malice Aforethought and Before the Fact. With perhaps some noir fiction flavour.

Then at a certain point it switches gears and switches focus, and then throws in a huge plot twist right out of left field, and we realise this is going to be a different kind of book altogether. It could be assigned to a couple of different genres but to say more might risk spoilers.

Given the ambitious and slightly unusual structure I’m going to be even more vague than usual in discussing the plot.

The story does involve a murderer. We do know his identity right from the start. We have some inkling of his motivations. The full scope of his motivations slowly becomes more obvious.

He’s a fine character creation, a young man who comes across as smooth and charming and confident but he is in fact a total loser. It’s all bluff. He’s never held down a job for more than a few weeks. He’s now a college student, which for him is clearly a retreat from a real world which is too much for him to deal with. In a vague sort of way he recognises his own inadequacy, which is what leads him to murder.

Initially murder is a way to avoid inconvenience but it occurs to the young man that it could be profitable as well. He will need to be very clever but he really does believe that he’s very clever.

So there’s a fine character study here but it’s the intricate and daring structure that raises this novel to the status of greatness.

And there are some extraordinarily subtle and clever clues.

This is an ambitious book but Levin doesn’t put a foot wrong.

There are some great set-pieces with a very cinematic feel. With some very tense and imaginative murder scenes. Almost all of Levin’s novels were filmed and, remarkably, all the film adaptations are excellent. He just had a knack for writing books that would translate extremely well to film.

One word of warning - some reviews and online plot synopses reveal a very very big spoiler.

A Kiss Before Dying has its own distinctive flavour and it’s very highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the first of the two movie adaptations of this novel, A Kiss Before Dying (1956). And I’ve reviewed Ira Levin’s much later thriller, the excellent and rather under-appreciated Sliver.