Showing posts with label Harlequin Enterprises. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harlequin Enterprises. Show all posts

31 October 2023

Harlequin Halloween Horror: So Much Satan!



Jean Plaidy – not her real name – wrote 191 novels. Daughter of Satan may be number 23, but I expect the authoress herself wouldn't have known for certain. What I know for certain is that it was the 203rd Harlequin Book, but only because the number appears on its cover. 

Daughter of Satan concerns a young woman, Tamar, who is believed to be the spawn of the devil. This has something to do with her mother having attended a midsummer coven of witches. Tamar's conception in no way dissuades her male suiters, not even puritan Humility Brown.

And here I'd thought Humility was a girl's name.

Daughter of Satan was the first Harlequin book to feature Satan in its title. I've found seven others, but I suspect there are more. What I find most interesting is the uptick during the Satanic Panic.

Make of that what you will. 

31 October 2022

A WTF Harlequin Halloween


Murder — Queen High
Bob Wade and Bill Miller
Toronto: Harlequin, 1951

Over the years, the Dusty Bookcase has shared some very frightening covers from Harlequin's early history. Who can forget The Corpse Came Back, the 2014 Harlequin Halloween selection.


 I expect 2017's Out of the Night caused many a bad dream.

Apologies.

Murder  Queen High rates lower on the terror-inducing index, though I think you'll agree that it's pretty scary. A feline/human form threatens a gun-packing woman in a pink frock. What exactly is going on here?


The back cover only raises more questions:

Is the woman in pink the Queen? Is she Fay Jordan, "she of the sensuous figure and the mind to match"? Could it be "the curvy, swervy girl called Sin"? Whatever the answer, Murder — Queen High may just be the craziest novel Harlequin has ever published.


17 August 2022

Dope. Danger. One Doll.



Lost House
Frances Shelley Wees
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1949
192 pages

Frances Shelley Wees runs hot and cold with me. I liked The Keys of My Prison so much that I selected it for reissue as a Ricochet Book. I did the same with M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty, but disliked No Pattern for LifeThis Necessary Murder, and Where Is Jenny Now?*

So, Lost House? Hot or cold?

The prologue 
is frozen solid. This takes the form of a brief conversation between the head of  Scotland Yard's Criminal Investigations Department and one of his detectives. Apparently, a man known as "the Angel" is up to something in a place known as "Lost House." The detective is dispatched to see what's what:
He rose. "Very well, sir, I'll have a go at it."
Action shifts to British Columbia, where newly-minted physician David Ayelsworth is exploring "the forest primeval" astride his horse Delilah. What David finds is a half-submerged body by the shore of a lake. The doctor's attention is then drawn to the sound of a young woman chasing a dog. She falls, twists her ankle, and he comes to her aid. The injured young woman is Pamela Leighton, who lives at nearby Lost House.

Harlequin's cover reminds me of nothing so much as Garnett Weston's Legacy of Fear (New York: W S Mill/William Morrow, 1950), which also features a grand house in a remote corner British Columbia.

Interesting to note, I think, that both pre-date 
Psycho.

The mysterious D. Rickard is credited with Harlequin's cover art. I make a thing of his rendition because Rickard's Lost House isn't at all as described in the novel. Wees's Lost House rests on a walled island linked to the mainland by causeway and drawbridge. An immense structure, an exact replica of an English country manor, it was built by an eccentric Englishman who sought to further his wealth through a local silver mine. The mine proved a dud, the Englishman died, and all was inherited by Pamela Leighton's mother. Improbably, Mrs Leighton manages to maintain the estate by taking in paying guests during the summer months. This year, they include:
  • James Herrod Payne, novelist;
  • Shane Meredith, tenor;
  • Archdeacon Branscombe, archdeacon;
  • Lord Geoffrey Revel, lord.
There's a fifth male guest, an unknown who is being cared for by Mayhew, the resident doctor. The patient was brought in one night after having taken ill on a train stopped at Dark Forest, the closest community.

