Fiction Reviews


Night & Day

(2024) John Connolly, Hodder & Stoughton, £20, hrdbk, 356pp, ISBN 978-1-399-73926-9

 

Well this is a strange beast, although perhaps not when you consider the title, Night and Day, like Left and Right, Right and Wrong, Fiction and Non-Fiction. Yes, fiction and non-fiction because this is exactly what Connolly delivers here with nine stories and a 170-page long non-fiction piece about the film Horror Express (DVD promo here), which starred Chistopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas and can be easily found on various channels, perhaps even on YouTube.

Connolly is no stranger to the dark side, certainly things get very dark in his Charlie Parker crime novels, which have very dark subjects and titles that could easily be the titles of horror novels, such as Dark Hollow, The Black Angel, The Reapers, The Woman in the Woods, etc., etc.  However, he has written supernatural novels and stories for children and for adults, as well as two collections of supernatural tales in the collections - Nocturnes and Night Music. Seven years ago, he wrote one of P.S. Publishing’s “Midnight Movie” monographs on the film Horror Express, and it is presented here in a revised and updated version.

As for the stories, the first one is entitled 'The Pilgrims’ Progress: A Tale of the Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository', which is a bit of a mouthful, but almost tells the story itself as this library is a place where characters from literature come to life in a place because the border between fact and fiction, real and unreal, is blurred. Fortunately, not too many people know that the place exists and the shelves are stocked by first-editions of famous books gifted to the library when the author dies. Unfortunately because the library is on crossroads between different plains, some fictional characters have a habit of appearing and so it is with this tale when the Knight, the Miller, the Wife of Bath, the Nun’s Priest and the Summoner from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales make an appearance.

The second story is 'And All the Graves of all the Ghosts' where a family move into a new house and start to feel a presence in a room, which gradually becomes the form of a young woman who is clearly terrified of something. This story is very M. R. James-like, rather like the next story – 'The Evenings with Evans' – where a husband and father swerves his car to avoid a fox, but the resulting crash kills his family, and the man becomes obsessed with finding and killing that fox, meanwhile there are strange goings on in the cellar of his house that need investigated.

Connolly serves up something different in 'Abelman’s Line' which is science fantasy story about a group of Jewish scientists who use time travel to hunt down Nazi war criminals who escaped justice after the Second World War to make sure that they don’t have a happy 'retirement''. It is a bit of a ripping yarn, but maybe difficult to follow in places. However, we back on solid supernatural ground with 'The Mire at Fox Tor', which is very Jamesian as two man share dinner and a disturbing story of what happened to one of them, a man called Tenley, who is an experienced walker and compass user, who decides to cross Fox Tor Mire in Dartmoor. A mist descends and his compass doesn’t seem to be working, and then he hears a voice…

But if you thought 'Abelman’s Line' was different, what until you read Connolly’s story, “The Bear”, about two children who are in a holiday cottage with their mother after the parents have divorced, but than a bear appears, but is it a bear or something else? And can it stay with them? Look out for some great illustrations by P J Lynch in this short, odd, sad little tale.

In the remaining three stories, Connolly channels his inner M. R. James to great effect. 'The Flaw' is very like James’ story 'The Mezzotint', but here we have a painting of someone standing among some ancient stones. It’s never a good idea to buy something like that, or inherit a cottage where you can actually see the stones out of the bedroom window. 'Unquiet Slumbers' returns the reader to the Caxton Library for another special visitor, and finally 'Our Friend Carlton' is a darkly humorous tale about killing off Carlton, but he might be down and ever-so-slightly dead, but he’s certainly not out.

There endeth the fiction. What follows is a rambling, whimsical, informative take on the film, Horror Express, where Connolly summarises the plot, and gives us the background of the film’s cast and crew, and much more. The film, if you didn’t know, concerns the finding of a frozen creature in Manchuria which might be the missing link. Unfortunately, the beast thaws out while being transported on the Trans-Siberian express, so cue lots of bloody mayhem. But this monograph is about more than the film, it’s about Connolly’s relationship with his father, and growing up in Ireland, and branches out to discuss a whole load of weird and wonderful topics. As someone who grew up in Scotland and was addicted to those Friday late night horror movies I can appreciate Connolly’s nostalgic look at one of these movies and all the memories and feelings it stirs up. Night and Day won’t be everyone’s cup of tea with its mixture of fiction and non-fiction, and while a couple of the stories are weaker than the straightforward supernatural ones, you can’t fault the power of Connolly’s writing and story-telling abilities.

Ian Hunter

 


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