Old Bestsellers: The Stone of Chastity, by Margery Sharp

The Stone of Chastity, by Margery Sharp

Margery Sharp (1905-1991) was in fact a quite well-known writer ... for children. She wrote a series of nine books, beginning with The Rescuers (1959), about a beautiful mouse called Miss Bianca who (along with the loyal Bernard) becomes involved in the efforts of the Prisoner's Aid Society in rescuing unjustly held prisoners around the world. I read a few of these with enjoyment when I was young, and revisited them later when my children were young. There were also a couple of (lesser) Disney movies, The Rescuers (1977) and The Rescuers Down Under (1990).

Margery Sharp was also a mildly well-known writer for adults. I encountered Cluny Brown (1944) and The Nutmeg Tree (1937) when I was in my 20s. I don't think I ever made the connection (obvious enough) between the writer of The Rescuers et. seq., which I had read age 12 or so, and the writer of Cluny Brown and many other novels. Cluny Brown is likely her most famous adult novel -- it was made into a 1946 film by Ernst Lubitsch (starring Jennifer Jones, recommendation enough in my mind). (It should be noted that other Sharp novels were also filmed, such as The Nutmeg Tree (with Greer Garson) and Britannia Mews (with Maureen O'Hara).)

Sharp's first adult novel (Rhododendron Pie) appeared in 1930, and The Rescuers didn't come out until 1959 (when I was born). So it seem as if her career was perhaps bifurcated -- a few decades of reasonable success as an adult novelist, followed by another couple of decades writing for children. But that's not quite correct -- while she did publish 15 books before The Rescuers came out, she kept writing for adults until the end of her career. (She appears to have retired in the late '70s.) And while the Miss Bianca books were certainly popular, so too, at least in their time, were her adult books.

And now? As far as I can tell, none of her books -- not even the Miss Bianca books -- are in print. Some may be available in electronic editions. But I suspect she hasn't really been available widely since not too long after The Rescuers Down Under came out. Which is to say, pretty much since her death. My copies of Cluny Brown and The Nutmeg Tree are Perennial Library paperbacks, from 1982. Nowadays I look for her stuff in antique stores and used book sales and the like, and even there they're hard to find. Perhaps she is just a bit too new?

All this is a shame. Margery Sharp was an outstanding writer. Her metier was comedy -- very light comedy, I suppose. And comedy does have a tendency to be underappreciated -- especially when its satiric bite is not all that intense. Sharp was also popular in her day -- which may have meant that nobody felt she needed revival, or special appreciation. Compare Barbara Pym, who wrote novels of similar quietude, but never achieved the commercial success early in her career that Sharp did. Late in her life Pym became the subject of a significant rediscovery, and as a result she is now placed, it seems to me, on a shelf with the likes of Elizabeth Bowen and the great Elizabeth Taylor. Sharp has never got such attention. Quite possibly her fame as a writer of children's books was also to her reputation's detriment.

Well, or maybe not. But I like her books a lot, and while I wouldn't rate her with Taylor (one of the real quiet giants of 20th Century British fiction), I have no problem matching her with, say, Pym (whose work I quite enjoy, I should say). Definitely, I would say, she is a writer worthy of a latter day reexamination.

So, to the book at hand. The Stone of Chastity is the one book I did manage to find in the wild -- at a charity used book sale, I think. Or maybe an antique store. My edition seems to be the second, printed the same year as the first, 1940 (by Little, Brown -- in the US, anyway). The back of the dust jacket promotes The Nutmeg Tree, comparing it to Robert Nathan (appropriately -- they even both had novels adapted for films starring Jennifer Jones!) and Victoria Lincoln (who she?), along with praise from Nathan himself.  One flap praises another novel, Harlequin House. The dust jacket cover (by Robert Ball) is reproduced on the cloth covers.

