{"id":9978,"date":"2018-11-23T18:48:59","date_gmt":"2018-11-24T01:48:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9978"},"modified":"2018-11-24T09:58:05","modified_gmt":"2018-11-24T16:58:05","slug":"sherlock-meets-poe-sherlock-meets-lovecraft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9978","title":{"rendered":"Sherlock Meets Poe? Sherlock Meets Lovecraft?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\"I am reading one of the Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child “Agent Prendergast” mysteries right now ,Crimson Shore.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Pendergast is a New Orleans-raised rich eccentric (New York mansion, manservant) with a twenty-something assistant\/ward, Constance, possessed of “an old-fashioned beauty.” He has FBI credentials, but apparently answers to no one in the J. Edgar Hoover Building on a regular basis, instead taking cases that engage him intellectually.<\/p>\n

Crimson Shore<\/em> <\/a>is set in a lonely, decayed Massachusetts fishing village1<\/a><\/sup> and the plot involves events in Salem in 1692. And someone once was walled up in a wine cellar and left to die \u2014 there is your Edgar Allen Poe reference, as the characters make clear. Lovecraft? How about a reference to the Necronomicon <\/em>delivered with a literary elbow to the ribs? Also mysterious creatures in the salt marshes.<\/p>\n

So is that more like the Murder, She Wrote <\/em><\/a>TV series meets Poe, etc? A little toward the “cozy” end of the spectrum as opposed to the hard-boiled “police procedural” end?<\/p>\n

“What I would like you to do, Constance, is to go to Salem tomorrow morning. I understand there are many attractions, including a ‘Witch house,’ a ‘Witch Dungeon Museum,’ and the famous Witch Trials Memorial, not to mention the ‘Witch City Segway Tour.'”<\/p>\n

“Segway Tour? Surely you’re joking.”<\/p>\n

“More to the point, Salem is also home to the Integrated Wiccan Alliance.” He passed her a card. “A certain Tiffani Brooks, also known as Shadow Raven, is head of the league and the leader of a coven there.<\/p>\n

Constance took the card. “Wicca? White magic? And what am I supposed to find out?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But then it gets considerably weirder. Still, after all my Salem-related posts earlier this yea, there is room for more!<\/a><\/p>\n

  1. Are there really any un-gentrified ports left? [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I am reading one of the Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child “Agent Prendergast” mysteries right now ,Crimson Shore. Pendergast is a New Orleans-raised rich eccentric (New York mansion, manservant) with a twenty-something assistant\/ward, Constance, possessed of “an old-fashioned beauty.” He has FBI credentials, but apparently answers to no one in the J. Edgar Hoover Building […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[325,12],"class_list":["post-9978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-salem","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2AW","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1278,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1278","url_meta":{"origin":9978,"position":0},"title":"Our Secret Order Will Rule the Empire","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"What is it with secret societies and magical orders in the movies these days? The Da Vinci Code. National Treasure: Book of Secrets. . . I could go on.Now M. and I are back from watching the new Sherlock Holmes, which felt like \"screenplay by Dan Brown and Dion Fortune,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8553,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8553","url_meta":{"origin":9978,"position":1},"title":"“The Love Witch” \u2014\u00a0“Twin Peaks” Meets “Bell, Book and Candle”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 12, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Last November, Peg Aloi of The Media Witches reviewed The Love Witch under the deadline, \"Why Real Witches Are Going to Love (or Maybe Hate) the Love Witch.\" A pagan friend I watched the film with was shocked and called it \u201cirresponsible and potentially damaging.\u201d His concern is not unreasonable;\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/witch17-300x217.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/witch17-300x217.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/witch17-300x217.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":345,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=345","url_meta":{"origin":9978,"position":2},"title":"Moab is not yet destroyed\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 2, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Moab is not yet destroyed One of the guys whose rants are collected under the name of the prophet Isaiah once ranted,\" \u201cOn the night when Ar is sacked, Moab meets her doom\/ on the night when Kir is sacked, Moab meets her doom\" (Isaiah 15:1). I can say that\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6275,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6275","url_meta":{"origin":9978,"position":3},"title":"The Scary Countryside 2: Children of the Stones","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 23, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The original \"Scary Countryside\" post. As mentioned above, \"the scary countryside\" is a staple meme of television and movies on both side of the pond, but in the UK there is the additional refinement of \"the scary countryside where people practice strange and ancient rites.\" That does not work as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/4\/4c\/Children_of_the_Stones.jpg\/250px-Children_of_the_Stones.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8586,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8586","url_meta":{"origin":9978,"position":4},"title":"The BBC Interviews Iceland Heathens","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"You can download this episode (27 minutes) of the BBC's Heart and Soul program on the Heathens of Iceland: Floating in a hot spring, snow falling from the night sky, John Laurenson meets Teresa Drofn. A 25-year-old Heathen, Teresa describes her return to the religion of her Viking forebears as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Iceland\"","block_context":{"text":"Iceland","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=iceland"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Icelandic-blot.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":256,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=256","url_meta":{"origin":9978,"position":5},"title":"More literary paganism Two more\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 5, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"More literary paganism Two more novels that carry the lingering strand of Victorian or Edwardian literary \"paganism\" forward into the 1930s and 1940s are Forrest Reid's Uncle Stephen (1931) and Jocelyn Brooke's The Scapegoat. Uncle Stephen was the last of a trilogy, but it was written first and can stand\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9978"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9993,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9978\/revisions\/9993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}