Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Master of the Macabre by Russell Thorndike The Master of the Macabre. "Dr. Syn's creator cannot but write interestingly. . . . Some of the strange stories are horrible and not for the squeamish." - Sydney Morning Herald "These tales of terror and violence are quite nightmarish in their exciting conception." - Glasgow Evening News "Master of the Macabre is certainly macabre and provides just what you want, if you enjoy reading of 'ghosts and ghoulies, long leggity beasties and things that go bump in the night.'" The Star (Sheffield) "It is all very good reading for a windy night, alone in front of an open fireplace." - Winnipeg Tribune "This book is strange, … mehr. Russell Thorndike. "You, too, are an honest man, Captain Faunce," replied Syn. "You show your sympathy and your sentiment without shame, and I think you. Therefore, on the strength of your generosity, if I pledge you my word that this shall never happen again, will you. The Slype. " W]orthy of being compared to Dickens's creations . . . First-class entertainment." - William F. Deeck, "The Mystery Fancier" "An exciting story told in a pleasant narrative style with considerable skill, and a whole portfolio of Dickensian charact. The Master of the Macabre. "Dr. Syn's creator cannot but write interestingly. . . . Some of the strange stories are horrible and not for the squeamish." - "Sydney Morning Herald" "These tales of terror and violence are quite nightmarish in their exciting conception." - "Glasg. Dr. Syn: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. Doctor Syn, a Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh. Posing as a respectable vicar in Dymchurch at the turn of the 18th century, Dr. Syn is actually the retired pirate Captain Clegg. Clegg, believed hanged in Rye, is no longer being sought by the authorities. However, country life proves too tame for S. Doctor Syn on the High Seas. """Doctor Syn on the High Seas"" is a 1936 novel by British writer Arthur Thorndike. The second in the Doctor Syn series, it tells the story of how a young clergyman called Christopher Syn loses his wife to a seducer and his consequent quest for veng. The Amazing Quest Of Doctor Syn. The men of Dymchurch had good reason to be suspicious of strangers--especially inquisitive strangers. In an area where smuggling was almost a way of life, any such man might well be an agent the revenue men. But this stranger; pompous, nervous, We. The Courageous Exploits of Doctor Syn. Doctor Syn. Posing as a respectable vicar in Dymchurch at the turn of the 18th century, Dr. Syn is actually the retired pirate Captain Clegg. Clegg, believed hanged in Rye, is no longer being sought by the authorities. However, country life proves too tame for t. Doctor Syn A Smuggler Tale. This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available a. The Further Adventures of Doctor Syn. Doctor Syn, meeting the brothers at dinner, jocularly suggested that the Admiral should employ the Scarecrow to catch the privateer, affirming that his mysterious and notorious parishioner, having never yet lost a smuggling lugger, must possess somet. The Shadow of Doctor Syn. Well--there it was. He had been hanged by the neck until he was dead, by some person or persons unknown--to wit--the Scarecrow, which the jury found on one was able to do anything about, since the Army, the Navy, the Revernue and Bow Street Runners, . Russell Thorndike. This article does not contain any citations or references. Please improve this article by adding a reference. For information about how to add references, see Template:Citation. Arthur Russell Thorndike (6 February 1885, Rochester, Kent – 7 November 1972) was a British actor and novelist, best known for the Doctor Syn of Romney Marsh novels. Less well-known than his sister Sybil but equally versatile, Russell Thorndike's first love was writing and, after serving in World War I, he devoted himself to it. Contents. Background [ edit | edit source ] He was born in Rochester, Kent, where his father had recently become a canon at the cathedral. He was a student at the King's School, Rochester and at St George's School, Windsor Castle and a chorister of St George's Chapel, an experience he later recounted in his book Children of the Garter (1937). Thorndike married Rosemary Dowson, a daughter of the well-known actress Rosina Filippi, in 1918. Acting [ edit | edit source ] At his suggestion, both he and Sybil (who once aspired to be a concert pianist) tried acting as a career in 1903. They became students at Ben Greet's Academy and two years later accompanied fellow members of the company on a North American tour, which included New York City. He remained three-and-a-half years with the company, once giving three performances as Hamlet in three different versions of the text on the same day. He also toured in South Africa and Asia. In 1914 he enlisted. His brother Frank, who once performed on stage, was killed in action. Russell was severely wounded at Gallipoli and discharged. He rejoined Ben Greet's theatre company and his sister at the Old Vic in 1916, where he played in Shakespeare's King John , Richard II , and King Lear . Thorndike also acted with Sybil and her husband, Lewis Casson, in their touring repertory performing melodramas. In 1922 he was applauded for his performance in the first professional production of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt at the Old Vic. In film, Thorndike's appearances were infrequent. He played Macbeth (1922) in a silent version of the play opposite Sybil's Lady and also played leads in silent