The Necromancer

Rating:
Summary: Harrow Revisited
Review: I am in awe of Douglas Clegg. Each new story he produces seems to top the last in every possible way. Cemetery Dance now brings us this short novella, The Necromancer, which continues Clegg's Harrow mythology (which also includes the novels Nightmare House, The Infinite and Mischief). This new story gives us the back story on the early years of Justin Gravesend's life, the man who later build the Harrow House.

Clegg is a writer without fear. He can write amazing quiet horror (like The Hour Before Dark, one of the best horror novels published in the last decade), but he can also write stories that are more visceral and gruesome (such as in the stories White Chapel and The Rendering Man) . The Necromancer stands somewhere in the middle.

When Gravesend leaves his hometown and moves in with his uncle in the 1920s, he decides to make a new life for himself. He enters college (even though he is a poor country boy) and starts befriending the richer, upper class. During a travel to the big city of London, Justin is greeted with a life he didn't know existed. It is here that he will meet his master, his Necromancer, the man that will open his eyes to the dark world that has been his gift since birth.

Short, disturbing and very entertaining, The Necromancer is vintage Clegg. It is the kind of book you simply cannot put down, the kind of story that leaves you craving for more. After finishing The Necromancer, I just felt like running to my bookcase to find all the Harrow book and read them all over again. Clegg is really a master of the game; no one writes horror like he does.