A Book of the Dead Read online

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Also Available by John Blackburn

  A Scent of New-Mown Hay (1958)

  Broken Boy (1959)

  Blue Octavo (1963)

  A Ring of Roses (1965)

  Children of the Night (1966)

  The Flame and the Wind (1967)

  Nothing but the Night (1968)

  Bury Him Darkly (1969)

  The Household Traitors (1971)

  Devil Daddy (1972)

  Our Lady of Pain (1974)

  The Face of the Lion (1976)

  The Cyclops Goblet (1977)

  A Beastly Business (1982)

  The Bad Penny (1985)

  A BOOK OF THE DEAD

  JOHN BLACKBURN

  with a new introduction by

  GREG GBUR

  VALANCOURT BOOKS

  A Book of the Dead by John Blackburn

  First published London: Robert Hale, 1984

  First Valancourt Books edition 2017

  Copyright © 1984 by John Blackburn

  Introduction © 2017 by Greg Gbur

  Published by Valancourt Books, Richmond, Virginia

  http://www.valancourtbooks.com

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher, constitutes an infringement of the copyright law.

  Cover design by Kerry Squires

  INTRODUCTION

  The book you are currently holding in your hands, John Blackburn’s 1984 novel A Book of the Dead, is simultaneously the rarest of his numerous works as well as one of the most familiar. This may at first seem paradoxical, but it turns out that A Book of the Dead is a reworking of one of Blackburn’s earliest novels, Blue Octavo (1963), which was written at what was arguably the height of his career. The two books, though almost identical in plot, are nonetheless strikingly different, as we will see.

  John Blackburn had a long and prolific career as an author, though it took him some years to settle into that profession. Born in 1923 in Corbridge, England, Blackburn worked a variety of jobs before officially putting pen to paper. Through the years, he served as a lorry driver, a schoolmaster in London, and a teacher in Berlin. He attended two different colleges, with his studies interrupted in the interim by World War II. During the war, he served as a radio officer in the Mercantile Marine. He also worked as the director of a bookstore in London, and it was during that time that he wrote and published his first novel, the biological horror story A Scent of New-Mown Hay, in 1958. The book was a critical and commercial success, and Blackburn was buoyed by it to write some thirty novels total, the last being the science fiction/horror tale The Bad Penny (1985).

  Even though he was turning out roughly a novel a year, Blackburn also managed to operate an antiquarian bookstore with his wife. It is from this work that he was evidently inspired to write the 1963 book Blue Octavo, an ingenious mystery which is set in the eccentric and unpredictable world of rare booksellers. When an aging bookseller named Roach is found dead, an apparent suicide, after spending an absurd amount of money on an obscure and worthless limited edition rock-climbing book, his friend John Cain suspects foul play. Further investigation uncovers that multiple copies of the book, The Grey Boulders, have been purchased, stolen, or destroyed in recent months, and that a number of people connected with the book have been found dead in curious circumstances. Cain, with the help of lovely industry heiress Julia Lent and eccentric and egotistical adventurer J. Moldon Mott, vows to root out and expose the murderous bibliophobe, but this act makes him into a target, as well. Can the trio uncover the secret of the book before the murderer strikes again, at book or person?

  A Book of the Dead follows the same broad plot, and superficially is essentially the same story. When an aging bookseller named Pike is found dead, an apparent suicide, after spending an absurd amount of money on an obscure and worthless limited edition book of true adventure tales, his friend Tom Mayne suspects foul play. Further investigation uncovers that multiple copies of the book, Men of Courage, have been purchased, stolen, or destroyed in recent months, and that a number of people connected with the book have been found dead in curious circumstances. Mayne, with the help of lovely industry heiress Janet Vale and eccentric and egotistical adventurer J. Moldon Mott, vows to root out and expose the murderous bibliophobe, but this act makes him into a target, as well. Can the trio uncover the secret of the book before the murderer strikes again, at book or person?

  A Book of the Dead is indeed very much the same as Blue Octavo, and is certainly a very close rewrite of that earlier book. For example, we can compare the first paragraph of Chapter 4 of both. From Blue Octavo, we have:

  Five minutes after John had opened his shop that morning he received a phone call from the Metropolitan Library. It was a long, tortuous call with Mr Reade’s voice slurring and stuttering at the end of the line, but when he finally replaced the receiver his eyes were very thoughtful. Part of his theory was beginning to come up, it seemed. Somebody with a very strange or abnormal mind was interested in Grey Boulders.

  And from A Book of the Dead, we have:

  Five minutes after Tom opened his shop the next morning, he received a telephone call from the Walpole Library. A long, rambling call with Mr Jason Biggs slurring on the end of the line. But when he finally replaced the receiver, Tom’s eyes were very thoughtful. At least, part of his suspicions were true, it seemed. Somebody with an extremely strange and abnormal mind was interested in Men of Courage.

  The two books are not exactly the same, however, and fans of Blackburn will be well-served to read both. First of all, and most importantly, it should be noted that the secret of the blue octavos of the two novels are very, very, different from each other, and lead to very different climactic scenes. As Blackburn’s books are very short and fast-paced reads, it is worth the cost of admission, so to speak, simply to get to read another Blackburn twist.

