Stories to be Read with the Lights On 2: Witness in the Dark by Fredric Brown

I'm continuing with my reread of Stories to be Read with Lights On today. As I said in the previous post, I don't think I'm going to be doing a story-a-day reread, but just story-by-story as and when I can. I did have a bit of a wobble when I read the first story and didn't remember anything about it, in case it turned out my fondness for this book was based on a false memory of reading the book as a teenager. Fortunately, that feeling was dispelled with the second story!

I had a massive wave of nostalgia reading 'Witness in the Dark'. I could even picture where I was the first time I read it (particularly the 'all cats be grey' lines), so that was a bit more reassuring.

'Witness in the Dark' is much more of a crime story than a horror story ('Death Out of Season' probably leans slightly the other way). So I think it's worth remembering that Stories to be Read with the Lights On isn't actually meant to be a horror collection. The introduction (supposedly by Hitchcock himself, but I doubt he personally wrote it) says the selected stories are 'startling, horrifying perhaps', but the overarching genre is 'suspense'. Suspense is defined here (as per the dictionary) as 'uncertainty accompanied by apprehension'. But I think for publishing purposes, it's very much being used as the 'Alfred Hitchcock Brand'. That kinda makes sense as a genre to me. According to the acknowledgements, quite a few of the stories in this collection were previously published in either Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine or Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, which very much fits with this idea of an 'Alfred Hitchcock Brand' story.

Brown's story is about a murder committed in the bedroom of a man who has temporarily lost his sight (he is the 'witness in the dark'), and it's got a nice layer of uncertainty and apprehension to that set-up. I think what I liked about it when I was a teen (being a fan of classic detective fiction) is that, for all its atmosphere of suspense, there's still a mystery here and there are clues along the way to allow the reader to (potentially) solve it. Does it hold up now? Yes - I think so. It's a bit dated in terms of its style and aesthetic, but given it was first published in the 50s, it would've seemed retro when the collection came out in the 70s too.

I'm just glad I remembered this one, to be honest!

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Stories to be Read with the Lights On 1: Death Out of Season by Mary Barrett

On my mystery (birthday) themed episode of Hannah's Bookshelf on North Manchester FM earlier this month, I talked about an 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents...' book called Stories to be Read With the Lights On. I mentioned that I got my copy of the book at some point in the 1990s from a jumble sale or charity shop (not sure which) & that I have good memories of reading some of the stories in my teens.

I was curious about what it would be like to go back to it again as an adult. Would it be nostalgic? Would the stories appeal to adult-me as much as they did to teenage-me? I boldly suggested on the show that I would do a full re-read of the book to find out, and so that's what I'm going to do. I was originally going to do a story-a-day reread, but this week has already thrown me off schedule. So it'll be story-by-story, but some days there might be more than one (and some days less!).

The first story in the book is 'Death Out of Season' by Mary Barrett. Let's go...

And a bit of a curveball at the start... I don't remember a single thing about this story! Hmmm... I thought it might all come rushing back to me when I started reading it, but I now I'm just worried that maybe I didn't read this book when I was a teenager after all! Still, even though I don't remember reading it before, I enjoyed Barrett's story. It's got that Tales of the Unexpected feel to it, and an ending that's satisfying although not wholly unpredictable.

Miss Witherspoon is an eccentric and reclusive older lady who spends most of her time tending her garden and making what her glamorous neighbour dismissively calls her 'little May baskets'. What I like about this story is that it's a bit like Se7en, but with an old lady in the John Doe role. In some ways, Miss Witherspoon is a much more unsettling villain as well.

And although I don't remember anything about the specifics of Barrett's story, it's very much in the tone and style I remembered the book having. Not sure why this one didn't stick in my memory, but I enjoyed (re)reading it!

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My Year in Books 2021: July

Time for my monthly round-up of the books I've read for pleasure recently, and once again it's a short post. My to-read pile is getting dangerously tall, so hopefully I'll be able to catch-up a bit and have more to share next month.