The story is set in the sleepy village of Gillenham. Professor Isaac Pounce is summering there, and planning to study the local legend of the Stone of Chastity: a rock which will invariably reveal a wife's unfaithfulness, or a maiden's unmaidenly behavior, if stumbled upon. Accompanying him are his feckless nephew Nicholas, his sister-in-law, Nicholas's mother, and a statuesque young woman named Carmen.

Besides the Pounces, the novel considers a range of village inhabitants ... the Vicar, his wife, the Pyes, various   habitues of the local pub, and an intriguingly independent woman named Bridget. The plot, of course, concerns the shocked reactions of the inhabitants to the dissemination of the Professor's quiestionnaire about the Stone; as well as Nicholas' attraction to Carmen and to Bridget, and the degree of reciprocity, or not, that occurs; and of course the reception of the out-of-towners by the village. It's not exactly a sharp-edged plot, nor need it be; but while the first reaction to the whole thing may be "light, gentle, humor", that's not quite right -- there is a bit of a knowing edge to Sharp's view of everyone -- though not ever a vicious edge. And it's not a romcom -- Sharp didn't really write romances, another reason it might have been hard to get a grip on her. It's -- well, I enjoyed it. I will say that it didn't get nearly the reception that books like The Nutmeg Tree and Cluny Brown got, and while that may be fair I still thought it good stuff.

Old Bestsellers: The Adventurer, by Mika Waltari

The Adventurer (Mikael Karvajalka), by Mika Waltari

I may be cheating a bit with this entry: I'm not sure the author, or even the book, really qualifies as "forgotten". But by now not all that widely remembered, anyway! Mika Waltari (1908-1979) was a fairly significant, and fairly prolific, Finnish writer. He wrote contemporary novels that gained some praise, but he gained at least a mild international reputation for his historical fiction.  His best known books are probably The Egyptian (1945) and The Adventurer (1948), to give them their US titles. The Egyptian in particular was a huge success: it was made into a movie in 1954, and according to Wikipedia it was the bestselling "foreign novel" (I assume they mean "foreign language novel") in the US prior to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.

But it was The Adventurer that I stumbled across. I found a 1965 Pyramid paperback edition of it. The cover copy is worth mentioning, mainly for its inaccuracies. The front cover says "A bold, romantic novel about one man's quest for love and riches in an age of terror". It is certainly not romantic, nor is the "hero"'s quest really for love -- perhaps for riches. It is an age of terror, though. On the back we learn, for example, that the hero's wife is a "passionate red-headed girl who draws from him a fiery love he never dreamed he could give" which might be technically true but which grossly misrepresents the spirit of that section of the book.  It states "Michael takes a bloody vow to fight the forces of tyranny wherever they may be ... He becomes known as The Adventurer."  He took no such vow, and if he fought the forces of tyranny that was because there was so much tyranny to go around that whichever side of a fight you were on your opponent was likely a tyrant.  And he was never called The Adventurer, and would have been the last person anyone called that -- the book's title is purely ironic.  Oh well, that's blurbs for you -- inaccurate, and also spoiler-filled!

The book is about a Finnish bastard named Michael Furfoot (which is apparently what the Finnish title means in English), born in 1502 or so.  It follows his life from an invasion of the Danes (or Jutes) in about 1510 to about 1525.  The central subject of the book is the Reformation.  It's an extraordinarily cynical book.  Almost every character is basically evil, the narrator definitely included, Martin Luther included, certainly the entire Catholic hierarchy included in spades.  As such, it's a hard book to like, because you can't root for anyone.  It is quite funny in spots, and pretty involving, and rather depressing as man's thoroughgoing inhumanity to man is described at extended length.

