In this story, Edwin Winthrop is once again in evidence, though Catriona is not. Not that it was bad, per se - it just didn't do much for me. The Big Fish is probably my least favorite of the lot. I quite like the disdain that Catriona has for these people, all ego and flash, and the story is interesting, though somewhat sad. In 'Clubland Heroes', Catriona is called on the investigate the murder of a misanthropic and unloved man, who is also the neighbor to a group of six of these heroes. In this world, aside from occult monsters and threats, there are also super-heroes - though generally of a sort of scientific bend and less magical (though there's a bit of that, too.) In Clubland Heroes Catriona is mostly on her own, since she is not, at the time, an official member of the Club and can act as an independent entity. Also, we get some glimpses of Charles in his role as the head honcho. The best part about this story, though, is having Sir Arthur Conan Coyle and Aleister Crowley as characters at odds with each other. Quite shocking, in the time period of the story. I like Catriona, being a rather willful and independent woman, risking the wrath and ire of her family by living with a man but not being married to him. We also miss Edwin Winthrop and Catriona Kaye, who pretty much take over the roles of Charles and Kate, though I don't like Edwin nearly as much. I can't really say how or why without giving too much away, so I'll just say dear Rose is more than meets the eye. With Angel Down, Sussex we find ourselves with another changeling case, and with the introduction of a recurring character who is truly interesting. That said, I did like the depiction of the fundamental crazy dude being, well, crazy. This story was ok, and the characters were fine, but I didn't click with this one nearly as much. Richard Riddle, Boy Detective in "The Case of the French Spy" Unfortunately, after this story we never really see Kate again, and Charles takes a more peripheral role, as he becomes the head of the Club instead of an investigator. I enjoyed this story just as much on the second read, mostly because I really like the characters of Charles and Kate, and it is my favorite of the collection. It follows Charles Beauregard and reporter Kate Reed as they investigate a girl who was, apparently, returned by the faeries several years after her disappearance. This was a reread for me, and the reason why I, ultimately, wanted to get my hands on this book. The first story is 'The Gypsies in the Wood'. In these stories, Mycroft merely wishes to remain out of the public spotlight, since his Club deals with mysteries of a more occult nature - thus, the secret histories. In the Sherlock Holmes stories, Mycroft is clever, but lazy. This story takes us through the files of the Diogenes Club, the club founded by Sherlock's cleverer brother Mycroft. Life's Lottery, his most mainstream novel, consists of multiple choice fragments which enable readers to choose the hero's fate and take him into horror, crime and sf storylines or into mundane reality.Ī collection of Secret History stories by Kim Newman, the author of one of my favorite vampire novels ever (which is also an historical fiction): Anno Dracula. His pseudonymous novels, as Jack Yeovil, play elegant games with genre cliche-perhaps the best of these is the sword-and-sorcery novel Drachenfels which takes the prescribed formulae of the games company to whose bible it was written and make them over entirely into a Kim Newman novel. In horror novels such as Bad Dreams and Jago, reality turns out to be endlessly subverted by the powerfully malign. He is complexly and irreverently referential the Dracula sequence-Anno Dracula, The Bloody Red Baron and Dracula,Cha Cha Cha-not only portrays an alternate world in which the Count conquers Victorian Britain for a while, is the mastermind behind Germany's air aces in World War One and survives into a jetset 1950s of paparazzi and La Dolce Vita, but does so with endless throwaway references that range from Kipling to James Bond, from Edgar Allen Poe to Patricia Highsmith. Note: This author also writes under the pseudonym of Jack Yeovil.Īn expert on horror and sci-fi cinema (his books of film criticism include Nightmare Movies and Millennium Movies), Kim Newman's novels draw promiscuously on the tropes of horror, sci-fi and fantasy.
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