  Also, Blackburn’s novels share a cast of rotating and recurring characters, and A Book of the Dead is updated to include a number of those. Major-General Charles Kirk, who first appeared as the protagonist in A Scent of New-Mown Hay, plays the role of an investigator trying to close a case that has haunted him for decades. Also appearing is Peggy Tey, the former partner of criminal Bill Easter, who shared adventures together in Deep Among the Dead Men (1973), Mister Brown’s Bodies (1975), The Cyclops Goblet (1977), and A Beastly Business (1982). By A Book of the Dead, the duo has finally parted ways, and Peggy Tey makes a brief appearance early in the novel to spur the investigation.

  The most significant recurring character, however, is the obnoxious J. Moldon Mott – adventurer, eccentric, author, and amateur crime-fighter. Mott first appeared to save the day in Blackburn’s first spy thriller, Dead Man Running (1960), and would show up to fight subterranean psychics in Children of the Night (1966), as well as werewolves in the aforementioned A Beastly Business. Of course, he also appeared in Blue Octavo, and he plays the same role in A Book of the Dead: drawn into the int
rigue by pure coincidence, he becomes convinced that only he can solve the mystery, and volunteers himself for the mission. His adventures play out somewhat differently in the later book, and Blackburn gives him a professional nemesis to butt heads with. Mott is, in my opinion, Blackburn’s greatest character creation: an obnoxious, egotistical, self-aggrandizing lout, but a man who is fearlessly brave and has an unwavering sense of righteousness.

  A Book of the Dead was Blackburn’s second-to-last novel, and his final work – The Bad Penny (1985) – is also a close reworking of an earlier book. The Bad Penny is a rewrite of Blackburn’s second novel, A Sour Apple Tree (1958), a supernatural thriller in which Nazi experimentation has produced a psychic monster with the potential to destroy the world. This rewrite, like A Book of the Dead, has also been updated to modern times and with a revised roster of recurring characters. Charles Kirk appears in both books, but in the more recent one he is now retired and investigating threats with limited governmental resources and a weakened physique. Bill Easter has been added to The Bad Penny, having been drafted into service with Kirk, more or less against his will. The Nazi threat has also been revised somewhat, to take into account that 40 years have passed since World War II and any surviving Nazis must be getting quite ancient!

  A natural question to ask: why would Blackburn rewrite and repackage his classic works in this way? He was evidently not a man with a limited imagination, as his lengthy bibliography can attest. Unfortunately, Blackburn was a rather private man and did not do many, if any, interviews about his work, so we don’t have any definite answers to the question.

  A few possibilities come to mind, none of which are mutually exclusive. Blackburn may have gotten into a dispute with his first publisher about the rights to his books, the earliest of which were certainly out of print by 1984. By making the books just different enough to avoid legal issues, he could rerelease them to a new audience that likely had not read the decades-old originals. Another possibility is that Blackburn simply wanted to update the stories for modern times, with better writing skills that he had developed over 30 years of experience. The significant changes that he made in particular to the climax and mystery in A Book of the Dead suggests that he felt the original revelations needed improvement. Finally, some of the few biographical sketches of Blackburn that exist suggest that his health was failing in the last years of his life, which ended in 1993. He may have only had the energy and focus to do revisions of existing stories, rather than craft entirely new ones.

  In any case, Blackburn’s last two novels actually do something surprising for the dedicated reader that Blackburn himself probably did not intend. Their depictions of the same events happening again, decades later, provide a surreal sense of history repeating itself. In Blackburn’s universe, enemies can be defeated, and threats eliminated, but new ones will inevitably appear. Civilization, and humanity itself, is always on the brink of destruction in Blackburn’s stories. The repetition of The Bad Penny, in particular, drives home this idea.

  These final two novels also give a sense of closure, a last hurrah of sorts, for many of the characters. We get a last, updated look at Charles Kirk, Bill Easter, and J. Moldon Mott, and in some cases get a glimpse at their ultimate fates. A Bad Penny and A Book of the Dead, though derivative, gives the dedicated Blackburn fan a chance to say farewell to the characters, and to the brilliant author himself.

  Greg Gbur

  June 18, 2017

  Greg Gbur is a professor of physics and optical science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He writes the long-running blog ‘Skulls in the Stars’, which discusses classic horror fiction, physics, and the history of science, as well as the curious intersections between the three topics. His science writing has been featured in ‘The Best Science Writing Online 2012,’ published by Scientific American, and his horror writing has appeared in a number of volumes of the literary horror magazine Dead Reckonings. He has previously introduced several John Blackburn novels for Valancourt Books.

  One

  “Well, gentlemen, shall we proceed to the slaughter?” Officially the sale was over. The auctioneer had brought down his hammer for the last time and Jack Isaacs grinned at the porters who were starting to shift the lots. The boys grinned at each other and sidled towards the door. The real business was about to begin.