(That Lost House has an infirmary speaks to its immensity. That Lost House staff and guests are close in number speaks to Mrs Leighton's financial difficulties.)

There are also four female guests, Lord 
Geoffrey's mother being one, but it's the males that command our scrutiny; after all, we know the Angel to be a man.

Which is the Angel? Which is the Scotland Yard detective? It's impossible to tell. The focus is so much on David and Pamela, and to a lesser extent Mrs Leighton and Dr Mayhew, that the guests are little more than ghosts. The reader encounters them from time to time, but as characters they barely exist. Lost House fails as a mystery for the simple reason that Wees provides no clues. The Angel could be any one of the male guests. Indeed – and here I spoil things  much of the drama in the climax comes when he passes himself off as the Scotland Yard detective. And why not? There's nothing that might lead the reader or the other characters to suspect otherwise.

As the novel approaches mid-point, Pamela apologies to David. "I've dragged you into a dreadful mess," she says. "I've spoiled your holiday..."

This isn't true; David's
 involvement has nothing to do with her. He's at Lost House because the body he found by the lake turns out to be that of a missing Lost House staff member.


Lost House is a dreadful mess. The novel's disorder may have something to do with the fact that it first appeared serialized in Argosy (Aug 27 - Oct 1, 1938). Its fabric is woven with several threads that are subsequently dropped, the most intriguing involving Verve. A new brand of cigarette. Verve is a frequent topic of conversation, as in this early exchange between Pamela and David:  
"You've been smoking a tremendous lot." Her eyes were on the big ash tray before her.
   "Yes."
   "I like Verves," she decided, looking at the tray. "Not as much as you do, apparently... I don't smoke very much though. But when one is a bit tired, a Verve seems to give one exhilaration. Doesn't it?"
   "Yes," David said after a moment, "I... think it does."
   "You say that very strangely."
   "Do I ?" He shifted in his chair. "perhaps I'm a little lightheaded. I've sat here and smoked twenty of them in a row, and they do give one exhilaration. That's... the way they're advertised, of course. But other cigarettes, other things, have been advertised that way, too. Only... this time... and the whole world is smoking Verves. They've caught on extremely well. The whole world."
   She said, troubled, "You are queer."
   "Sorry." He crushed out the cigarette carefully and locked his hands together.
More follows, including a suggestion that the cigarettes have some sort of additive, but the subject is dropped in the first half of the novel. In the latter half, it's revealed that the Angel is using Lost House to store marijuana bound for the United States and United Kingdom. It seems a very lucrative trade. Might the drug have something to with Verve? The question is asked, but never answered.


Lost House was the second ever Harlequin, but the publishers pushed it like old pros.

Dope? Sure.

Danger? Ditto.

Dolls? Well, Pamela is described as attractive in the way prospective a mother-in-law might approve. Wees makes something of her playing around with "the soft pink ruffles of her skirt" when speaking to David in the final chapter. That's sexy, I guess. But Pamela's just one doll. The female guests at Lost House include a sad middle-aged widow who has yet to throw off her weeds, elderly Lady Riley, and two older spinster sister twins who live for knitting. 

Pamela's mother often appears in a lacy negligee, though only before her daughter. Is Mrs Leighton the the other doll?

Back cover copy continues the hard sell:


Pamela does not "land at David's feet, showing more in the process than a nice girl would normally show to a strange male." She wears a heavy skirt that approaches the length of a nun's habit. I add that she has sensible walking shoes.

Lost House is not "a fashionable British Columbia retreat for wealthy guests from all over the world;" it is nowhere so exotic, attracting only the dullest the English have to offer.

At end of it all, I found Lost House neither hot nor cold. It's lukewarm at best, despite Mrs Leighton's negligees.

*In fairness, as a romance novel, No Pattern for Life doesn't fit the Ricochet series. I recommend it as a strange romance.