The storyline is somewhat episodic, following young Michael as he is raised by the town witch, becomes something of a scholar, gets involved traitorously (though mostly by accident) with the invading Danes, is forced to flee Sweden and Finland as a result, ending up at the University of Paris with his longtime friend Andy.  He becomes involved with a whore who betrays everyone in sight at every chance. Back in the North, he gets in more trouble, and he and Andy head for the Holy Land, but Michael ends up left for dead in Germany.  Brought back to health by another "witch", he ends up marrying her despite her ugliness and age, only to see her arrested by the Inquisition.  Michael vows revenge against the Pope, and after some time involved with the futile Peasants' revolt, sparked by the Reformation, he and Andy end up in a mercenary army which ends up sacking Rome, only to be betrayed once again by a faithless woman.  At the end, he is off again to the Holy Land, but this time we know he will end up in the service of the Ottomans. There was a sequel, called The Wanderer in the US, which showed Michael's career in the Ottoman Empire.

In the end I'd have to say this is a pretty good novel, if as I suggest kind of depressing, ultimately, and incredibly cynical.

Old Bestsellers: Captain Dieppe, by Anthony Hope

Captain Dieppe, by Anthony Hope

Many of the writers I will cover in this series of reviews are by now all but forgotten, along with all their books. But there are exceptions ... I suspect it will be some time before Anthony Hope, and at least one of his books, is forgotten. The book of course is The Prisoner of Zenda (1894). It has been filmed something like 10 times (at least), and has been made into plays, and even an opera. A sequel, Rupert of Hentzau (1898) is also well-remembered. But aside from those two books, it doesn't seem to me that any of Hope's work is much read today, though he had other successes in his lifetime, such as an early collection of sketches, The Dolly Dialogues (1894).

Anthony Hope's full name was Anthony Hope Hawkins, born 1863, died 1933. He was a barrister, and stood for Parliament (losing), but gave up his legal career after the success of Zenda. He was knighted in 1918, apparently for his services (as a writer) to the war effort.

Captain Dieppe is a very short book, really a novella, about 32,000 words long. It was serialized in six parts in the Ladies' Home Journal in 1899. My edition was published in 1902 by Doubleday, Page, & Co. It appears to have been first published in book form in 1900, by Doubleday & McClure, the original name of the famous house (which was cofounded by magazine publisher Samuel McClure). The change in name of the publisher happened in 1900.

The pictures I've taken above include one of a page from the book, highlighting the odd layout, which contributes to such a short book taking up a respectable seeming 223 pages.

The novel is pretty good fun, if very slight indeed. The title character is a Frenchman, nearly 40 years old, and apparently some sort of spy (for money). He is in possession of some valuable information, and he is on the run from officials of some sort (apparently French officials?) in Italy. He ends up at a slightly odd house, and is welcomed by the owner, the Count of Fieramondi. Dieppe soon learns that the Count is estranged from his wife, who still lives in the house, which is divided in half. The Count offers Dieppe his room, because it is attached to his wife's room, and the Count does not wish to risk an encounter. Naturally enough, Dieppe finds himself yielding to the temptation of opening the door between the rooms, and catches a glimpse of a thoroughly delightful young woman.

Soon the Count has enlisted Dieppe's help in interceding with his wife, which pricks Dieppe's conscience because he finds himself rather falling for the lady. Things are complicated by a couple of sinister characters in the nearby village, one of whom, it turns out, wants to blackmail the Countess; and the other wants to relieve Dieppe of the important information he has. The pair join forces, and Dieppe is lured to a rendezvous or two, with the object of resolving the Countess' difficulties with her blackmailer. Shots are exchanged, betrayals happen, another woman appears on the scene, a river floods ... and after a twist or two (none too surprising) things are neatly resolved.

As I said, it's good fun. Hope's writing is featherlight and witty. Dieppe is an engaging character, and the other characters are thinly but effectively portrayed. This isn't the sort of book that demands revival, but if you run across a copy it will likely entertain you for the short time it takes to read.

Old Bestsellers: Guyfford of Weare, by Jeffery Farnol

Guyfford of Weare (and The Money Moon), by Jeffery Farnol




One of my favorite writers of "old bestsellers" is Jeffery Farnol. Farnol (1878-1952) was a writer of historical adventures and romances, in the first half of the 20th Century. He was born in England, and spent most of his life there, though he spent some time in the U.S. His first novel appeared in 1907. His most famous books are probably The Amateur Gentleman (1913) and The Broad Highway (1910). He often set his novels in or near the Regency period, and indeed he is regarded as a significant influence on Georgette Heyer, who began her career a dozen or so years after Farnol. I've previously read the two novels mentioned above, with a fair amount of enjoyment, and one other novel, The Money Moon (1911) with rather less enjoyment -- The Money Moon is set contemporaneously to its writing, which may be why it doesn't work as well..

