Book Review: A Shriek In The Midnight Tower

{N.B. - A few minutes ago I received via email a post from 4 years ago. I have no idea what Blogger is doing. Perhaps it was following the instructions my eyeglasses gave when they slid off my nose and landed on my keyboard.}

A Shriek In The Midnight Tower - A Queen-Size Gothic
by Katheryn Kimbrough (aka John Kimbro)
published by The Popular Library

Alright, so generally this is a knitting blog, with additional old-timey stuff on occasion. However, I'm at sixes and sevens right now in regard to my knitting (perhaps it's the warm weather) but getting everything blocked and photographed (much less completing nearly-finished items) is a bit more than I'm inclined to do. Mostly I'm just futzing around with some small crochet projects.

So why am I reviewing a book that has no knitting content and does not meet my criteria of old timey? Well, this book is... a treasure. No, that's not quite right... an oddity. Yes, it's definitely an oddity, a curiosity.

I read my first grown-up novel when I was 9 or 10; it was The Secret Woman by Victoria Holt. It completely warped my sensibilities; in 1970 there was no Goth movement such as came a decade or so later. But Gothic novels were a decent market back then, and Mme Holt opened the door to that market for this young reader. For the next five years I read every Gothic novel I could persuade anyone to buy me. Warped is probably an understatement, now that I think on it.

Anyhow, in recent years I've been revisiting some of the influences of my youth - music, books, films - to see how they've held up, to see what they might have offered me back in the day, whether those things can be of any relevance or significance to me now. The problem is, once in college, I divested myself of all the trashy fiction that I had acquired up to the age of 20. I no longer had any of those Gothic novels that I'd read back in the day.

Never fear, though - old ladies to the rescue. The clinic my mother goes to for her doctor's visits has a book rack - 25 cents for paperbacks. And bless those old ladies that go there (someone, please bless them!), they've been dumping collections of old romances, including some awesome 1970s Gothic novels. $1 gets you four, of course, so I found four and gave them my dollar. Thus A Shriek In The Midnight Tower found its way into my library, and is unlikely to exit it any time soon.

The magic of this book isn't the plot; sure, the plot has a 'shocking' twist like all Gothic mysteries of the time did, and the plot twist is a bit twisted, but the author left us with more than that to discuss. All you need to know is that a murder has taken place at Le Chat Noir, an old bayou chateau built by one of Jean Lafitte's lieutenants. (Yes, the house is named 'The Black Cat'.) The detective assigned to the murder case invites himself to stay there whilst investigating; after all, Le Chat Noir is 35 miles away from the nearest anything, and 70-mile round trips on a south Louisiana road is more than anyone should be expected to make every day, believe me.

More important, and of greater interest, is the list of characters.

• Marietta Ingram - 12-yr-old orphaned heiress, precocious in a Freudian kind of way, in love with her attorney and waiting until she’s of age (this is set in the early 1970s), an “invalid” (she can walk, a little she claims).
• Nora Elias - 20-something companion to Marietta; she’s beautiful, unconsciously very aware of handsome men and ogles them as much as she can. Orphaned in her early teens, she ended up in a convent, running away at 17 to hitch around the country with Jimmy - sex, drugs, artists, occultists and spiritualists. She has secretsssss. 
• Patrick Carruthers - Sheriff investigating the death of Abner. Attractive in a middle-aged redneck kind of way. 
• Abner Grouse - Estate handyman found dead, stabbed in the greenhouse. Actually, stabbed in the heart whilst in the greenhouse.
• Dandelion Snodgrass - Cook, from New Orleans.
• Barrett Young - an artist. Is obsessed with painting clowns & anything circus-themed.
• Lucien Gaspar - Butler/houseman/whatever. Married and has one developmentally disabled son.
• Hortense Gaspar - Not quite a Mrs Danvers-type, but is surly and has her secrets.
• Carlos Gaspar – Son of Lucien & Hortense. He’s likes to watch (he actually says that). But perhaps he didn’t like watching Abner.
• Mark Becker - The playboy attorney. He ended up with Marietta as a client when his boss, Maxwell Sprowl, was killed in a boat explosion. He makes love (in the 19th cent. sense of the word) to Marietta, but can’t keep his eyes off Nora. 