versions of other classic plays, including Scrooge (1923) as Old Ebenezer, and The School for Scandal (1923) as Sir Peter Teazle. He ended his film career in minor priest roles for Laurence Olivier in Hamlet (1948) and Richard III (1955). Although Thorndike appeared on the stage over four decades (including playing his own Dr. Syn character and entertaining audiences as Smee in ten revivals of Peter Pan , including the famous Scala Theatre version where Donald Sinden doubled the roles of Mr Darling and Captain Hook), he felt a deeper fulfilment in writing, which would include the later work The House of Jeffreys . Writing [ edit | edit source ] Published in the Dymchurch Day of Syn programme from 1985 is an apocryphal biography of Thorndike that indicates it was during the period of touring with Ben Greet's theatre company, that Russell and his sister Sybil came up with the idea of Dr Syn. The story goes, both were with the company in Spartanburg when a man was murdered on the street outside their hotel. The article suggests the corpse laid there for some time while ". his glazed eyes seemed to stare right up into Sybil's bedroom". Sybil was unable to sleep, so she asked Russell to sit up with her. She made a pot of tea while they talked, and the character of Dr Syn was born. As the night went on, "They piled horror on horror's head and after each new horror was invented they took another squint at the corpse to encourage them." Around this time he completed his first novel of romantic adventure on Romney Marsh entitled Doctor Syn: A Tale of the Romney Marsh . Pretty Sinister Books. Crime, Supernatural and Adventure fiction. Obscure, Forgotten and Well Worth Reading. Friday, November 8, 2013. FFB: Master of the Macabre - Russell Thorndike. In the tradition of works like Arthur Machen's The Three Impostors and R. Austin Freeman's The Uttermost Farthing: A Savant's Vendetta (which this book markedly resembles) The Master of the Macabre (1947) is another collection of supernatural and macabre tales that take the form of a quasi-novel. Taylor Kent, writer of thrillers, is travelling by car to deliver a package to Charles Hogarth. En route he encounters a raging snowstorm, loses control of his car and crashes not far from Hogarth's home. Kent now injured with a broken ankle is rescued by Hogarth's servant Hoadley and taken to the house where he soon becomes both guest and invalid. While recuperating Hogarth shows Kent his collection of macabre objects and relics he has amassed over several decades. Each one has its own peculiar story and over the coming nights Hogarth proceeds to relate several stories. The book has an amazingly similar structure and skeletal plot to The Savant's Vendetta in which a sinister collector of human skulls also tells a variety of stories to a house guest. Each novel has an underlying connecting story that recurs throughout the narrative resulting in a surprise climax. In the case of Thorndike's book the climax has to do with the ghost of the corrupt Abbott Porfirio who haunts Hogarth's home and who appears in a series of apparitions which Kent first attributes to nightmares. An aspect of the novel I found most interesting is Thorndike's take on the haunted house as a living entity. This idea had previously been explored by Bulwer-Lytton in the late nineteenth century in "The House and the Brain" and to much greater effect in the mid 1920s in Cold Harbour by Francis Brett Young. The topic would continue to be explored by generations of supernatural fiction writers and would reach its apotheosis in 1959 with The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and continue to be reworked by Richard Matheson ( Hell House ) and Robert Marasco ( Burnt Offerings ) in the 1970s. In Thorndike's book prior to the serial narration of the stories of the objects both Hoadley and Hogarth discuss the weird influence the house has on its occupants. The house is described as being "susceptible," exhibiting "the strangest properties", displaying "powerful and insidious" effects. There is talk of the Spanish Chamber being the "most active" room in the house with weird examples of what goes on there. Thorndike carries this discussion to the objects themselves when Hogarth says to Kent: Russell Thorndike in costume as Dr. Syn The "insidious influence" becomes a running theme throughout the book as each relic in Hogarth's collection has its story told. Yet this theme is rarely mentioned in any reviews or criticism of Thorndike's book. That Thorndike was an early proponent of this popular motif in haunted house literature cannot be denied. It is unfortunate that his obvious fascination with the idea of objects that are alive and a house with influence has been overlooked by supernatural fiction critics. Instead Thorndike is usually discussed for his other obsession -- graves, decaying corpses and the grisly aspects of death. Building upon an already rich library of supernatural and weird fiction tropes Thorndike is clearly paying homage to the grotesque penchants of Poe, Machen, James and Blackwood in these stories. Pickled maggots, graveyard ghouls, live burial and other assorted often repulsive set pieces all make their appearances. Of the stories I enjoyed the most are his very Poe-like tale of a man fleeing execution by hanging during a breakout of plague and his bizarre idea to disguise himself as one of the victims of the disease. When is thrown into a mass grave his harrowing, nightmarish escape recalls some of the more grisly sequences in the tales of the American master of the macabre. There is also a very well done and brief story of