Crimes, Creeps & Thrills

[demonik]

Crimes, Creeps & Thrills (Eric Grant, n.d.)

E. H. Visiak - The Shadow
Philip Lindsey - Hunger
R. Edison Page - The Eyes Of Obi
E. H. Visiak & John Gawsworth - The Uncharted Islands
Kenneth Hare - The Woman With The Bundle
A. L. Davis - The Skull
John Rowland - The Rattlesnake
John St. Clair Muriel - Chinese Mask
R. Edison Page - The Ninth Year
Simon Dewes - Sacrifice
Henry Yalden - Broken
Richard Middleton - The Hand
M. P. Shiel & Fytton Armstrong - The Falls Scandal
Richard Middleton - Eccentric Lady Tullswater
H. H. Ewers - The Execution Of Damiens
Richard Middleton & G. Dundas - Murray's Child
E. H. W Meyerstein - The Cat-Lovers
R. Edison Page - The Tube Of Radium
Frederick Carter - Coincidence
Edgar Jepson - The Women Avenge
G. R. Malloch - High Politics
Frances Marsden - The Signet Ring
Oswell Blakeston - - The House Opposite
Eimar O'Duffy - My Friend Trenchard
E. H. W Meyerstein - Boxbug Paints His Kitchen
John Lindsey - On Lighthouse Rock
Edgar Jepson - Secret Service Work!
Mary Francis McHugh - Gilmartin
John St. Clair Muriel - Decision
Simon - Death For The Gander
Edgar Jepson - The Case Of The Absconding Financier
E. H. W Meyerstein - Really Was A Bluetit
Nora C. James - Helping Mummy
R. Edison Page & Kenneth Jay - The Jingling Telephone
E. H. Visiak - Carson
Mary Francis McHugh - The Ride
E. H. W Meyerstein - A Whistling Woman And A Crowing Hen
hamish MacLaren - Summer Harvest
Philip Henderson - Cruelty in Sunlight
Edgar Jepson - The Lost Meadow
Simon - The Disappearance
M. P. Shiel & Fytton Armstrong - The 'Master'
Nugent Barker - The Announcement
Frederick Carter - The Fakir Of Teheran
Edgar Jepson & John Gawsworth - The Shifting Growth

Biographical notes

I'm not certain, but I'm inclined to believe this volume is aka Thrills. Boring plain red cover on my copy so no point my scanning it E. H. Visiak's The Shadow is a short novel dedicated to Gawsworth. You wouldn't really expect to see H. H. Ewers' unforgettably ghastly Execution Of Damiens in such refined company, but here it is and I'm wondering id this was its first British publication?

[Calenture]

admin said:

I'm not certain, but I'm inclined to believe this volume is aka Thrills. Boring plain red cover on my copy so no point my scanning it...

My copy of Thrills contains only 20 stories. I'm not sure if it's something Gawsworth turned out. It has 12 illustrations by Norman Keene (quite decent) with one printed on the cloth cover. I'll upload a scan and details later, but I need to go out and get a new printer just now.

[artlongjr]

Hello, Calenture! The copy of "Thrills" that you have seems to be a bit of a mystery...it's listed on the Gawsworth site here with just the title and no table of contents:

freepages.pavilion.net/tartarus/g6.htm#new

I checked a copy of Donald H. Tuck's "Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy" which was my original source for Gawsworth anthology info and "Thrills" isn't listed at all there. However, it is listed in the anonymous anthologies section of Tuck's book. The authors are all usual suspects from Gawsworth's other anthologies. From the story titles, a lot of it looks to be crime fiction.

[Calenture]

artlongjr said:

The copy of "Thrills" that you have seems to be a bit of a mystery...it's listed on the Gawsworth site here with just the title and no table of contents:

freepages.pavilion.net/tartarus/g6.htm#new

I checked a copy of Donald H. Tuck's "Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy" which was my original source for Gawsworth anthology info and "Thrills"; isn't listed at all there. However, it is listed in the anonymous anthologies section of Tuck's book. The authors are all usual suspects from Gawsworth's other anthologies. From the story titles, a lot of it looks to be crime fiction.