Yes, there is someone named 'Max Sprowl' in the book, as well as someone named 'Fedora Cuddington'.

In spite of all the circus-related content, this novel does not take place in a circus. It takes place in this southern mansion. Where almost everyone involved ends up having some sort of circus connection. It was as if the author were writing a novel based on comedy improv choices - "Kimbro, your fans have chosen 'Southern Gothic Mansion' and 'Circus' as the themes for your next book!"

What it does have is a shift in narrative that calls full attention to itself, with no attempt to dress it up or even put a robe on; a blatant self-reference to the author; and some of the most entertaining dialog I've ever read in one of these things. I'm not sure if the latter is intentional or not; I'm uncertain about a lot of things regarding this book. I regret that the author is deceased and that I can't just shoot him an email. So for the rest of this review I'm simply going to post some of the better dialog bits from the first part of the book; I'm leaving plenty unquoted so that, if you're curious enough to read this yourself, you won't have all the fun spoiled for you. Here goes:

(Marietta the precocious child to Mark the sleazy attorney) "Even if I did think Mr Carruthers was better looking than you, I would never be so foolish as to entertain thoughts about a cop."

"I should hope not," Mark returned with easy laughter... "Were anyone to know the deep feeling I had for you, they might well consider me some sort of child-molesting pervert, or suggest that I was plagued with some other peculiar fetish... We all have our idiosyncrasies, haven't we?" (pg. 27)

 When I got to this part of the story, I checked the cover to make sure I hadn't mistakenly grabbed some other kind of book, but it still said "A Queen-Size Gothic" on the cover.

"Murder? Murder? Murder?" Mark exclaimed. "Have you actually reached the conclusion that murder was committed and that Abner Grouse didn't meet an accidental death?"

 "No, I can't say that I have established that fact as yet," Carruthers returned patiently, a large smile wreathing his face. His eyes twitched. "But in my humble opinion a man does not accidentally puncture himself in the heart with a dull rusty instrument, stagger some distance and drop dead. Even if such were possible, there is no indication of a murder weapon, no rusty projections of lethal proportions, nothing. What other conclusion could be reached than that Abner Grouse had some sort of assistance in going to his final reward?"  (pg. 41)

 (Nora, speaking to Mark, Carruthers and Marietta) "I was very fond of my father, and I knew his happiness depended a large part on Helen (Nora's stepmother). I wished that I could make him equally as happy, but physically that would have been sinful." She blushed.

"Physically? Did you have such thoughts about your father?" questioned Carruthers, repositioning himself in his chair and picking up interest. (pg. 43)

No comment.

Cross Post - Good Summer Reading (circa 1875)

He's dead, Jim!

I just finished reading the first half of that classic novel, "The Somnambulist and the Detective" by Allan Pinkerton. Yes, the Allan Pinkerton for whom the Pinkerton National Detective Agency was named. Allan moved here from Scotland with his bride, began as a private detective in Chicago in 1849 or 1850, eventually met up with some muck-a-mucks (click the link if you want details; I'm not going to repeat a Wikipedia article), popularized such detective tricks and shadowing (tailing, following) and what we would now consider undercover work, and eventually put his name on a series of fictionalized accounts of his career (rumor has it they were ghostwritten).

The story begins with a young bank clerk being killed and a bank robbed. This all takes place somewhere down south; most of the evidence is overlooked by the locals, since it leads to the best friend of the deceased because class matters in 1850 Mississippi, and the best friend, Mr Drysdale, is of the best of families. But ol' Pinky, who is called in as a last-chance attempt to catch the killer/robber, is a cranky Scot, he is, and he dinna care fer a man's standing in the community. After examining clews, weighing evidence, and sucking down mint juleps galore, he trots back to Chicago, and formulates a plan so cunning that you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel. A large, inefficient, clunky weasel.

Next we know, a widow (Mrs Potter), a man of means (Mr Andrews), and a young carpenter (Mr Green) descend upon this small town. All are operatives of ol' Pinky - oops, I should have said spoiler alert. Now y'all will know how the story ends.

Their job is to figure out how to get a confession from the murderer Drysdale. Mrs Potter (not her real name) befriends the innocent wife of the alleged murderer...

