The Wind in the
Snottygobble Tree (1971) by Jack Trevor Story is a bizarre book.
Travel agent Harry Marchmont amuses himself
by pretending to be a spy.
Or is he
pretending? He’s certainly taken for one by the various parties chasing him and
trying to kill him.
Somehow he becomes
involved with a plot to replace the Pope with a fake Pope, only in the end to
learn that the current Pope is already a fake, who is glad to be replaced and
thus retire.
Meanwhile Marchmont
exercises his libido in a manner which reads like a parody of James Bond as
written by Edward Whittemore.
Typographically this is also an odd production—the font in this edition
(published by Allison & Busby) is not right-margin justified, and in the
second half of the book, there are a number of sentences or paragraphs which
for no apparent reason have words sprinkled with dashes:
e.g., “Ir-ma al-so lik-ed the i-dea of the
pun-ish-ment and es-pec-ially the thought of this new young he-ro
ad-min-ist-er-ing it” (p. 104).
This is
unnecessarily distracting, in a book already strange enough to range along the
limits of boredom. The novel was serialized in four parts in
New Worlds, from November 1969 through
February 1970.
The Colour Out of
Darkness (2006) by John Pelan is a riff on Lovecraft, part of a series of
novellas published by Cemetery Dance (this is number 17, but what the other
titles might be I cannot say—there are no mentions of any of them in this
book).
Basically, this is a tale of the
resurgence of the Old Ones among modern Seattle’s
disaffected youth, with an extra helping of sexually graphic torture-porn
prose. It’s better written than I expected, but it is structured awkwardly, and
the plotting is predictable. As Lovecraftian fiction, it’s mediocre at best.
The Wind in the
Snottygobble Tree (1971) by Jack Trevor Story is a bizarre book. Travel agent Harry Marchmont amuses himself
by pretending to be a spy. Or is he
pretending? He’s certainly taken for one by the various parties chasing him and
trying to kill him. Somehow he becomes
involved with a plot to replace the Pope with a fake Pope, only in the end to
learn that the current Pope is already a fake, who is glad to be replaced and
thus retire. Meanwhile Marchmont
exercises his libido in a manner which reads like a parody of James Bond as
written by Edward Whittemore.
Typographically this is also an odd production—the font in this edition
(published by Allison & Busby) is not right-margin justified, and in the
second half of the book, there are a number of sentences or paragraphs which
for no apparent reason have words sprinkled with dashes: e.g., “Ir-ma al-so lik-ed the i-dea of the
pun-ish-ment and es-pec-ially the thought of this new young he-ro
ad-min-ist-er-ing it” (p. 104). This is
unnecessarily distracting, in a book already strange enough to range along the
limits of boredom. The novel was serialized in four parts in New Worlds, from November 1969 through
February 1970. 
The Colour Out of
Darkness (2006) by John Pelan is a riff on Lovecraft, part of a series of
novellas published by Cemetery Dance (this is number 17, but what the other
titles might be I cannot say—there are no mentions of any of them in this
book). Basically, this is a tale of the
resurgence of the Old Ones among modern Seattle’s
disaffected youth, with an extra helping of sexually graphic torture-porn
prose. It’s better written than I expected, but it is structured awkwardly, and
the plotting is predictable. As Lovecraftian fiction, it’s mediocre at best. 
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