Böcker av Ken Faig

This second volume of stories of the private detective Wilmott Watkyns recounts a number of cases taking place far distant from her native Cincinnati; several of them feature Wilmott's unique psychic abilities in probing matters of the remote past. "Vanished" tells of a young woman who appears to have gone back in time to marry a lonely ancestor. A series of connected stories probe anomalies surrounding the life and work of the poet John Greenleaf Whittier. The lengthy narrative "God's Providence" takes us to Rhode Island, where a 17th-century colonist appears to have extended his life for centuries, right up to the present day. The novella "A Royal Priesthood" finds Wilmott in Africa, pursuing an obscure religious cult that may have kidnapped a young couple that it believes will be a new Adam and Eve. In all these adventures, Wilmott uses not only her skills at detection but her affinity for the supernatural to crack the cases. And along the way, she finds herself in intimate relationships with both men and women who cannot help finding her appealing.

Wilmott Watkyns is no ordinary private investigator. This plucky, dynamic woman has been involved in all manner of investigations in Cincinnati from the 1970s to the present day. What's more, she has specialized in the probing of ghostly or supernatural phenomena, using psychics, séances, and other paranormal means to solve the mystery. In this first volume of her "casebook," Wilmott recounts some of her more interesting and provocative cases. There is the case of a diner haunted by the ghost of a frequent client; an apartment plagued by the revenants of its former tenants; a house afflicted by screaming spectres; and much else. Ken Faig, Jr., author of Tales of the Lovecraft Collectors, has brought his formidable skills as a scholar, critic, and fiction writer to bear in these engaging narratives-some of which probe disturbing instances of sexual aberrations. Wilmott herself is an unapologetic lesbian, but she always places her professional duties above her sexual proclivities-but that doesn't mean she can't dally with a scrumptious female after the case is over!

David Van Bush (1882-1959) was a uniquely American phenomenon. Born in Pennsylvania, Bush became a Congregational pastor but spent most of his life lecturing on a wide array of subjects. He was an early proponent of what would later be termed the "self-help" movement, writing such books as Applied Psychology and Scientific Living (1922), The Psychology of Sex (1924), If You Want to Be Rich (1954), and many others. He was also a poet, with such distinctive volumes as Peace Poems and Sausages (1915) and Poems of Mastery and Love Verse (1922). Bush is virtually forgotten today, known only because the supernaturalist H. P. Lovecraft revised some of his prose and poetry. Ken Faig, Jr. has spent years researching this exhaustive biography of Bush, which chronicles the ups and downs of his long life, which included arrests by various government agencies for marketing products of dubious quality. Faig provides plot summaries of every one of Bush's books and, in general, paints a portrait of a dynamic salesman with boundless self-confidence who was part guru and part charlatan. Everyone interested in the culture of the interwar years in America will find this work fascinating.

For more than fifty years, Ken Faig, Jr. has been a leading scholar and researcher on the life and work of H. P. Lovecraft. Over the decades he has made landmark discoveries that have clarified many aspects of Lovecraft's life, ancestry, and the influence of his personal experiences upon his weird fiction. In this new volume of essays, Faig continues his pioneering work in illuminating the obscurer corners of the people and places associated with the writer from Providence, R.I. A long piece on Lovecraft's English ancestry-his paternal forbears came from the county of Devonshire, in the southwest corner of England-traces the Lovecraft or Lovecroft name back to the 15th century. An essay on Lovecraft's uncle by marriage, Edward F. Gamwell, clarifies how this figure influenced his nephew's early writing. Faig also writes detailed histories of Lovecraft's first two residences in Providence, 454 and 598 Angell Street. Amateur journalism was a lifelong hobby of Lovecraft's, and Faig has done extensive research on the members of the Providence Amateur Press Club and on his occasional nemesis, the literary radical Elsie Alice Gidlow. Faig also directs attention to the interplay between Lovecraft's life and work as exhibited in such tales as The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and "The Dreams in the Witch House." Ken Faig, Jr. uses all the research tools at his disposal-from early maps of Providence to census records to tidbits found in Lovecraft's extant letters-to paint a fuller portrait of Lovecraft and his world, enriching our understanding of the man and his work.