Hard-boiled female detective schmoozes up innocent housewife

...you can see the evidence for yourself. In fact, this heartless undercover agent fakes an injury to infiltrate their household - a shameful pretense of being dependent upon the kindness of strangers. Indeed!

"She's suffered severe trauma, Jim!"

Mrs P starts smearing blood all over their home in the middle of the night in order to freak out the suspect. Talk about the house guest from hell...

Meanwhile, Messers Andrew and Green (not their real names) plot to drive Drysdale insane, in case Mrs P's imitation of "The Shining" doesn't work. (Okay, okay, this book came before "The Shining".) Mr Green looks like the deceased, so they dress him up to look like, well, a zombie in order to freak out the suspect even more.

"He's undead, Jim!"

And it works - but only some of the time. Our alleged murderer gets up and wanders in the middle of the night to the locations where he has buried the stolen money, and doesn't notice the zombie during his late-night strolls.

"He's the living dead, Jim!"

At this point, I know, you're hoping for a zombie war, or perhaps a face-off between a zombie and, say, a nosferatu. No such luck, dear readers. If the title hasn't already given it away, he's sleepwalking! Yes, sleepwalking. Wow! And FYI, that's a large, flat rock that our sleepwalker is holding. He's not wrestling with an alien life form or anything. Sorry.

By now, Drysdale is in hysterics. No southern belle could out psychosomatic him at this point, and I mean it. For instance, every time he finds the blood smeared in his room, he faints and says that he is weak from loss of blood... but he hasn't really lost any blood. So why is weak and faint - hysteria? Nerves? Guilt? A secret opium habit we're never told about?

No matter. They've succeeded in making him crazy. And yet, he still won't confess.

From what I can tell, the operations of these three detectives has probably taken three to six months. Honestly, if all his cases were this labor-intensive and drawn out, there is no way Allan Pinkerton would have become the rich, worker-hating lawman that he became.

Anyway, Pinkterton returns to the south, and gets together with everyone to plan one last attempt to coerce a confession from this dude without using a waterboard or lynch laws. Mr Green gets into his zombie togs again, and hides in the bank - the scene of the original crime. They arrest Mr Drysdale and take him to the bank. (If you're like me, you feel like you're suddenly in an episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies", but you're not; hillbillies could not afford Pinkerton's fees back in 1856.) I'll let the lovely illustration show you the moment when they break the killer:

"Dammit, Jim, I'm a murderer, not a doctor!"

Ah yes, they just don't confess like this anymore. And look at Mr Sourface McMustache in the background (just to the left of Drysdale) - stern and judgmental. That's a level four glare of disapproval. If it had been a level five, Drysdale would be a heap of ashes or a puddle of goo on the floor.

Eh, I give the story a C, mostly for being brief and having some lovely illustrations. The plot was ridiculous - but not as ridiculous as "The Ghoul", a book which I will review in loving detail someday. If you're not going to be a realistic mystery, you should go all out for crazy, over-the-top thrills, which "The Ghoul" delivers. The second half of the Pinkerton book is a tale entitled, "The Murderer and the Fortune-teller". If it's any good - or if the drawings are the least bit entertaining - I'll let you know.

Why Non-needleworkers Shouldn't Write About Needlework

I recently completed Laced, by Carol Higgins Clark. On a scale of 1 to 100, I'd give it a "meh". Not bad, not good, but had the virtue to not take up too much time to read (if you're not going to be a great book, you can at least be a fairly brief book).

The title of the book, of course, appealed to the lace knitter in me. The stolen object is this magnificent handmade lace tablecloth featuring a castle as either the focal point of the design, or the main design element. But what irritated the hell out of me was that readers were never told how the famed tablecloth was made. May Reilly made it by hand, we are told in the novel. But how? The reference to shamrocks not being part of the design made me think Irish crochet (and the novel takes place in Ireland, so this makes sense). And that would indeed be some fancypants needlework to create a castle in Irish crochet and make it look good. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure it could be done, but nutty needleworkers from the world over would trek to Nowheresville Ireland to see such an incredible thing.

