Acquiescence - Book Six

The sixth book in the "Acquiescence" collection of female-led fiction from Rafael Menton contains two works of the occult, and warped femininity.

We open with, "An Enduring Bewitchment".

The arrival of an intimidating new female neighbour across from a somewhat reclusive writer, coincides with the delivery of a manuscript and a letter. A letter from the solicitor of a now deceased father Jeremy Culshaw has not seen since he deserted both him and his mother some thirty-eight tears before. It is a manuscript that will test the son's credulity while both appalling and revolting him as it tells of a family curse and the danger in which it places him. A curse, if real, in which he senses the huge and seductive Latina woman now living across from him will play a leading part¿ And then her daughter arrives¿

Next we have, "A Chinese Horror".

We return to the period of post-Suez London, and the tale of how a highly-regarded heart surgeon makes visual acquaintance with a woman of indeterminate ethnic background at a party and finds his life spiralling out of control. Which is when he receives a letter from a professor and old friend, recently returned from mainland China after one of his frequent trips to acquire both knowledge and antiquities. A letter inviting him to dinner at a Hampstead address¿ An invitation that will lead to the end of his life as both a doctor and a man!

If you like tales of assertive women who are both erotic and believable, without being too obvious, you are likely to enjoy this collection of stories from a female-led perspective on the subject of crime, horror, the occult and the bondage of man to woman.

Rafael Menton is a Professor of English Literature with a retro passion for the early to mid-twentieth-century fiction of mystery, crime, suspense, and horror with erotic undertones; ranging from Doyle and Blackwood and on to Rohmer ¿ as well as sometimes indulging in a more contemporary take of his own on the work of those masters.

Dettagli