Guyfford of Weare is from later in Farnol's career -- it was published in 1928. I read an A. L. Burt edition of this book, as with many of the books in this series of reviews. It's set in the 18th Century, in England. It opens with a young woman, Helen D'Arcy, trying to retrieve a certain letter from the roguish Sir Richard Guyfford, rumored to be both a murderer and a debaucher of young women -- including Helen's friend Angela. Quickly we gather that Sir Richard has long been falsely accused of various crimes, and the real villain is his cousin Julian, who hopes to gain his estate by assuring Sir Richard's death.

Thus begins a slightly tangled story, involving several rivals for the beautiful Helen's hand, and involving Sir Richard being once again accused of murder, and involving lots of mistaken identity, and gypsies, and highwaymen -- good highwaymen, mostly. The end is never in doubt -- of course Sir Richard will eventually be redeemed, and he and Helen will fall in love. But the plot isn't really the point of the book -- it's rather twisty, as I said, and certainly very busy, but it's not really all that well constructed. But for all that the book is fun to read, and mostly because of Farnol's writing. His prose, particularly his dialogue, is very artificial (the which I don't think he ever doubted). But it works for me. The touch is mostly quite light. It's pleasant to read, often quite funny is a feather light manner. Farnol essays country dialect, and Romany dialect, and exaggerated upper class posturing -- I couldn't say if any of this is much in the way of accurate, but it's effective. The characters are not particularly deep, but they're well enough done. Helen is perhaps a cliche version of the "spitfire", but she does have her own mind, and courage, and "agency". I also liked her older guardian, Madame La Duchesse. This isn't even close to a great novel, but it's a fun read.

I might as well add what I wrote long ago about The Money Moon. As noted above, I preferred The Amateur Gentleman and The Broad Highway, both Regencies (yet quite different from each other), but I didn't write about them! So:

The Money Moon is an early Jeffery Farnol novel, published in 1911. I decided to try Farnol because he is apparently an important influence on Georgette Heyer (also, perhaps, Wodehouse and Vance). This novel is contemporary to 1911, and is breezily readable but not terribly special.  A very rich American follows his fiancee to England, is dumped for a Duke, and wanders in the countryside, there encountering a young boy looking for his fortune, and the boy's beautiful, financially beleaguered Aunt.  They fall in love, but the obvious solution to everyone's problems (the hero pays off the beautiful Aunt's mortgage, then they get married and live happily ever after) won't do because of the lady's pride.  The hero tries a couple of transparent ruses to get around this problem, is caught, and eventually prevails by brute force.  (Nothing abusive, I rush to say.) The plot wasn't subtle enough for me, and the characters were early 20th century sexist and classist cliches.  In this latter way it was indeed reminiscent of Heyer, but her early "contemporary" novels (i.e. Barren Corn), which are horrible (actually Farnol was less sexist, I thought, than Heyer).  I'm making this sound worse than it is: it was still a fun, fast, read, and the characters were likeable if not believable.  I was hoping for more twists to the plot though.

Old Bestseller Reviews: Graustark, by George Barr McCutcheon

Graustark, by George Barr McCutcheon

I found an omnibus of two of George Barr McCutcheon's Graustark novels at an antique shop. McCutcheon was an American novelist and playwright. He was born in 1866. His most famous novels date to the first decade of the 20th Century, particularly Graustark (1901) and Brewster's Millions (1902). Graustark is set in a fictional Eastern European kingdom, and it spawned a number of sequels. The books were very popular, and indeed romantic fiction set in fictional kingdoms, usually called "Ruritanian" after the country in Anthony Hope's slightly earlier (and far far superior) The Prisoner of Zenda, is occasionally called Graustarkian.

