A. Merritt (1) (1884–1943)

This pulp fiction adventure story was first published in 1932. It is surprisingly free from the prejudiced attitudes to women and ethnic minorities seen in other such fiction, although I did find it a bit irritating that the protagonist often refers to his best friend Jim, who is Cherokee, as "Indian" which seemed racist compared to Jim's nickname for him as "old timer". However, they are close friends as is shown in the story so I made allowances for the period in which this was written.

Leif, who has Nordic heritage, and Jim are travelling in a remote area of Alaska where they are meant to be looking for gold, at some time after WWI (where they served together after meeting at University). After they hear mysterious drums, Leif eventually unburdens to Jim and tells him of his experiences when he was working as an engineer in the Gobi Desert. He got on very well with the Mongolian tribes and found that his natural gift for languages enabled him to communicate with them easily (and refreshingly there is not the kind of description of such people that would have been found in the work of contemporaries of Merritt's such as H P Lovecraft). When his team moved north they came into contact with a strange tribe who usually kept themselves to themselves, but who showed an instant proprietary interest in Leif and taught him their language. They then showed up in force and Leif told his employer and colleagues to let them take him as he realised there would be a bloodbath otherwise - and to instantly depart south to the area of the friendly tribes leaving him to extricate himself.

The experiences which followed have haunted Leif since and now he senses that he is about to be drawn into the ambit of the Lovecraftesque being which is worshipped by the mysterious tribe. I won't say more about the plot other than it in some ways draws on the romantic tradition of the lost peoples living in their own mini paradise - Shangri La and the like - which were popular in fiction of the late Victorian period, popularised by writers such as H. Rider Haggard. On the whole, the various ethnic characters and women are treated with respect although Leif's romantic interest Evalie is a bit of a non character.

I found this a bit slow in the middle but it did pick up and on the whole is an entertaining adventure romp with a bit of philosophy regarding whether reincarnation exists or an ancestral memory. It wasn't a keeper, but was a workmanlike read and I am giving it a 3-star rating.… (lisätietoja)

This novel, first published in 1928, and probably a magazine serial before that, differs from the other novels I've read by this author. In this, although there is a hinting at a supernatural element, everything in it is explicable by technology and trickery, and it falls rather more into the fast paced detective/thriller/adventure genre of the time with lots of action.

Briefly, the hero, James Kirkham, is an adventurer known for retrieving ancient artefacts sometimes in rather daring fashion - a sort of Indiana Jones before that character was even thought of. At the start, he has been well paid for one of these missions, but has just lost the lot in bad investments on the stock market - which turn out to have been deliberately manipulated to do so by a crime boss with a difference. This man, who leads a worldwide organisation that includes people highly placed in the government, media, industry and other sectors, and who also keeps an army of drug addicts who will do anything for him for their next fix, has a large collection of stolen art treasures. He has had James watched for some time, has been manipulating him, and has now decided to force James to join his organisation. He arranges to kidnap James in such a way that James' appeals to authority go nowhere. James ends up at his hideout and is drawn into the crime boss' game - and the central part of that is his self-styled posing as Satan.

James and the heroine Eve, with whom he first clashes but shortly forms a devoted attachment, are pretty cardboard as characters, but I liked the Cockney thief/engineer without whom they would not have a prayer. A stereotype, but still engaging.

The book is quite a page turner and not hard to zoom through in a day or so. Pretty forgettable, but good fun while it lasts. There are some slightly old fashioned attitudes in it, with James' views of Satan's possible part Chinese heritage, and the term the Cockney uses which wouldn't be acceptable today - chink - but the book is much less beset by racism than a lot of the popular writing of that period, and even if the heroine is quite often tearful at least she doesn't faint or have hysterics. So a 3 star read.… (lisätietoja)

Read this some years ago and wasn't very interested. It is a probably fairly typical example of a particular kind of pulp fiction: mightly hewed Vikings, beautiful compliant women, trusty sidekick of a non Caucasian extraction. People are on ships, they are different groups and the groups are backed by different gods, including Ishtar. There's fighting, and the hero is a slave part of the time. That's all I remember, but I do know I wasn't very keen and there are other books by Merritt that I far prefer to this one.… (lisätietoja)