In case you're interested, here are my posts from the rest of the year: January, February, March, April, May, June

And here are the books I read in July...

Bone Harvest by James Brogden (2020)

The first book on this month’s list was very nearly the final book on last month’s. It’s another from my Abominable Books pile, and it’s another bit of surprise folk horror. I don’t know why, but I had it in my head that this was another American novel (this is what comes of my resistance to reading blurbs before I start reading!). In fact, Bone Harvest is set in the UK, mostly around the English-Welsh border and then in Staffordshire. And I’ll say right off – I loved this one, despite not being the world’s biggest folk horror fan. The story begins with an unnamed man deserting in the trenches of WWI (he continues to be technically unnamed throughout the book, though he adopts the name Everett from some stolen dog tags). As the deserter moves amongst the carnage of the war, he meets with the ‘No Men’ and is introduced to the religion of Moccus, a pre-Christian deity whose followers consume their god’s flesh in a cyclical ritual. When he returns to the UK, the deserter seeks out those followers and becomes an acolyte of Moccus. The first half (roughly) of the novel was really striking and totally unsettling, and I was fascinated by the deserter as a character. However, the book really comes into its own in the second half as we move into the present day and to a wonderful setting for folk horror: allotments. This one is a real page-turner with a rich story and excellent characterization.

Sealand: The True Story of the World's Most Stubborn Micronation by Dylan Taylor-Lehman (2020)

I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole earlier this year. When Prince Phillip was first taken to hospital, I noticed a number of strange Twitter accounts sending him their (rather formal) regards. Each account looked like an ‘official’ account of an embassy or other state functionary, complete with crests or other state insignia, but all of them had names that were nothing like any country I’d ever seen before. Intrigued, I looked one of the names up and discovered it was the name of a micronation: a small ‘country’, founded by an individual, with claims of sovereign identity despite existing within the boundaries of another country’s territory. I started reading about the history and theory behind micronations – from the serious attempts at secession (sometimes for tax purposes) to the more frivolous home-based projects – and I couldn’t help but notice the name ‘Sealand’ kept popping up. And with good reason, it turns out. Sealand is one of the longest-standing, but also (arguably) the most successful micronation. Founded in 1967 on a disused naval fort off the coast at Southend, Sealand is a ‘principality’ ruled by an eccentric ‘royal family’ who have seen off numerous attempts to usurp them over the years. Taylor-Lehman’s book takes us through the hilarious, terrifying and occasionally downright unbelievable story of the Bates family and their concrete micronation. I can’t do justice to how bonkers the story is – and I’d definitely recommend reading the book to learn more. It’s even stranger than you might think.

The Madman's Library: The Strangest Books, Manuscripts and Other Literary Curiosities from History by Edward Brooke-Hitching (2020)

I read a review of The Madman’s Library in the Manchester Review of Books earlier this year, and I knew it would be right up my street. Interestingly, I’d bought a copy of one of the author’s other books – The Phantom Atlas – as a birthday present for my brother, but I didn’t realize it was by the same author until I was part way through The Madman’s Library. We’re going to do a swap, so I might write about The Phantom Atlas in the future. For now… The Madman’s Library is a beautifully illustrated coffee-table-type book about curiosities from the world of literature. Some of these are well-known – the Voynich manuscript gets some attention, as does the Codex Gigas (aka the Devil’s Bible) – but there’s an absolute wealth of other, more obscure stories here that are a delight to dip into. Some books are just bizarre or baffling, but others reveal a lot about the history of literature, writing and bookbinding. Most of the books discussed are unique (in one way or another) artifacts, so this isn’t a timeline of the development of the book. It’s arranged thematically rather than chronologically so you can dip in and out of different types of strangeness (one grisly chapter looks at ‘Books of Flesh and Blood’, for instance, and another ‘Cryptic Books’). I personally enjoyed ‘Literary Hoaxes’, many of which were new to me. This one is a strong recommendation for people interested in the weirder side of the history of the book.