Trivia I: In the preface to the anthology Investigating Women: Female Detectives by Canadian Writers (Toronto: Dundurn, 1995), David Skene-Melvin writes that the novel's royalties helped finance "Lost House," Wees's home in Stouffville, Ontario.

Trivia II: Like Wees, David is a graduate of the University of Alberta. He and his father practice medicine at the University Hospital, Edmonton. 

University Hospital, Edmonton, Alberta, c. 1938

Object: A very early Harlequin, my copy is a fragile thing. The publisher used the same cover in 1954 when reissuing Lost House as book #245, marking the last time the novel saw print. 

Access: Lost House was first published as a book in 1938 by Philadelphia's Macrae-Smith. The following year, Hurst & Blackett published the only UK edition. In 1940, the novel appeared as a Philadelphia Record supplement.


As of this writing, one jacketless copy of the Macrae-Smith edition is being offered online. Price: US$50.00. I'm not sure it's worth it, but do note that the image provided by the bookseller features boards with yellow writing. I believe orange/red (above) to be more common.

The Whitchurch-Stouffville Public Library doesn't hold a single edition of Frances Shelley Wees's twenty-four books.

14 March 2022

The Dustiest Bookcase: V is for van Vogt


Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

Destination: Universe
A.E. van Vogt
New York: Signet, 1958
160 pages

The Dustiest Bookcase series is meant to highlight books I've had forever, and have always meant to read and review, but haven't. Destination: Universe is a cheat. It was given to me just last year by someone who knew I liked vintage paperbacks. The pages are loose, the cover is more than scuffed, and still I'm happy to have it, despite my previous encounters with the author.

In the fourteen-year history of the Dusty Bookcase, I've given van Vogt two kicks at the can. I was first dawn into his orbit in by the 1952 Harlequin cover of The House That Stood Still.

(In all seriousness, WTF, Harlequin?)

I disliked The House That Stood Still so much that I included it in my book The Dusty Bookcase. Then gave van Vogt a second chance with Masters of Time, about which I remember nothing. This old review suggests I was unimpressed.


Philip K. Dick was an admirer of van Vogt. I'm not – not yet at least – though I've enjoyed bits of his writing. The beginning of The House That Stood Still reads like pretty good post-war noir pulp before becoming a muddled mess. That van Vogt had a habit of cobbling together disparate short stories for resale as novels may explain my dissatisfaction.

Destination: Universe looks promising as a collection of ten short stories first published in Astounding Science Fiction, Thrilling Wonder Stories, the Avon Fantasy Reader, and similar publications. As such, there should be no awkward couplings or ménages à trois.


"Want to take a rocket ship tour into space that lasts 500 years?"

Not really.

Still, I look forward to reading this collection.

I'll read it this year.

Ten stories.

Ten more kicks at the can.

Related posts:

15 February 2022

Valentine's Day Cathode Ray Tube Afterglow


               Better than dreaming, look and you'll find
               Even more than the romance that's in your mind

For the morning after the night before, this four-decade-old advert for Harlequin's Superromance series.

That voice!

My wife identified it immediately as belonging to Luther Vandross. Further research reveals that Vandross co-wrote the song. 

I'm a fan.

It's interesting to note that the four titles representing the "4 NEW TITLES EVERY MONTH" were published over a seven-month period.

I wonder how they were chosen.

Abra Taylor wrote two of the four: Taste of Eden and River of Desire. Real name Barbara Brouse, she was the very first Harlequin Superromance novelist. Her Toronto Star obituary, found here on the Brouse family website, is provides an all too brief portrait of a remarkable woman.


25 January 2022

On the High Heels of Pleasure


Repent at Leisure
Joan Walker
Toronto: Ryerson, 1957
284 pages
Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure:
Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.
— William Congreve, The Old Batchelour (1693)
The title is a spoiler.

