Category Archives: Books

The place where the two currents of my recent reading about Rasputin and the Russian Symbolists converge is a book called The Silver Dove by Andrey Biely. It’s the story of a young Russian intellectual at the turn of the … Continue reading →

  The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe and The Invention of Murder – since I’m a well known Poe freak and afficionado of true crime, Stashower had me at the title, and I’m pleased to report that … Continue reading →

Although I enjoyed Steven Sidor’s The Mirror’s Edge, it was almost despite the subject matter – Satanism is one of those subjects, like UFO’s or vast conspiracies, that I prefer to read about in nominal non-fiction. Somehow the paranoiac imagination works … Continue reading →

  Don’t they kind of drive you crazy, those chapters from an author’s "coming soon" book that the publishers stick at the end of the latest paperback? It’s such a tease – if it’s any good it will suck you … Continue reading →

As so often happens, it all started with something I found at the library sale. It was a movie from the sixties English horror schlockmeisters Hammer Studios called Rasputin: The Mad Monk. Of course, its historical accuracy can be gauged … Continue reading →

  People like to argue as to when crime fiction first started. To me the mystery is not a fairly recent off shoot of "real" literature, but a mighty redwood in and of itself, and one whose roots anchor it … Continue reading →

While I was polishing up the old History of Mystery lecture – and we killed in Canton last night, thank you very much – I ran across a book I’d left out of the precursor group, a great read called … Continue reading →

  People are always asking me who my favorite writer is. I usually tell them something safe like Josephine Tey, Raymond Chandler or James Lee Burke. And I do love those writers and think them great, but they’re just not … Continue reading →

Despite a lifetime of reading, every so often I come across a book that I can’t believe I’ve never heard of much less never read. As I worked my way through The Dedalus Occult Reader: The Garden of Hermetic Dreams … Continue reading →

My pursuit of the decadent movement around the globe has led me to the Russian variety, and one of its foremost practitioners Fyodor Sologub. I started to read his best known work The Petty Demon again, and, although it’s very … Continue reading →