Art', apologies for my delay in replying. I've posted the details of my copy of Thrills here.

The only things it has in common with the book on The Supernatural Fiction Database page are Norman Keene's cover illustration and the names of the authors.

[demonik]

Thanks for confirming that they're two different books after all! I should have realised this as Hugh Lamb reprinted Gawsworth's grim How It Happened in his The Thrill Of Horror and The Haunted Bungalow in Forgotten Tales Of Terror. I reallly must make a start on re-reading these soon.

[demonik]

The subtitle, "Forty-Five New Stories Of Detection, Horror And Adventure" forewarns you that it's not going to be quiet as gruesome a ride as the best of the Not At Night's or Creeps. Some of these are super-short, two to three pages, and in certain cases, you know what's going to happen within a few sentences. Another difference with the above named anthologies: on the strength of the dozen I've read at least, there's less fascination with the "supernatural" than there is murder and suicide. But that doesn't mean they can't be fun ...

Norah C. James - Helping Mummy: Poor Mrs. Rodgers. Her husband has died and now she's taking the long boat journey home from the Philippines. Little Tommy and Ruth mean well, but that screaming baby is getting on everybody's nerves and how are they to know she's being flippant when she warns him that, if he doesn't stop wailing, she'll throw him out of the porthole ....

Edgar Jepson & John Gawsworth - The Shifting Growth:"Uncompressed, it looked as if it would have filled a drainpipe, and split the colon of an ox."

Euw. The charming story of swimming champion Sylvia Bard, her perplexed surgeon lover and the nasty something she swallowed. Probably the most reprinted of the Thrills stories.

Simon - Death For The Gander: Mr. Carson thinks his daughter Marie is pulling a fast one when she insists they mustn't move to the reputedly haunted house in Bloomsbury as she's had a premonition. He threatens her with a good thrashing if there's any more talk of this infernal spectral policeman peering through the window.

Richard Middleton - The Hand: A life-shattering experience for fanatical ornithologist Lord Scaife begins when he watches a young woman pass in the street below, her bonnet decorated with the rare tail-feather he thinks has been stolen from his collection. He tails her to a house in a part of London "which he had heard of but had not previously believed in." There he encounters a feisty youth who mistakes him for a debt collector and locks him in a dark room with a severed hand for company.
All is explained at the end. Not really what I'd call horrific, but well told and Scaife's mischievous sister Lady Arabella is the most likable character in the book thus far.

Simon Dewes - Sacrifice: Kaloun, a hunchback with the squeaky voice, has somehow convinced himself that he has a chance with the lovely Amima. His friend Anton, who has the reputation of being something of a Lothario, finally rids him of his delusions when he proposes to the girl and she readily accepts. Kaloun plans to kill Anton the next time they're working the crocodile-infested river.

E. H. Visiak - Carson: A bullied youth finally turns on the younger kids who torment him. The shame of it all ruins his life.

Simon - The Disappearance: Inspector Deering mystery. This time the porky super is assisted in cracking the case of a fence who seemingly vanishes from a house under surveillance. Something to do with an old cretin who is transformed into a dashing young gent. It's all in the thyroid gland, you know.

E. H. W Meyerstein - Boxbug Paints His Kitchen: A vindictive old despot who has "a habit of getting rid of things" finally sees the error of his ways when he encounters another of those plucky poor children who put in so many appearances in this book. He returns home and redecorates his room a ghastly shade of crimson ...

Nugent Barker - The Announcement: John Warrington-Coombe spends the stifling hot afternoon in the public library. He's a man of eclectic tastes judging by the several books he admiringly browses. His next stop is the police station to hand himself in ...