So then I pondered whether it was knitted, or if some other method of lacemaking had been used. One could knit a castle design in openwork, using yo's and the like to create the shape. This sounds more like a Shetland textile than an Irish, though. Not that the Irish can't knit Shetland, etc. My logical (?) mind, however, thinks that a novel set in Ireland should feature needlework for which Ireland is famous. For example, the Irish Lace Museum lists the following as the five main Irish laces:

Irish Crochet Lace, Youghal Needlelace, Inishmacsaint Needlelace, Carrickmacross Lace and Limerick Lace.

If you visit their lovely site, you can see photos of the various types of Irish lace. What was most interesting about this, though, was that in seconds (thank you, Google) I found an Irish lace museum with examples and discussions of the main types of lacemaking done in Ireland. I gathered enough information from one site to give some description of how a famous tablecloth with a castle as the main design feature could have been made.

Not that I think a writer needs to become an expert in every topic that comes up in their books. Not at all. In the age of the internet, though, it's extra-inexcusable to not spend an hour researching something that's pretty easy to research.

So if anyone out there is inspired to crochet/bobbin/knit/hook/otherwise make a lace castle, please send me photos!

And You Thought I'd Given Up on This!

Nay, not I, sirs and mesdames! Still knitting, still blogging.

I've been writing the last few months, but less and less for the blogs. However, I'm going to attempt to blog more regularly (every 10 days or so), just to keep in blogging mode.

I'm almost finished with my second booty - I was distracted with canning, and hanging out with friends and poets, when I was first laid off, so the second booty was a long time in coming. And then, after I started it, I had to put it down for holiday knitting. Crap, I just realized I didn't take a photo of one of my knitted Xmas gifts. Well, it was just a garter st scarf out of a nice art-type yarn, about 800 ft long (a wee exaggeration, okay?). You'll just have to believe me on this one.

I also started my first "Hemlock Ring Blanket", the legendary project launched by Jared Flood. If you join the Yahoo! group, you'll find a very clear pdf of the destructions. Some folks have had difficulty following it, but I found it clear and easy to use. I've had no trouble with it, and I'm glad I let braver, younger souls knit it up and work out the bugs, kinks, and other difficulties. (The group is free - join up if you want to knit this project!) Anyway, I'm 20 rounds away from the short version still, but I'm hoping mayhap by next weekend it will be done. If I can bear the way it looks when it's blocked, it will be an Xmas gift. I'm using a chocolate-colored version of Cascade Yarns eco-wool - I do love the color. I hope my knitting will do it justice! Knitting lace in such a huge gauge makes me nervous; I'm used to that super fine stuff.

I also am knitting up another set of "Gorilla My Dreams" wristwarmers for a friend and former coworker. She liked the pair I made myself, but said she'd prefer browns, greys, etc. So I found some PEP print in those colors, and purchased it to make her a set. In the process of knitting them up, I posted an entry on my non-knitting blog about the special handmade gifts I was giving folks this year, namely taxidermy gone bad. That was a joke - but I realized that the wrist warmers I was knitting up looked like dead kittens, so I'll be giving at least one bad taxidermy-ish gift this holiday season. See, I'm not a liar after all!

I also started two versions of the Manly Lace scarf, one in a sock yarn from KnitPicks, and one in some old Sirdar dk I had laying around. I'm hoping that, when these are finished, that the men I give them to won't think I'm giving them something less than manly. It is a fun pattern to knit up, though, easy to remember and looks lovely. The first photo captures the colorway (knitpicks yarn) fairly accurately; the second photo shows up the pattern; dear readers, you can let me know if it's manly lace or not.

I began a lovely set of wrist warmers from Spincycle made from their BFL - and it's a lovely, silky BFL that they're using. A gorgeous color, too. Not cheap, but so incredibly pleasurable to knit up! I should have added it to my stash, but I'm embarrased to be knitting up new yarns when I've a century and half worth of stash. In fact, embarrasing to admit, of all the things I've been working on recently, only the Fidget and the Sirdar Manly Lace are from yarn that I've had for more than six months. (The photo doesn't capture the vibrancy of the yarn; the close-up made them brighter, but also faded the richness of the colors.)