Repent at Leisure tells the story of young war bride Veronica Latour, sole child of London physician Charles Phelps and wife Amanda. It begins at Heathrow, where Veronica is about to board a repurposed Liberator for a flight to the New World:
She wore a wheat-coloured Irish linen suit, with an ascot of tan silk stabbed by a delicate diamond brooch. A very new, rather small mink cape was slung over her arm. Beside her brown crocodile pumps there was matched rawhide luggage tagged with BOAC labels, "Montreal".
Whether handsome husband Louis Latour is aware of his bride's imminent arrival is unknown. Veronica's departure is unexpected. Doctor Phelps chanced to get his daughter a seat through one of his patients, an executive at BOAC. Veronica sent Louis a telegram, but has received no response. Not that that means anything; it's not been forty-eight hours and this is 1946. 

As with David Montrose's Murder Over Dorval, I was fascinated by the author's descriptions of post-war air travel. During one leg of the flight, an "unembarrassed steward" directs Veronica to the toilet facilities. She pulls aside curtains and finds herself almost entirely surrounded by glass. Where once been a tail-gunners perch now sits a chemical toilet. The most magnificent view of the Atlantic Ocean by moonlight is afforded those in need of relief.

After stops to refuel in Shannon (at which passengers depart the plane for dinner at the airport hotel) and Gander (breakfast), the pretty young newlywed's plane lands at Dorval.

But where is her groom?

What do we know about Louis Latour, anyway?

On the evening they met, Veronica had plans for a library book and small box of rationed chocolates, but these were dashed by her best friend. "Sarah had nagged and nagged, and reluctantly she had changed into a blue and white silk print with red velvet cummerbund and red high-heeled red sandals, and met Sarah and John at Grosvenor House."

Grosvenor House, c.1940
Grosvenor House, c. 1940

It was in the hotel ballroom that Veronica met Lieutenant Louis Latour, a "devastatingly handsome young man with very black hair and vividly blue eyes and a small curved flash on the shoulders of his service khaki which said, in red letters, CANADA."

Who could resist?

Veronica's parents never much cared for Louis. There was no real reason for this, rather a feeling. The worst Dr Phelps could say of the young French Canadian was that he "murdered the King's English," all the while allowing that Louis did so in an "attractively continental way." A discrete enquiry to lieutenant's commanding officer revealed an exemplary military record.

Veronica and Louis married within weeks of meeting. The couple were together a few weeks more in the Phelps' large London home before Louis was shipped back to Canada.

And now, Veronica was joining him.

At Dorval, Veronica finds herself stranded with monogrammed luggage, hat box, and Elizabeth Arden make-up case next to her brown crocodile pumps. She's rescued by friendly fellow traveller Alan Nash, who offers her a lift to town. Any hesitation Veronica might feel in accepting the offer from a man is settled by the sight of Alan's sister: 
Jane Nash was quite lovely. Brown shining hair and laughing hazel eyes like her brother's, only his weren't laughing now but strangely thoughtful. She like the way Jane looked as crisp as a lettuce in a green and white print with china bracelets heavy on one wrist and tricky white suède sandals strapped over incredibly fine nylons. 
Joan Walker once worked as a fashion illustrator in London, and it shows. The Liberator flies through dark clouds "like scarves of black chiffon" while Veronica, with "hair back like satin from her temples," gazes out at a Milky Way "stretched like a bride's veil across the sky."


Walker was also a war bride. Her first Canadian book, Pardon My Parka (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1954), provides one account of her early married life in Val d'Or, Quebec. She appears to have a better time of it than Veronica Latour; Pardon My Parka won the 1954 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour.

Louis has created a fiction. When war was declared, he'd enlisted in order to escape a large, unloving, incompatible, impoverished family. During his six years overseas, Louis worked at improving his English, his table manners, and had fabricated a backstory which had him as an orphan raised by a kindly maiden aunt (recently deceased). After the war, after marriage to Veronica, he'd returned to Montreal a different man. Louis bought tasteful suits, fresh shirts, and applied for positions for which he was wholly unqualified.

As I myself have learned, good looks and exemplary table manners only get you so far.

