Book of the Week, Something More Than Night.

From the description of Kim Newman’s Something More Than Night: “Raymond Chandler writes detective stories for pulp magazines, and drinks more than he should. Boris Karloff plays monsters in the movies. Together, they investigate…” annnnd that’s when I bought the book.

Okay, that’s a lie: I bought the book when I saw ‘Kim Newman,’ and I realized that I didn’t recognize the title. But if I hadn’t seen the author, the description would have done it for me.

Book of the Week: Anno Dracula: One Thousand Monsters.

Kim Newman’s latest, and it’s an excellent choice for Halloween.  Anno Dracula: One Thousand Monsters is a vampire novel (of impressive pop culture awareness) set in Japan in 1899, which is a fascinating setting in its own right.  This book is also a standalone-sequel of sorts to Anno Dracula itself, but if you haven’t read it yet you should do so anyway. It will well reward your time.

And so, adieu to Infinite Stars.

Book of the Week: Anno Dracula

How could have I possibly skipped Anno Dracula? It’s marvelous fun (short version: Dracula wins, and what happens afterward), particularly if you like vampire fiction in general.  Shoot, it’s practically a bibliography for the whole blessed genre.

And so, farewell to The Nixon Challenge.

Halfway through Hound of the D’Ubervilles…

…which was written by Kim Newman, and which has as its conceit that it is the long-lost memoirs of Sebastian Moran, big-game hunter and right-hand man to Professor Moriarty*. So far, great fun: Newman’s portrayal of Moran is instantly and comfortably familiar to anyone who is a fan of Harry Flashman, and the multitudinous ironies of that add a certain spice to the stories. Check it out.

Moe Lane

*I refuse to explain who Professor Moriarty is.