Someone in the Dark

Rating:
Summary: A derivative, unimpressive collection of ghost stories
Review: As August Derleth says in his introduction to Someone in the Dark, he had never taken the time to write a really first-rate ghost story; by his own admission, of the two hundred plus tales of this type he had written, only the sixteen stories that make up this particular collection can possibly be read twice. Well, I've actually read this book twice now, and I don't recommend anyone else doing the same. August Derleth was capable of writing interesting, compelling stories from time to time, but the sixteen tales of this collection are all derivative, predictable, formulaic, exceedingly bland, and just not very good.

The book is divided into three sections, but to tell the truth, if you've read one of these stories you've basically read them all. Several of them really don't even qualify as ghost stories, I'm afraid. Either someone finds an amulet or some such thing and finds himself haunted by a spirit that he cannot see but others can, a pair of adult siblings inherit a house from an uncle with whom they shared a mutual hatred, or some morally repugnant individual helps bring about the death of a rich older relative and finds that murder will out in the end. Far too many stories also seem to feature a woman in a black silk dress. The final two stories are different from the others, however. The Return of Hastur and The Sandwin Compact are tales rooted firmly in Derleth's overly simplistic conception of the Cthulhu Mythos created by his friend and mentor H.P. Lovecraft. These are two of Derleth's most disappointing Cthulhu stories, both of them suffering terribly from his good vs evil misinterpretation of Lovecraft's morally ambivalent Mythos. Derleth actually refers to Lovecraft's story Call of Cthulhu in one piece, while he commits the cardinal sin of ending the other story with a paragraph in italics, as if that somehow makes the passage scary.

Perhaps there is someone out there who might feel one brief uneasy moment as he considers the shadows of his darkened room after having closed the pages of this book some night. If so, Derleth's self-avowed goal will have been met. There is no guarantee this will ever happen, though, for ye olde italics gambit is about the most impressive weapon Derleth brings with him to Someone in the Dark.