  They slunk down the path like soldiers fearing ambush. Not in a group, which might suggest conspiracy, but in shambling twos and threes. Hats and caps pulled low over pallid, crafty faces. Grubby fingers clutching catalogues. Furniture dealers into a van parked on the drive. Booksellers towards the damp garden. Twelve men standing around a rose bed and preparing to bid for goods they had already bought. The ring going into action.

  “A mixed day, gentlemen, so let’s get it over with.” Jack Isaacs took up his position on a flagstone square and scowled at the late spring sky. Late spring already, with the buds coming out on the trees and a few crocuses showing. The boys weren’t interested in spring or buds or flowers. They stared at their well marked catalogues and waited. Thirty lots had been sold to three of their members for a song while the others kept quiet. Good business, for why should dog eat dog? Now the legal owners would put them up for sale again and the knockout reveal their true value. Books for those who wanted them and a share of the kitty for the rest.

  “Yes, we are all present, gentlemen, and I shall proceed.” Jack Isaacs, the ringleader, might have been opening a charitable sale of work and he leaned back against a sundial and consulted his catalogue. “Number twelve was the first lot we bought and it was sold to Mr Barton for twenty pounds. What may I start at please?

  “Thank you, Mr Algar; fifty then. Mr Mayne; seventy. Mr Grasper; seventy-five. Any more, gentlemen? Yours for seventy-five, Bill, leaving us with fifty-five as a dividend.

  “Now, let’s turn to Number twenty-three. The collection of hunting prints, which, owing to the intervention of that very trying young woman in the fur coat, forced Mr Smith to go up to fifty. Thank you, Mr Lehman, I have eighty then . . .”

  Slowly and quietly, without excitement or rancour, the transactions proceeded, for what was there to be rancorous about? Nobody could lose. Books for the highest bidders and a cut of the kitty for those who couldn’t match the offer or merely kept quiet. Quite a nice little kitty. Sometimes the difference between what a lot had reached in the official auction was multiplied three times by the ring. All very friendly and respectable. It was only when Isaacs reached the end of his catalogue that a note of bitterness crept into the proceedings.

  “Sixty pounds, Mr Isaacs.” Jonathan Pike stood a little apart from the other gentlemen, and against a background of trees and vegetation he didn’t look like a gentleman. He looked like an illustration from a book of folk tales. A sinister gnome waiting to tempt the lost traveller in one of the Grimm brothers’ grimmer fairy stories.

  “All right, eighty it is, Mr Goldsmith.”

  Eighty quid! Though Pike spoke confidently Tom Mayne knew that it was not all right and glanced at the notes on his catalogue. Lot One hundred and five; three books on sailing and navigation. The Loss of the Cospatrick, A Million Ocean Miles and Men of Courage. They had only fetched a tenner at the sale and eighty was absurd. Neither Pike nor Goldsmith would have a customer to pay that sort of money for them.

  “Eighty-five”, “Ninety-five”, “One hundred”. No, not just absurd; quite crazy. Tom knew that Pike and Goldsmith were enemies, of course. Carrying the scars of some unsatisfactory piece of business down through the years, but could they be throwing money away just for spite, though that had to be the reason. At the very outside, thirty was the maximum figure, and he had marked that price in his catalogue.

  “One hundred and ten.” “And twenty.” All the same why should he worry? Not his or any other man’s business if the two bitter old fools wanted to cut their own throats. Tom glanced at Peter Barton of
the Farman Bookshop and winked. The harder Pike and Goldsmith fought over that trashy lot, the more pickings there would be for the rest of them. The sale itself had been a washout. Too few books amongst too many dealers, but the dividend should make the day worthwhile. “One fifty.” “And eighty.” “Two hundred.” Far away down the drive Tom heard the sound of lorries and porters’ barrows. The furniture boys had completed their affairs, had divided the cut and were loading up. They’d run their own ring in a comfortable van, unlike the poor booksellers shivering in the cold.

  “Another fifty, Mr Goldsmith.” Sam Isaacs beamed. A wicked uncle trying to lure the orphaned nephew into squandering his fortune, and the bidder nodded, though Tom sensed this was his top limit. The man’s expression was quite blank apart from a slight air of smugness.

  Goldsmith had not wanted the books himself. He wasn’t a specialist on any of the subjects. He had no customer who would pay that kind of money for them, but he somehow knew that Pike had. Somehow, through some tortuous little channel he’d discovered that, and he’d driven old Pike up to the last gasp, the final level. Tom watched him light a cigarette and turn away as though the whole business had become distasteful to him.

  “Mr Pike. I have two hundred and fifty pounds and it is against you.” Isaacs still beamed, but there was something cautious about his expression. He probably suspected that Pike was out of his mind, but he wasn’t sure. Old Pike had been in the trade a long, long time and was supposed to know his business. Could there be something about that lot he’d missed? Something which made the books valuable. Jack Isaacs hated the thought of missing anything of value. He was 70 years old himself, with a hundred thousand pounds worth of stock tucked away in the basement of his shop, but the idea of missing a bargain still gave him nightmares. Rows and rows and miles and miles of priceless books trickling away into other people’s stores and lists of catalogues, and not a single volume for poor Jackie Isaacs.