I do have a weakness for the Ruritanian subgenre. So I went ahead and read Graustark. The story opens with a man, Grenfall Lorry, presented as something of a paragon, against the evidence ... He's an American with lots of family money, but he seems too lazy to do anything with it -- he is shown being a terrible lawyer. He bumps into a beautiful young woman traveling with an older couple -- Lorry and the young woman end up missing a train connection and Lorry arranges for a dangerous coach ride in the West Virginia mountains to reunite her with her Aunt and Uncle (as it turns out). He becomes obsessed with this woman, who has given her name as Sophia Guggenslocker (before checking, I wanted to say "Shickelgruber"). Eventually he decides to go to Graustark to find her, confident that someone named Guggenslocker must be the daughter of a butcher or something, and will gladly leap into his arms and return with him to the US.

Accompanied by his friend, the curiously named Harry Anguish, Lorry makes his way to Graustark. But there are no Guggenslockers in that tiny country. To no reader's surprise, we learn that Sophia Guggenslocker was a pseudonym for the Princess Yetive. Ahh, such agony for Grenfall Lorry. For of course the Princess -- the ruler of her country -- cannot marry a commoner. Worse, her country is threatened with ruin as the result of a disastrous war with their neighbor, Axphain, some time back. They owe millions of gavvos. The only way to pay back the loan is an advantageous marriage, either to the rather dull heir to the throne of Axphain, or to the caddish young prince of another neighbor, who will advance the money in exchange for Yetive's hand. She has agreed to marry the young prince of Axphain, but his character is revealed when Grenfall overhears him offering to share Yetive's favors once he's tired of her. Meanwhile the other prince attempts a kidnapping, which Lorry and Anguish foil. Yetive's presumptive fiance is murdered, and Lorry is immediately the prime suspect, and the dead prince's father agrees to delay payment of the indemnity in exchange for Lorry's head on a stake, but Yetive cannot bear to have him killed and tries to convince him to escape ... Well, we see where this is going, and we can all guess who the real killer is ...

It's all rather humbug, of course, and it simply pales next to The Prisoner of Zenda. It does bounce along nicely enough. The book is horribly sexist, of course, but in fact Yetive shows some real spunk and independence at times, almost in spite of the author it seems. She's the best part of it -- Grenfall Lorry is rather a cipher, or an implausible paragon. In the end, it is what it is. Easy to see why it sold well in its day, and spawned many sequels, but also easy to see why it's nearly forgotten now.


[Jacket pictures to come!]

Old Bestseller Reviews: Half a Rogue and The Best Man, by Harold Macgrath

 

















Half a Rogue, by Harold Macgrath  

Half a Rogue was published in 1906, by Bobbs-Merril. It was the tenth best-selling novel of that year. I found a Grosset & Dunlap reprint of the book. Harold Macgrath (or MacGrath, spellings vary) was a novelist from Syracuse, New York, and an early writer for films. He is all but forgotten today, despite reputedly having originated Boris Karloff's stage name. (Karloff was born William Henry Pratt, and MacGrath's 1920 novel The Drums of Jeopardy, which was filmed twice (in 1923 and 1931), featured a mad scientist named Boris Karlov. However, William Henry Pratt apparently used the name Boris Karloff as early as 1912, so if anything the inspiration for the name in MacGrath's novel may have run the other direction.)

The book is short (perhaps 80,000 words), and on a brief scan looked like it might turn sexily on a love triangle or quadrangle, so I thought it might be fun. And to be fair, it reads quite breezily, and holds the interest OK. But it's full of cliche, both in the writing and in the characterization. There's some offensive characterizations of ethnic groups, particularly Italians and Irish (no mention of black people) -- I suppose par for the course in popular fiction of that era. There's also a notable classism -- there's a strong sense that we are to be led by "gentleman", though to be sure the main character is the son of a potato farmer, a self-made man -- but still, it's clear, a "gentleman".

