Silken Evils - Book two

Book Two in the "Silken Evils" collection from Rafael Menton contains four illustrated and female-led works of horror, the occult, and the erotic and controlling woman.

First up is, "An Enduring Bewitchment", as the arrival of an intimidating new female neighbour across from a somewhat reclusive writer, coincides with the delivery of a manuscript and 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!

Following this we have "A Chinese Horror".

Rafael Menton takes us back 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¿ And an invitation that will lead to the end of his life as both a doctor and a man!

Next up is "Caversham's Descent".

The year is 1955 and, exiting Victoria station on his return home from work, the headline waiting to greet him at a news-stand tells of riots in Egypt and the collapse of his investment there and the loss of his quarterly dividend. Devasted, he decides to wait until the next day to contact the English friend in Alexandria looking after his interests there. Only to find when he wakes from a fitful sleep the following morning, that he is¿ Already there! What follows will be a waking nightmare and a re-acquaintance with a woman who insists she has known him for centuries - and in the most intimate of ways¿ A woman of some power who now wants him back!

Finally, we have "True Drama".

An ageing but still distinguished actor, touring the UK in an Alan Ayckbourn production, comes face to face with a drama that is as unbelievable as it is real at his lodgings in Guildford. A two-week stay for the duration of the play that is going to prove far more enduring and far more¿ demanding¿ Especially if the two strangely compelling Indian women, who are housekeeper and mistress at his lodgings, have their perverse and life-changing way.

If you enjoy stories that trigger the darker erotic areas of the imagination and like tales of assertive women that are believable as well as dark, you are likely to delight in 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