I keep thinking I've tasted everything that horror has to offer and find new surprises soon after. I haven't even taken 40s British pulp fiction into account. Take Norman Firth, for example.
Firth only wrote until he was 29 in 1949 when he died of tuberculosis. In a short span of time, he published numerous short stories and novelettes which were usually crime, noir, mystery, horror, westerns, and science fiction. Postwar Britain saw a spike in small publishers. Numerous houses popped up almost overnight, a phenomenon referred to as "mushroom" publishing. Firth was in the thick of it with many of his longer works appearing in pamphlets and chapbooks. He commonly wrote under pseudonyms such as N. Wesley Firth and Earl Ellison.
From what I've read, Firth's work wasn't necessarily groundbreaking but he was a great storyteller. His stories read like such wonderful black and white movies as The Old Dark House, The Undying Monster, Mad Love, The Cat and the Canary, and The Black Cat (both of them from back then). Bold Venture Press recently released a collection of Firth's Gothic novellas called Murders Macabre.
The first is called "Terror Stalks the Night" (originally published in 1945), in which a killer wielding a claw is stalking and eliminating members of the Rivers family in their decrepit mansion. The pace was brisk and the violence brutal enough for me to consider this tale to be a proto-slasher and worthy of the best creepy mysteries.
The next is "The Phantom of Charnel House" (published in 1946 as "Death Haunts the Charnel House" by Jackson Evans). A specter is haunting the Charnel estate, eviscerating victims with a harpoon. A wealthy industrialist has hired his old friend, a ghost hunter, to investigate. This one stands up with the first and is fantastic.
The third and last in the volume is called "The Devil Inside Her (published in 1945 as by Henri Duval). While the first two take place in England, this one takes place in the states. Dr Carter visits his rural hometown partly to rest and partly to woo a girl he once knew. He comes to suspect her of being the source of an urban legend, a witch who makes blood sacrifices and commits murder. While it was good reading, Firth employs an explanation that was tired for its day (it's a sort of backwoods Caligari-type story). He still did it well.
Many of Firth's books are available as reprints and ebooks. I recently had the pleasure of reading the ebook Sinister Honeymoon (a novella he wrote in 1946 as N. Wesley Firth known as Spawn of the Vampire). This story involves a young married couple honeymooning in Transylvania where a vampire haunts the locals. This is another well-told story, although it's told with the type of melodrama you would find in an old horror movie.
Last and unfortunately the least is another ebook The Egyptian Tomb (originally titled The Tomb of Horror as by Earl Ellison in 1946). The original title hooked me as anything with "horror" in the title would. This is more of a crime story, in which a group of protagonists investigate the death of an archeologist in Egypt and leads to a showdown in an ancient tomb. There was very little horror in this one, although the title and setting had me hoping for a mummy, a curse, or something occult. If you put aside the letdown expectations, we have a serviceable crime/adventure story. This is my least favorite Firth story but still a decent read.
What I've read makes me a fan of Norman Firth, who is still a mystery and not widely discussed. He deserves a wider audience and continues to entertain like the best of his pulp-writer contemporaries in the U.S.
Written by Nicholas Montelongo
Firth only wrote until he was 29 in 1949 when he died of tuberculosis. In a short span of time, he published numerous short stories and novelettes which were usually crime, noir, mystery, horror, westerns, and science fiction. Postwar Britain saw a spike in small publishers. Numerous houses popped up almost overnight, a phenomenon referred to as "mushroom" publishing. Firth was in the thick of it with many of his longer works appearing in pamphlets and chapbooks. He commonly wrote under pseudonyms such as N. Wesley Firth and Earl Ellison.From what I've read, Firth's work wasn't necessarily groundbreaking but he was a great storyteller. His stories read like such wonderful black and white movies as The Old Dark House, The Undying Monster, Mad Love, The Cat and the Canary, and The Black Cat (both of them from back then). Bold Venture Press recently released a collection of Firth's Gothic novellas called Murders Macabre.
The first is called "Terror Stalks the Night" (originally published in 1945), in which a killer wielding a claw is stalking and eliminating members of the Rivers family in their decrepit mansion. The pace was brisk and the violence brutal enough for me to consider this tale to be a proto-slasher and worthy of the best creepy mysteries.
The next is "The Phantom of Charnel House" (published in 1946 as "Death Haunts the Charnel House" by Jackson Evans). A specter is haunting the Charnel estate, eviscerating victims with a harpoon. A wealthy industrialist has hired his old friend, a ghost hunter, to investigate. This one stands up with the first and is fantastic.
The third and last in the volume is called "The Devil Inside Her (published in 1945 as by Henri Duval). While the first two take place in England, this one takes place in the states. Dr Carter visits his rural hometown partly to rest and partly to woo a girl he once knew. He comes to suspect her of being the source of an urban legend, a witch who makes blood sacrifices and commits murder. While it was good reading, Firth employs an explanation that was tired for its day (it's a sort of backwoods Caligari-type story). He still did it well.
Many of Firth's books are available as reprints and ebooks. I recently had the pleasure of reading the ebook Sinister Honeymoon (a novella he wrote in 1946 as N. Wesley Firth known as Spawn of the Vampire). This story involves a young married couple honeymooning in Transylvania where a vampire haunts the locals. This is another well-told story, although it's told with the type of melodrama you would find in an old horror movie.Last and unfortunately the least is another ebook The Egyptian Tomb (originally titled The Tomb of Horror as by Earl Ellison in 1946). The original title hooked me as anything with "horror" in the title would. This is more of a crime story, in which a group of protagonists investigate the death of an archeologist in Egypt and leads to a showdown in an ancient tomb. There was very little horror in this one, although the title and setting had me hoping for a mummy, a curse, or something occult. If you put aside the letdown expectations, we have a serviceable crime/adventure story. This is my least favorite Firth story but still a decent read.
What I've read makes me a fan of Norman Firth, who is still a mystery and not widely discussed. He deserves a wider audience and continues to entertain like the best of his pulp-writer contemporaries in the U.S.
Written by Nicholas Montelongo
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