Anyway, the novel opens curiously with playwright Richard Warrington approached in a restaurant by a young woman, who it seems cannot pay for her meal, due to a sad story concerning her father's bad habits. Of course he pays for it (the gentleman), and then it turns out she's an actress who can't get a fair hearing, and this her means of proving how talented she is. As it happens, Warrington is looking for a new lead for his latest play, because his current star is insisting on changes to give her a more flattering role, and that would ruin his art. This made me think the story would be set on Broadway at the turn of the century ... but then suddenly we are several years in the future. Katherine Challoner, the actress he had hired in the first chapter, comes to him with news -- she is getting married, and will leave the stage. There is a hint of romantic entanglement in the past between Warrington and Challoner, but nothing came of it (their hearts were not truly engaged). Meantime Warrington is pondering a very flattering letter praising his work -- from an anonymous very young woman. And then his old University friend, the rich businessman John Bennington, visits and asks him to be his best man -- for he will be married soon. Of course it turns out that Bennington is in fact marrying Katherine Challoner ... and (gasp!) Katherine left her gloves with Warrington when she came and told him of her plans to leave the stage and get married.

The wedding of course will be in Bennington and Warrington's common home town, Herculaneum, in upstate New York. (It seems overtly modelled on MacGrath's home town, Syracuse.) The scene shifts quickly there. A few threads are set up. In one, the local social leader, Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene, an odious woman, begins to plot to make sure that the soon to be Katherine Bennington will not be able to upstage her social position -- after all, an actress! In another, Warrington, who comes to stay with his beloved Aunt, who raised him after his father died (his mother having left at his birth), again meets Bennington's much younger sister, Patty, and an attraction quickly blooms. (Warrington, no surprise, soon discovers that it was Patty who had written the anonymous letter of praise that he so treasured.) In a third, Warrington is recruited to run for Mayor, to oppose the entrenched candidate, who is the tool of an odious man named McQuade, who uses his influence to arrange for corruptly awarded city construction contracts. And in the fourth, Bennington's steel mill is threatened with a strike because he employs a non-union engineer, who, even worse, is British, and worse still, is perfecting a labor-saving device.

Naturally all these threads converge. Bennington's association with Warrington means that his business decisions may throw votes to the other guy. McQuade plots to ruin Warrington's reputation, and his eventual tool is to suggest that Warrington and Katherine Challoner had an affair. Patty's love for Warrington is threatened if she too believed that her new sister-in-law (whom she loves) was previously involved with her new paramour. And the same scandal that may affect Warrington's reputation of course also affects Katherine Bennington's -- which plays into Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene's hands.

At times the novel reads a bit like Atlas Shrugged, at least in John Bennington's attitudes. (His response to the strike is to close his business.) But more than that it's a lightly sketched paean to a man who is hardly portrayed as even a tenth of a rogue, let alone half -- instead he's rather implausibly perfect. The romance with Patty is underwhelming, and the "scandal" of his relationship with Katherine has no legs at all for a contemporary reader. Perhaps back in 1906 a woman visiting a man's apartment twice (as far as I can tell) ... a man with whom she had a professional relationship ... would be shocking. For me, I think the novel would have been much better if (as I had assumed at first) Katherine and Richard had been lovers, but realized they didn't love each another enough to live together ... if John and Patty each had to adjust to that fact ... but no. The story of political corruption is somewhat unsatisfactorily resolved as well: Warrington and Bennington, after discovering damning information about McQuade and his tools, are too much the gentlemen to ruin him as he deserves -- they just hope to use the knowledge to neutralize him in future. Hmmmph. Still, as I said, the novel didn't bore me, and there is a sweet closing scene. It never convinces, it's full of cliches, but I can see why MacGrath had readers. After all, he was a far better writer, line by line, than Dan Brown. (Though to give Brown his due, Brown appears to have a much better plotty imagination.)

