The novel does have its flaws: coming to it straight from a re-reading of some John Buchan and Aickman ghost stories, I was struck by the comparative clumsiness with which Leiber describes the streets of San Francisco. It would be easy to lose sight of the plot in such a whirl of interconnecting ideas, but luckily Leiber keeps the reader hooked with a good, scary haunting that owes much to M R James (who is quoted by Franz on several occasions!) Rosemary Pardoe explores the James angle very well in her essay Our Lady Of Darkness: A Jamesian Classic (and while some have deplored the tendency of Ghosts and Scholars contributors to attribute too much influence to James, Pardoe is bang on the money here! Careful of the spoiler at the end though.) The flapping, bounding 'paramental' (a 'pale brown thing' that Westen glimpses from across the city and which looms ever larger in his life as the novel goes on) is also inspired by de Quincey's Lady Of Darkness, and this mix of influences - Jamesian tightness and restraint with decadent splendour and unease - gives the novel a unique flavour. The book's a Fortean paradise! (For a taste of the thematic scope, you just need to look at this set of annotations.) The imaginary topic of megapolisomancy is fascinating by itself - it's a cryptic 'neoPythagorean' science by which are measured and predicted the evil effects of the cities that cover the modern world in an 'electro-mephitic city-stuff' and seek to stamp out life, first on this planet ,then through the whole universe! But Leiber also weaves in a good deal about the benign power of music, its relation to mathematics, the curious cults and personalities of the 20s San Fran intelligentsia (which suffered from a peculiarly high suicide rate, for reasons which are explored in the book) and, perhaps most interestingly of all, the 'secret spaces' in old buildings 'that weren't really hidden but were never noticed'. The sheer diversity of the subject matter sets it apart from pretty much any other work in the genre that I've ever read. He pops over to the Heights to investigate, which is when the trouble starts! One is a weird blend of the occult and science titled Megapolisomancy: A New Science Of Cities, written by a malevolent eccentric Thibaut de Castries, and the other appears to be an account of de Castries' bizarre practises and worsening temper, handwritten by no less a person than Clark Ashton Smith! Trying to soothe his mind after the tragic death of his wife Daisy, Franz dives into the works, only to find himself increasingly distracted by the antics of an indistinct creature atop Corona Heights, a hill he surveys from his San Francisco flat. It's a strange tale (even by the standards of the genre) about a widower and recovering alcoholic, Franz Westen, who comes upon two odd books in a second-hand dealer's. I was recently lucky enough to bag a Fritz Leiber paperback from Purple Books (via Abebooks) - Our Lady Of Darkness.

Our lady of darkness leiber