Martin Gately has been contributing stories to Black Coat Press‘ Tales of the Shadowmen. And after putting out a collection of his Rouletabille stories, BCP has put out another collection of reprints and new tales, Exquisite Pandora & Other Fantastic Adventures. Some are from BCP volumes, and several are pulp inspired, using several characters that also appear in Tales.
This volume gives us the following:
A Lovecraftian tale, “The Mask of Nithon” tells of a fungi from a moon of Yuggoth called Nithon that comes to Earth. This one did a pretty good job of capturing the atmosphere and growing horror, and made good use of letters and journal entries in telling the story. By the way, this moon is from other works.
“The Moon Hag” is a tale from BCP’s The Vampire Almanac #1, which had stories based on Paul Feval‘s and other early vampire works. This one is tied to Carmilla, the vampire created by Le Fanu.
In the title work of the collection, “Exquisite Pandora,” a matron running a workhouse in England in the 1860s worked to create a female creature. What is it for, good or evil, and what will happen as it grows?
We get a Sherlock Holmes tale in “The Adventure of the Snaresbrook Assizes,” which comes from The Further Crossovers of Sherlock Holmes. Here Holmes teams up with Rouletabille and deal with German spies. The story was revamped into a two-part story with Harry Dickson and Roulatabille. That one you’ll find in Gately’s Roulatabille collection.
We do get a tale of Harry Dickson, the “American Sherlock Holmes,” in “The Columbia Road Blasphemy.” This one appeared in BCP’s Harry Dickson vs. The Spider, and has Harry and his associate Tom Wills dealing with two cases: a grave robbery and a young attorney being visited by succubi.
Another Dickson tale is “The Roebuck Cabal” from the Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper Tales. Here Dickson has joined a group that is still trying to solve who Jack the Ripper was, and they have settled on suspect. Are they correct?
We get a different detective tale in “The White Box,” where a Scotland Yard inspector is looking into a safe missing from a government office.
A science-fiction tale, “The Cataclysm Will Not Be Televised,” has Manhattan Island from the 1950s having been transported into the distant past of Africa. A genius science hero helped them set up things there, then heading into the future, but has never returned. Now they must contend with a strange, wild man who is more than he seems.
In a reprint from the Night of the Nyctalope volume, “Dam Busters of Mars” has Gulliver of Mars (an early sf character seen as a forerunner to John Carter of Mars) and the Nyctalope (on Mars in 1911 when a French colony was set up after his first adventure there) going up against a common foe.
Next up is a Doctor Omega tale (an original French SF character who is visually similar to the first Doctor Who) that appeared in Tales of the Shadowmen #9, “The Wolf at the Door of Time.” Here he teams up with Moses Nebogipfel, a time traveler created by H.G. Wells (though we learn there is a connection to Doctor Omega/Doctor Who) in search of a prehistoric wolf let loose in the timestream. They encounter several other characters, such as The Nyctalope.
We get another Doctor Omega tale in “The Curse of the Frost Wolf,” which teams him up with Harry Dickson and Gulliver Jones to deal with a strange pocket of time in London, after something crashed there. Characters from the stories “Exquisite Pandora,” “White Box,” and “The Cataclysm Will Not Be Televised” are featured, and a mystery from the last story is answered here.
In “Khronopulo and the Schoengarth Bequest,” a reporter is checking out an archive at a college in California given by a “monster hunter” when it gets a plague of Mongolian death worms!
Another science-fiction tale, “The Unfettered Man” tells of a strange future world where the totalitarian Total Society Management controls the world and even has “Cull Men” to kill off excess population — until someone takes a stand. And you’ll understand the references in “Frost Wolf.”
“The Sons of Crystal City” comes from the second Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes, which I have not yet obtained. In a story set in Detroit in the 1960s, we get vigilantes Kibosh and his partner Knighhand going against a Japanese-American gang, the Sons of the Crystal City. They have to figure out who is the leader and the reasons for their attacks on Japanese-American businesses in Detroit and Chicago. There is very much a Green Hornet and Kato vibe with these two, and would be interesting in seeing further stories with these two.
Overall, it’s a great collection, especially as there are many new stories I had not read. If you’ve enjoyed Gately’s work, or even if you enjoy what you’ve gotten from Tales of Shadowmen, you should check this one out.