 I will mention briefly that I also ran across a collection of short stories from Macgrath, The Best Man (1907). (My copy is an A. L. Burt reprint of a Bobbs-Merril original.) It comprises four not terribly long stories: “The Best Man” (12000 words), “Two Candidates” (6000 words), “Mr. “Shifty” Sullivan” (7200 words), and “The Girl and the Poet” (2800 words) – that's a total of less than 30,000 words, a pretty slim book. “Mr. “Shifty” Sullivan” was previously published in Ainslie's Magazine – no previous publication is credited for the other stories. “The Best Man” is about a man in love with a woman who is convinced he will lose her because he has discovered that her father is guilty of financial bad dealing. “Two Candidates” is a morality tale about two men running for office, both apparently decent people, both of whom are faced with seemingly unimportant temptations to support their political backers' interests. It's kind of obvious stuff, but not too bad really. “Mr. “Shifty” Sullivan” is about the visit of a prizefighter to dinner at a society woman's house, and the surprising knowledge the local Rector shows of boxing. And “The Girl and the Poet” is about a failed poet and the woman he loves. These are all slightish pieces, and quite obvious in their messages, and plots too, but they are decent entertainment.

Old Bestsellers: Brood of the Witch Queen, by Sax Rohmer

Brood of the Witch Queen, by Sax Rohmer

Sax Rohmer was an Englishman, real name Arthur Henry Ward (1883-1959). He was famous almost entirely for his series of novels about a Chinese master criminal named Fu Manchu. It doesn't take much in the way of "politically correct" feeling to detect an unpleasant racist tone to the depiction of Fu Manchu, and indeed to the plots of some of the novels, which concerned the Yellow Peril. I am however not terribly familiar with Rohmer's work, so when I ran across an A. L. Burt edition of his 1918 novel Brood of the Witch Queen, I figured I'd give it a try. (A. L. Burt, by the way, did cheap hardcover reprint editions of popular novels -- they filled, seems to me, a similar marketplace function in the early 20th Century that the mass market paperback did after WWII.)

Brood of the Witch Queen is not a Fu Manchu book. Instead it concerns an Englishman named Robert Cairn, and his unpleasant acquaintance Antony Ferrera. We quickly learn that Ferrera is thought to be excessively effeminate in dress and manner, yet still fatally attractive to certain women. Moreover his is suspected of dark magics, at least by those in the know, like Robert's father, Dr. Bruce Cairn, an old friend of Antony Ferrera's adopted father, Sir Michael Ferrera. Soon Sir Michael Ferrera dies mysteriously. This puts Antony in line to inherit a lot of money, particularly if he can deal with his cousin, Sir Michael's ward, the beautiful Myra Duquesne. Of course, Miss Duquesne is of particular interest to Robert Cairn as well.

Bruce tells Robert a story of Sir Michael's investigations in Egypt, which undercovered evidence of an ancient immortal being, the Witch Queen. Apparently Antony must somehow be the current incarnation of this Witch Queen. And soon the older husband of one of the young women ensnared by Antony dies, also mysteriously. Robert is also threatened by magical means. Before long the action shifts to Egypt, where ancient pyramids, mysterious evil winds, hidden rooms, and so on come into play.

All that is pretty much what I expected in the way of a plot outline. Fair enough. The problem is the execution. The novel, even at the relatively short length of some 65,000 words, seems padded. The characters are not just thin -- that we expect -- but uninteresting. Robert Cairn's love affair, such as it is, with Myra Duquesne is bloodless and uninvolving -- partly because Myra has so little agency of her own. Indeed Robert himself is a weak individual, relying mainly on his father's guidance. It is, to be honest, the sort of book that gives "pulp fiction" a bad name -- it is just as bad as detractors always say, without the good parts (fun parts) that we fans of trashy old stuff hold up as the reason to put up with the bad writing and silly plotting and thin characterization.

To be fair, it doesn't seem to me, discussing this with others who have an interest in old pulpish fiction, that Rohmer's reputation has survived at all well with much of anyone.