E. H. W Meyerstein - The Cat-Lovers: Mr. Justice Grist and fellow henpecked Judge Leanjer bemoan the good old days when they could dole out twenty strokes of the cat-o'-nine-tails to juvenile delinquents. Nowadays, everybody's too namby-pamby to allow the old perves to indulge their pleasure so often, but eventually Round and Bollow come before them. It was better for Grist and Leanjer that they hadn't.

[demonik]

A. L. Davis - The Skull: Dr. McIver loans his artist friend James Ewen the skull of Old Maggie, recently hanged at the crossroads for murder. McIver and the medical students - body-snatchers to a man - liberated her corpse for their dissecting rooms but, forced to flee from an angry mob of villagers, they bodged the job and decapitated her in their haste to get away. McIver warns his friend that the skull resents being shut up in box or cupboard but if somebody tells you something like that, what are you going to do?

Kenneth Hare - Woman With A Bundle: Up there with Helping Mummy and The Skull as my favourites so far. The Nags Head is something of a hotbed of simmering sexual tensions. Landlady Mrs. Bates detests her husband for his inability to provide her with a baby, while barman Blowin is trying to get his end away with the not altogether discouraging barmaid Mary who can more than match his saucy innuendos. One day an old woman comes in and, after getting on the wrong side of Mrs. Bates by mentioning babies, departs having left behind her bundle. She doesn't come back and finally the landlady inspects the lost property ....

John Rowland - The Rattlesnake: Johnson is captured and staked out by the Apaches with a tethered rattler for company. When it rains, the rawhide will expand and the snake will eventually reach him. Storm clouds hover overhead ...

Hamish Maclaren - Summer Harvest: The old soldier sits at the bar selling fresh cherries to strangers and regaling them with tales of his experiences during the war in South Africa. Finally, the innkeeper has had enough and exposes him as a fraud who's never set foot outside of Hillingdon. The old boy takes it badly and the Cherry tree is put to a different use.

Mary Frances McHugh - Gilmartin: Another suicide saga, this time concerning an Irish journalist drummed out of Fleet Street and fallen on hard times. He rages at the world - especially his countrymen - until he finally ends it all in the bogs at Euston Station. Like Summer Harvest, it's well enough written but there are already enough of these predictable tragedies for one volume.

[demonik]

Edgar Jepson - The Women Avenge: Dear old Dennis Wheatley must have loved this one!

World War I. Lady Mosenheim, Clarissa Leggatt, Lady Northwold and her stocky Welsh servant, have each lost sons or lovers during the conflict. Good Tory's all, they put the blame squarely at the feet of eighty 'traitors' - otherwise known as "The Labour Government" - including disgraced MP Blagden and an unnamed person at the very top. As men are too spineless to kill these wretched Socialists, the women will have to do it themselves.

Blagden, they decide, will be the first to be put on trial - not that he can influence the verdict as the eighty have already been found guilty and will be hung or otherwise executed for their crimes.

Lady Northwold invites him to River Court for the weekend ...

[artlongjr]

Thanks a lot, Demonik, for the synopses of these stories...all of them sound interesting! Especially since only few of them were discussed in E.F. Bleiler's Guide to Supernatural Fiction, which has been my primary source for story outlines in the various anthologies. It's interesting to note that 'Simon' was a pseudonym of Oswell Blakeston and Roger Burford, according to the Steve Ing article here:

alangullette.com/lit/shiel/essays/shiel_gawsworth.htm

In reading this article, I was intrigued by Ing's comparison of the editor's works:

"Gawsworth's anthologies were probably not as good as Lady Cynthia Asquith's Not at Night series, but better than Charles Birkin's Creeps series (whose Gawsworth's resemble in title)."

Obviously he meant Christine Campbell Thomson as the editor of Not at Night...but he does think highly of her series. E. F. Bleiler considered Gawsworth's anthologies to be higher in quality compared to both Thomson's and Birkin's books. As for me, I like all three editor's books, each series has its own charms.

[demonik]

Perhaps the best reason for providing synopsis for these stories is that Bleiler is fairly lukewarm toward all three series and, of course, he only comments on tales with supernatural comment which rules out many of the pure horror shockers.

