Complete John Silence Stories [Paperback]

In 1906-07, Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) wrote a short story cycle telling of the adventures of psychic detective/ghostbuster John Silence, a sort of Sherlock Holmes meets H. P. Lovecraft meets Hermann Hesse. (That may sound strange, but Blackwood was truly inspired and it works brilliantly.) All but one of these stories were then published in a book titled John Silence--Physician Extraordinary (1908), which went on to be a huge hit, undergoing many reprintings. The omitted story, "A Victim of Higher Space", was published years later, but until now never in the same book as the other John Silence stories.

John Silence--Physician Extraordinary having been out of print for about 30 years, Dover Publications deserves our gratitude for recently bringing that collection back into print -- and including the heretofore separated story to assemble The Complete John Silence Stories (1997), consummately edited and introduced by the eminent horror literature scholar S. T. Joshi.

This is a publishing milestone and belongs on the bookshelf of every fan of classic detective fiction or classic horror fiction. John Silence and his adventures speak with a fresh, thrilling voice undiminished with the passing of nearly a century since it was first committed to paper. H. P. Lovecraft put it well long ago, in his Supernatural Horror in Literature, where he wrote that "these narratives contain some of [Blackwood's] best work, and produce an illusion at once emphatic and lasting."

Nature serves as his haunted domain in some of the John Silence stories, most notably "The Camp of the Dog," and also in two of his most anthologized stories, "The Willows" and "The Wendigo."

You will need to equip yourself with two reading gears in the John Silence stories (not the author's best work by any means): a leisurely course through his descriptions of nature and the awesome terror of his hauntings; and a fast forward through the mystical, occult blah-blah whereby John Silence tries to explain away the terror and awe.

John Silence serves as both a psychiatrist and an exorcist in these stories, and the hapless, bumbling narrators are always falling about in awe of his occult powers. However, the good physician is a bit schizophrenic about the occult. In this book's first story, "A Psychical Invasion" a potential client tries to explain why she has come to him:

"Your sympathetic heart and your knowledge of occultism---"

"Oh, please--that dreadful word!" he [Dr. Silence] interrupted, holding up a finger with a gesture of impatience."

And yet John Silence is always reading minds, performing magical rites, and defending ordinary mortals against the powers of Darkness.

All of these stories will send a chill down your spine, as long as you skip lightly past the mystical, rather pompous blather of the main character:

"A Psychical Invasion"--A young author who takes a mind-expanding drug accidentally puts himself in touch with an ancient evil. John Silence and his cat and his collie spend a night in the author's haunted house on Putney Heath and are attacked by dreadful, occult forces.

"Ancient Sorceries"--A masterful portrait of a shy misogynist who escapes from a noisy trainload of English tourists, only to find himself in a very strange, sleepy little French village. As the narrator is leaving the train, a Frenchman leans out and mutters a half-understood warning that ends in: "á cause du sommeil et á cause des chats." Beware of sleep and cats. Blackwood slowly builds a powerful, eerie atmosphere around the narrator as he tries to decide whether to escape, or to stay forever in the mysterious village.

"The Nemesis of Fire"--This story has some genuinely frightening moments as fire elementals and an ancient Egyptian curse haunt a peaceful, English countryside. Blood is drunk, faces are blasted to ruin, and you'll need to employ your fast-forward gear through quite a few explanatory paragraphs.

"Secret Worship"--As dusk falls in the hills of the Black Forest, a silk merchant revisits the school where he spent his childhood with the Moravian Brothers (just as the author did). Lots of atmosphere and a slow build to a terrifying climax: "And then the room filled and trembled with sounds that...were the failing voices of others who had preceded him in a long series down the years." Blackwood is not very specific in his descriptions of the Other World. His glancing images and sounds leave much to the reader's horrified imagination.

"The Camp of the Dog"--A jolly campout on an island in the Baltic Sea slowly turns terrifying as a mysterious canine dogs the footsteps (sorry) of a young woman.

"A Victim of Higher Space"--A mathematician learns how to peer into the higher dimensions of space-time and is horrified by what he discovers.