Of course it would make the ideal setting for the movie -the house itself is a horror show. Little do they know that Craghold House, now a converted hotel, has a rich and gruesome history of hauntings, murders and unexplained supernatural events. Cornelia and her helicopter pilot assistant (nicknamed Soldier) find the perfect spot in Kragmoor, Pennsylvania. Movie mogul Max Wendel sends his right hand lady Cornelia to scout locations for their upcoming blockbuster-to-be movie adaptation of a best selling horror novel called The Six Sidneys. It dares to combine an obsessive movie fan's love of title allusions and movie star name dropping with weird horror set pieces that aspire to a Lovecraftian pastiche. I only wish there were more over-the-top Gothic novels like this one. There is only one person who writes like that. Michael Avallone. Cornelia was pretty much a ringer for that English doll from the Red Shoes. Not even a Z movie ever had anything like that in it." His blood ran cold, the mercury dropping like a shot in a thermometer.
"Oh, Soldier.what was it? How can there be such a isn't couldn't be. The tendons, cords and nerve centers of her throat were locked into one spasmodic, cramped complex that refused to respond to the telegraphed messages of terror from her mental batteries. How could anyone overlook the prose style of the samples below? Forget that the book is all about a movie production company and is peppered with numerous references to old movies and movie stars. It's not at all like any Gothic suspense novel you will ever read.Īnyone familiar with Avallone's work would recognize his tell-tale style in an instant. Forget that giveaway pen name. And I could only think as I was reading this loopy book that a whole lot of women readers who used to snap up Gothic suspense books by the bucketful back in the 60s and 70s must've thought the "woman" who wrote this book had smoked a little too much weed or dropped a bit too much acid. So much of a prankster that he includes one of his own alter egos as a character in this book. His private, after all, was Ed Noon. Avallone was a big prankster when it came to pen names.
A well read private eye fan won't even have to open this book to know that it's one of the many pseudonyms of Michael Avallone.
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