a 20th century Ahab named Captain Dawson and his obsessive pursuit of a man-eating shark known as "Great Crafty." It's both a nod to Moby Dick and an eerie prediction of Peter Benchley's massive bestseller Jaws . There are other tales as well which make up quite a mixed bag (many of them go on far too long) including a very strange one about the origins of a shovel with a horseshoe welded to its handle and a protracted tale about the scarlet lining of an Indian soldier's coat that has several sequels throughout the book. oddly weird fiction. It's impossible to pigeonhole this book into a particular category, so I'm not even going to try, square pegs and round holes and all that. There's a lot going on in this little book -- it's a different take on the usual haunted house story, it's a ghost story, it's pulpy, and there are a number of spots where it's also funny. While it's not particularly frightening (or at least it wasn't to me), The Master of the Macabre is still a little gem of a book and makes for fine pre-Halloween (or any time for that matter) reading. Set in 1940s England, author Tayler Kent has been under a bit of stress over a four-week period, perhaps due to the "mental strain" of working on finishing a "complicated biography" he's been working on, but he doesn't think so. He's been having strange dreams of shadowy figures with vivid eyes -- a pleading woman and a "commanding and servile" man, "compelling" him to "obey them." Rather than seek medical help, he decides to take a trip to his cottage on Romney Marsh, where he hopes to find some much needed peace and quiet. He makes a brief stop at his club, where he is handed a package left for him by his friend Carnaby. Kent is to deliver the package to the Old Palace of Wrotham, the residence of "The Master of the Macabre." There is no other name given, and Kent shrugs it off as a joke, wondering what Carnaby's up to this time. As he's heading out, the weather is terrible and turns into a terrible snowstorm; on the road, where can barely see and loses control of both brakes and steering, he skids and is enveloped by a "gigantic snow-slide." While trying to escape being buried in the snow, he injures his leg. Despite the pain, he makes his way to a "fine old place." It seems that Kent is expected -- and preparations have already been made for his stay there. The elderly gentleman who greets him is Hoadley, general factotum to the home's owner, Charles Hogarth, who is also known as (you guessed it) "The Master of the Macabre." Things start taking a strange turn the very first night of Kent's stay, and while he's laid up, Hogarth shows him a collection of strange relics that he's collected over the years, each with some sort of bizarre story attached to it, and shares his belief that "every so-called inanimate object in this world. has a being" of its own, which also extends to the house and the objects found within. This theme recurs throughout the book, and is especially highlighted when Hogarth realizes that someone else has laid a claim for one of his valued possessions. Hogarth is a collector of "the material of odd happenings," -- both his own and others -- and has spent time setting them down into manuscripts "for the few." These stories, the mystery of the house itself, and the secret behind Kent's sleepless nights slowly unfold as the book progresses. As Hoadley so eloquently reveals, "this house is very susceptible. to susceptible minds." It also has "influences," and no one who comes to work there will ever stay there after dark. Hogarth also reveals that the house is "alive," that it's "just like a human being with moods" that need to be humored; it's a house with a mind that needs to be understood. The house also has "powerful and insidious" properties, with some rooms much more alive than others, and are more often than not, places where history repeats itself again and again. However, this book goes well beyond the standard haunted house story filled with ghosts or other terrors. Hogarth himself is a strange figure, a sort of detective who ferrets out the strange, and as Mark Valentine notes in his introduction (which should definitely be saved until after you've read the last page), his creator finds himself in "good company" among other authors who have written books with a "major plot and conspiracy, augmented by piquant minor side-adventures," none the least of whom are Arthur Machen and Robert Louis Stevenson. The introduction itself is enlightening, with a very brief history of the rise of the "investigator of the uncanny" and the occult detective. While the language may be a little overbearing for a modern reader, I had no problem with it, but then again, I love classic tales and have also spent many an hour with my nose buried in the work of golden-age writers of detective fiction who also tend toward the sort of verbosity found here in places. Some of the stories are delightfully pulpy, while some are just, well, there's no better word than "macabre" to describe them. There were times I couldn't help but chuckle (the story entitled "Concerning a Mad Sexton, A Drunk Hangman and a Pretty Girl" actually brought out a belly laugh) even as dark deeds were being done. Also, don't let the "investigator of the uncanny" thing turn you away from this little book -- while it may not provide readers with in-your-face horror that many modern readers crave, it's still a fun little book that needs to be looked at in its entirety rather than just in story-by-story mode. It's definitely a book to be appreciated, and I give kudos to Valancourt Books for bringing it into the present.