Louis didn't meet Veronica's plane because he was didn't know what to do. He worked that day stocking shelves at a grocery store (his detested brother-in-law, the manager, gave him the job), and then got drunk. It isn't until the wee hours that he goes to see his wife, pounding on her hotel room door. Ridicule, vomit, and violence follow:
He swayed to where Veronica was sitting on on the edge of the bed, her eyes bright with tears of helpless laughter, He slapped her face. He said something in French which was neither civilised nor cultured.
     Veronica's face went very white, except for the red marks of his hand. She stared at him silently, incredulously.
As a surgeon's daughter she knew had been on the verge of hysteria [sic]. She knew, too, that Louis had done the best thing possible by slapping her. But she also knew, with a cold certainty, that the reason for his blow had other causes and that he had no idea whatsoever of its therapeutic worth.
    It was like waking up and seeing a stranger. She had loved Louis deeply in England, but now he was unknown. An interloper in a loud, impossible blue suit, a belligerent, drunken, unattractive creature. She didn't love him at all.
No other scene is nearly so dark as this; in fact, the better part of the novel is bright and "gay" (a word as ubiquitous as "cigarette"), as reflected in the chosen decor of the couple's first Montreal apartment. Veronica displays great interest in her adopted country, navigating with good cheer, though she does have a tendency to look down her nose. Today's reader will find these depictions of the past fascinating, and may share in her snobbery.

Was there really a time when the most sophisticated Montrealers drank "Instant Coffee" with Pream?

What is Pream, anyway?


Veronica's love for Louis never returns, but she's happy; he really knows how to please her in bed. The young English expat sets out to mould her husband into her ideal, and it is to her credit that she succeeds.

But is that enough to save her marriage?

Cosgrove might have anticipated the ending.

Object: A compact hardcover, there's something of the British in its dimensions and design. Sure enough, closer inspection reveals that it was printed by Merritt and Hatcher Ltd, London and High Wycombe. I'm assuming the printing was a spit-run with Redman, which in 1957 issued the novel in the UK.

The dust jacket illustration is unusual for Ryerson in that it features the artist's signature. My thanks to Jesse Marinoff Reyes, who identified it as the work of British artist Henry Fox. I expect I'm not alone in seeing something of a 'fifties Harlequins in the illustration and design. In fact, there was a Harlequin edition, but with a very different illustration: 


The Ryerson is all wrong in that Veronica wears a wheat-coloured suit, and not cerise. The Harlequin is wrong in that it features an impossible view (though Veronica does own a green corduroy dress).

Access: First published (abridged) on 7 October 1957 in the Star Weekly with an illustration by Vibeke Mencke. Despite winning the All-Canada Fiction Award, Repent at Leisure enjoyed one lone printing. This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the prize. The used copies listed for sale online aren't plentiful, but they are cheap. As of this writing, there are four Ryersons, ranging in price from $11.18 to $17.25. Curiously, those with dust jackets are the cheapest.

The Redman is nowhere in sight.

Related posts:

31 October 2021

A Harlequin Halloween Hobo



I can't be alone in finding this cover disturbing. Just what is going on? Is this woman terrified or has she lost her mind? Is she the lady hobo? I ask the because that's a pretty nice frock. And doesn't her hair look terrific!

This 1953 Harlequin follows the 1935 Coward-McCann first edition. "Lots of incident but what of it?" sniffed Kirkus.

Lest you think I'm making too much of Harlequin's cover image 1953's, consider the back cover copy: 


"Fear and death... terror-stricken women... an excitedly different story of stark horror."

Amongst Beth Brown's other books are ApplauseBallyhoo, and That's That. For Men Only, the ribald tale of a successful brothel-owner, and the heart-warming, sentimental All Dogs Go to Heaven, suggest that, like Brian Moore, Beth Brown wasn't one to be tied down to a genre.

Though I haven't read Lady Hobo, I have listened to this 1968 recording of Brown's Minnie, the Tired Trolley Car. A children's story, it is he stuff of nightmares.

Listen if you dare!