One of my goals in researching Fawcett Gold Medal was to find lost works of horror. The books I'm about to discuss might be better described as dark suspense but still worth mentioning here. We live in the days of reprints and that gives me hope of not running out of good vintage fiction to read. Cutting Edge Books is responsible for bringing two books by Sebastian Blayne back from obscurity after 70-ish years of being out of print: Holiday in Hell and Terror in the Night.

Who was Sebastian Blayne? Actually, Blayne was a pen name for Janet Huckins, newspaper and radio writer. Not much is known about her, and her overall output was small. Sebastian Blayne is actually the name of her protagonist for the two books in question. He is a gentleman detective much like Poirot or Philo Vance (although not nearly as irritating as Vance). Blayne is a playwright by profession. He's rich, likes to sleep in, pamper his dog, and keeps his valet Beppo and secretary Maggie close to him as often as possible.

In Holiday in Hell (original title Gay Ghastly Holiday, derived from an Emily Dickinson poem), we have Moira Ryan, lover of hotel magnate Max Vienna, who is threatened by a shadowy killer. Some person mistaken for her was murdered and now she lives in abject terror. Blayne is called upon to solve the case. This intricate novel changes gears in several places and never stopped holding my interest. The bond between Blayne's inner circle of confidants is endearing and probably could have been maintained and explored in a series. The book creeps into horror territory when it tells some of the story through the murderer's chilling perspective.

I'm not sure if motive and the psychological analysis of the killer would hold up so well today but it works well enough for the story. This one is a rare instance when I guessed the killer and motive, but it didn't lessen my enjoyment of it. My only real gripe was the character Moira, who comes across as a flighty, entitled brat and is stuck in her kept-woman role. Regardless of some flaws, this is a terrific book, intricate enough to provide variety in the story but grounded in its main plot to avoid too much digression.

I think of Holiday in Hell as a variation of Vera Caspary's classic novel and film noir, Laura, in which a case of mistaken identity keeps a woman from being gruesomely murdered. If that's the case, I consider Terror in the Night to be a variation of one of Hitchcock's domestic thrillers. While not as good as the first, this one is a justified example of how sequels work. Blayne and his supporting cast return. His secretary Maggie absconds with her fiance Curt to meet his overbearing mother Pauline and his step-dad Dr Martel. They seem like decent people until she almost died from a couple of mishaps such as almost suffocating in a locked closet or nearly being skewered by a shower of broken glass, Too strange to be a coincidence. Who is trying to kill her? This novel is more of a slow burn but almost as rewarding for it's sense of variety, successfully telling a story that's very different from the first.

This book also has a passage that is one of the most apt descriptions of terror I've ever read, "What is fear? The heart begins to thud like a dying fish flopping about in the bottom of a boat, the diaphragm quivers, the extremities turn cold and clammy, the pores ooze perspiration. In moments of extreme fear, as for instance in battle, all the organs tend to react. If cancer could be described as insanity of the cells, then the fear of death might be called anarchy of the cells." I only wish Huckins produced more books for Fawcett but these were the only two, but I am grateful that they have new life.

Written by Nicholas Montelongo

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