Thanks for the link, Art. I read Simon's The Flying Worm and Blakestone's The House Opposite a few nights back (comments soon) and I figured they were maybe by the same hand. And I see Rog has kindly reproduced The Count in its entirety - well worthy of your time if The Flying Worm is anything to go by.

I'm with you. My preference is probably for Not At Night and Creeps, but each series has much to recommend it. Revisiting Crimes, Creeps & Thrills has been my most enjoyable reading experience so far in 2007.

[artlongjr]

I'm envious of you for having the Gawsworth books...the stories contained therein have been the toughest overall for me to track down here in the U.S. You may be familiar with a U.S. editor named Helen Hoke who had a series of horror anthologies that came out back in the 70's. Her books had a number of entries from Creeps and Not at Night and possibly Gawsworth as well...I read some doozies like "Meshes of Doom" by Neville Kilvington and "Unburied Bane" by N. Dennett in Hoke's series. I think it also may have been in that series that I found the terrific science-fiction/horror story "Carlton's Father" by Eric Ambrose, which was published in a U.K. anthology in the 30's.

Of the stories out of Gawsworth that I've read, M.P. Shiel's "Dark Lot of One Saul" is the one that probably impressed me the most.

Bleiler, although he may be one of the world's greatest experts on horror fiction, does dismiss "Creeps" and "Not at Night" all too frequently...but I love that stuff!

By the way, I was thinking maybe the board could have a section where readers could recommend their favorite stories...I would like to get some ideas for reading from the very knowledgeable people here.

[demonik]

artlongjr said:

By the way, I was thinking maybe the board could have a section where readers could recommend their favorite stories...I would like to get some ideas for reading from the very knowledgeable people here.

Well, we could start with a recommendations thread for each series in the General section if you like and see how we go from there? We're such a tiny board that the viewpoints won't be that varied, especially as I doubt we've a full set of the books between us.

In the case of the Not At Night's I think I'd find it easier to list the stories I don't recommend. The Creeps include some dreadful stories in the later volumes (though even they're fun in their own way) and, not being a great one for detective fiction, I tend to skip the crime stories in Thrills.

Helen Hoke had some children's anthologies published in the UK with titles like Monsters, Monsters, Monsters. I used to have a couple, but I'm afraid I've no idea of the contents: fairly sure these ones didn't include any of the Creeps, though.

I'll look out for Dark Lot Of One Saul!

[artlongjr]

With regard to the "Not at Night Omnibus", there is one story that was never a big favorite of mine..."The Seven Locked Room" by Jessie Douglas Kerruish. It always seemed more like mainstream fiction than horror to me. However, her other story in that anthology, "The Wonderful Tune", is terrific. And speaking of J.D. Kerruish, I was lucky enough to find a paperback copy of her novel "The Undying Monster"-it was quite good!

I agree wholeheartedly about not being a general fan of crime fiction.

[demonik]

Eimar O'Duffy - My Friend Trenchard: The narrator, Stapleton, has known Percy Trenchard from when they were at Wadminster School. He was always a headstrong, difficult fellow, seemingly incapable of tact, but after the great war he becomes odder than ever. When Stapleton goes to stay with him at his Sussex home, he finds that Trenchard has taken a wife - a woman ever on the verge of hysteria - and built a huge wall at the bottom of his garden. Trenchard's recent expedition to Sumatra provides a clue to the horror that holds them in thrall.

Very well written but, to be honest, the revelation isn't as scary as it should be and this one really stood out for me due to some Wheatleyesque Labour bashing (see also The Women Avenge). " ... I began to know what hunger was. My clothes became shabby, my boots wore out ... I know lots of men in my situation - some of them even public-school men - became infected with Socialism and other seditious ideas. But I knew that wasn't the game. Thanks to the training of the old school, I kept a stiff upper lip and determined to play with a straight bat."

As is the case with The Women Avenge, the author gives no indication that this is intended as satire.