World of the Weird, Part III

(This is the third and final post in Rafe McGregor’s series. Part I can be found here, while Part II is here.)

I was pleased to receive an advance copy of the sequel to Dave Zeltserman’s Bad Thoughts, entitled Bad Karma (Five Star, 2009), while I was still writing my review of the former. Bad Karma is set five years on and finds protagonist Bill Shannon living on his police disability pension in Boulder, Colorado. He has been happily reunited with his ex-wife, Susan, and--after her--his main interest in life is studying meditation and doing dream work therapy. He is a licensed private investigator, but rarely takes cases, and then only minor ones … until now. This novel is a fascinating and competent read, and it worked on three levels for me: part clever murder mystery, part personal spiritual journey as Shannon tries to heal his psychological scars, and an informed and impartial commentary on the New Age Movement, presenting both the positive and negative aspects of that subculture. Like so much of Zeltserman’s fiction, Bad Karma is ingenious and original, but what really interested me was the way he dealt with the supernatural element: the exact opposite of his treatment in Bad Thoughts.

In Bad Karma we are told from the outset that Shannon inhabits a world where out-of-body experiences and astral projection are possible. The prospect is handled in a summary of the events from the preceding book, which basically does exactly what Orson Scott Card suggests for speculative-fiction writers: Zeltserman establishes the parameters of Shannon’s universe, and sets out the rules for his particular version of the game of detection. This not only gives Bad Karma an interesting New Age theme--and sets up Shannon as a counterpart to the traditional “occult detective”--but it’s also essential to the solution of the mystery.

I suspect that Zeltserman’s change of direction was because Bad Karma is a sequel, so anyone who had read Bad Thoughts would already know Shannon’s universe; and anyone who hadn’t, needed to be brought up to speed on his back-story, which is impossible to relate without reference to the supernatural. Even more interesting from a writer’s perspective, however, is that both of these approaches work well. In fact, if handled with skill, the revelation of a supernatural plot can be successful at all three potential places: the beginning, middle, and end of a tale. Weird crime films provide popular examples with Fallen (1998), The Ninth Gate (a 1999 adaptation of Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s much-lauded 1993 novel, The Dumas Club), and Angel Heart.

I’ve already discussed Angel Heart, which keeps the supernatural denouement until the very end. Fallen makes it fairly obvious from the beginning--not to mention the advertising--that Denzel Washington’s character will be hunting a demon rather than a serial killer. Pérez-Reverte’s novel was actually a post-modern thriller celebrating Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, rather than a weird crime story. Director Roman Polanski increased the original occult theme in The Ninth Tale to the point where the supernatural element dominated the film, and the adaptation provides a fresh take on an excellent book. The realization that otherworldly forces are at play comes in the middle of the film, when Johnny Depp’s protagonist sees Emmanuelle Seigner’s enigmatic character perform some impossible acrobatics. I was going to make the point that what I’ve called “supernatural crime fiction” has been served better on the big screen than in print, but my recent reading of S.T. Joshi’s The Weird Tale: Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft (1990, University of Texas Press) caused me to reconsider.

My own introduction to H.P. Lovecraft was through The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (first published in Weird Tales in 1941). That novella isn’t one of his more popular stories, but I was instantly hooked. Only after reading Joshi did I realize why: “This novel is, quite simply, a detective story; it may be the greatest supernatural detective story ever written.” Joshi points out that Lovecraft follows the conventions of the Golden Age mystery, and presents the story as a puzzle, with the rigorous placement of clues for the reader. I think he’s quite correct, and the tale unfolds in a similar fashion to William Hjortsberg’s Falling Angel (1978), with the supernatural twist being unexpected, unless readers have deciphered the clues accurately. Joshi’s interpretation of Charles Dexter Ward shouldn’t really have come as a surprise to me, as several of Lovecraft’s stories unfold as mysteries, and The Horror at Red Hook (Weird Tales, 1927) is pure supernatural crime, and even has a police detective as the protagonist. I’d also argue that “The Haunter of the Dark” (Weird Tales, 1936), my favorite Lovecraft short story, is as much crime fiction as it is horror fiction.

All of which proves that while supernatural crime, like occult detective fiction, is a tiny field compared to other subgenres of the crime, mystery, and thriller market, it is very much worth visiting.