I also whipped up a pair of wrist warmers last night from a ball of "Jolt" merino boucle I purchased from Pancake and Lulu on Etsy. The colors are gorgeous - it was a dream to knit up, a lovely, jewel-toned, squishy dream come true. There was very little of it - silly me, I only purchased one ball - so I cast on 15 sts, knitted to 5.5 inches, and then did the same with the other end of the yarn. I ended up getting 6.5 inches, enough to sew up, leave a thumb hole opening, and have me a couple of quickie warmers. I'll provide the details in my next posting; I haven't sewn up the sides (I need to mark where the thumb opening will be). I'm hoping these will work for playing the piano at a friend's house; he keeps his place a bit cooler than I keep mine, and I'd like something super basic that will cover the hands without annoying the fingers one bit. If I'm successful, I'll let you know.



I'll be knitting up a swatch over the next couple of days - I found a nifty men's scarf in Nordstrom recently, nice design idea but super simple knitting (it would be a good project for a beginner - you get a switch up in pattern so you're not knitting five or six entire feet of garter st or stocking st or rib st). If the yarn works, I'll start knitting up and post the details, for anyone else who wants to duplicate an expensive scarf. Wish I could remember the designer's name on the label, but I don't. Apologies.

Once the throw is done, I'll be taking up the Saigon lace again. I'd like to get that finished. It's not that difficult, but the beads do take up time (always with the beads!).

Finally, I taught my friend Anton to knit. He rather pooh-poohed knitting as something not challenging until he spotted my lace charts. Being a mathematician, the idea of knitting being able to be charted, graphed, got him all kinds of excited. He knows the difference between Z twists and S twists, warp and weft knitting, he's charted his first chart using Mathematica, and last Saturday he came over, worked on his long-tail cast one, and worked a few rows of garter stitch. My first pupil* - and his knitting actually looked like knitting!

*(Okay, he's my second pupil if you count a woman I helped out at a writing workshop - she was having some sort of serious selvedge issue, I couldn't tell what she was doing wrong, but I suggested that she slip the first stitch of each row and that fixed it for her.)

Here's to more blogging and more knitting in 2009!

Play by FoxSaver®

Inspiration for the Month

Probably not the way you are thinking of inspiration, dear reader. I began writing a story last year (length TBD), a tale of personal growth and geographic quest (exile and returning home)*; I got my characters’ narrative to the point where they took the next step – but there was no next step there, nothing but darkness. I knew where they were going to be in the end, that was pretty much built into their personalities early on; however, they still need catalysts, drivers, to help the get from A to B in less than a million pages of aimless meandering. I’m no James Joyce, so trust me, you don’t want me to take on that particular literary experiment.

But this weekend I was pointlessly googling for images of whoever/whatever came to mind, and I found this photo. And some…thing, I guess, clicked in my mind, and suddenly I knew that face belonged in my tale – not the real person, by the way, but the character traits that photo conjured in my mind when I saw it. Within minutes I’d created an entire group of characters, storylines to go with them and to propel my original characters forward in their own tale. Eh, why am I bothering you with this? Well, my poor RL friends and coworkers get to hear way too much of this stuff, so I thought I’d share the wealth ;-)

If the story gets to a point where I’m willing to share some – or all – of it with any sort of reading public, I will do just that. Writing is like knitting, though. You see a yarn you like; you see a pattern you like; you think that, with a little work, you can get them to go together really well. Next you know, you hate the yarn, you hate the sweater, and the entire project spends years in a plastic bag until you give it away or unload it at a garage sale.

As a writer, you can have the same experience. Some characters don’t have nearly as much to say to you as you thought originally; story ideas that seemed to have real meat to them end up nothing but dried bones. However, with writing it’s not easy to give unfinished stories that aren’t working to the local goodwill; but you can recycle ideas, characters, or even words if it’s good dialog or a wonderfully wrought phrase. Still, it’s not uncommon to end up with several notebooks that have the literary equivalent of a half-knit sweater in them.


* If one views life as a journey then (almost) all narratives are ‘quests’ of a sort, character starting at A, going through B to get to the end, C, be it stories of personal evolution (Pride and Prejudice), personal devolution (Watt)…I was going to add novels that focus on quests, such as Patricia McKillip’s Riddle Master trilogy, but that includes personal evolution and devolution, as most fantasy quest novels do to a greater or lesser extent.