I suppose that unsophisticated readers believed they were buying a new
collection by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—but unfortunately, Sir Arthur’s attorneys
were not among that number and so, in order to avoid a lawsuit, the magazine
changed its name after the 10th issue to Aus dem Geheimakten des
Weltdetektivs (The Secret Files of the King of Detectives). The Great Detective was still named Sherlock
Holmes, and his Watsonesque sidekick was named Harry Taxon.
Several of the original German series were translated into French, and by
1927 the stories were being translated into Dutch-Flemish and published as Harry
Dickson de Amerikaansche Sherlock Holmes (Harry Dickson, the American
Sherlock Holmes). The “American” part derived from the fact that Harry was born
in New York.
In 1928, Belgian author Jean Ray (real name: Raymundus Joannes de Kremer), best known then and now for his horror
stories, began translating the tales into French. When Ray grew tired of
dealing with 2nd-rate plots and prose, he began writing his own
Harry Dickson yarns.
And that brings us, at last, to this Black Coat
Press edition of four of Ray’s Dickson tales, three novelettes and one short
story, translated by Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier. The yarns first saw print
between 1933 and 1937, and you would be hard-pressed searching American pulps
of that era to find more rip-snorting barn-burners than these.
Harry Dickson has at least as much in common with
psychic detectives like Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence or William Hope
Hodgson’s Karnacki as with the scientific detectives that followed in Conan
Doyle’s wake. Robert Downey Jr’s recent outing as Holmes bears more resemblance
to Dickson than he does to the traditional representations of the Sage of Baker
Street.
In “The Heir of Dracula,” Harry and his assistant
Tom Wills do battle with the Red Eyed Vampire in a haunted house near Hamburg.
Harry is drawn into the case when a murderer named Ebenezer Grump is about to
be guillotined and pleads with the Great Detective to complete the execution as
quickly as possible because if he doesn’t die soon, something worse than death
will overtake him.
In “The Iron Temple” Harry and Tom are back in
London and have to deal with some monster that fell from the sky in what
appears to be a spaceship. Its appearance is so terrible, it can kill with a
glance—and then something else arrives that is so much worse, it can kill the
monster.
The last novelette is “The Return of the Gorgon”
in which a mad sculptor uses human beings as the building blocks of his art.
The mad sculptor is Matthew Jarnes and here he has captured a journalist named
Renders. He’s placed Renders’ into the body of a sculpted centaur, the man’s
head protruding from the centaur’s neck.
“’Be careful!’ advised Jarnes. ‘That mixture of
boiling plaster and melted wax must be delicately poured over the head of our
Fallen Centaur. First, it must fill the hole around its neck, then slowly cover
his head. We’ll keep the eyes for last in order to preserve their purity of
expression of unimaginable fear. Yes, my friend,’ he added, speaking to
Renders, “you’re going to die, horribly so! The expression of sheer terror that
I see on your face will be preserved faithfully in stone for all posterity to
marvel at!’”
Ah, but how does Jarnes fix that expression just
the way he wants it? “’[I use] a mixture of talcum powder, camphor, plaster of
Paris and soap powder. It immediately congeals inside your mouth, stops you
from screaming, and freezes your face into an expression of unbearable
agony—which, in your case, will not last long. I call in a pain fixer!’”
Paging Dr. Roth. Dr. Eli Roth.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t warn you that even the
most supernatural of the tales could have a weird menace, Scooby-Doo ending.
I’m not saying they all do, but if last page explanations that include that
chance make you angry, well, prepare to lose a bit of your temper.
I think the stories are fun with an over-the-top,
Saturday matinee serial, monster kid joie
de vivre that some of us just can’t seem to outgrow. The tales clip along
at a speedy pace, the plots are outrageous and the characterizations are pure
pulp—and I mean that as a compliment.
I’ll read more Harry Dickson, if Black
Coat Press decides to give me more, but I’d really like to see them publish
some new translations of Jean Ray’s original horror stories.
Black Coat Press specializes in new translations,
many by Brian Stableford, of 19th and early 20th century
French pop literature. Sitting on my end table right now is Gustave Le Rouge’s Vampires of Mars.
I gotta go. See you later.
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