Three John Silence Stories

I am on my Algernon Blackwood quest, and this is book four. John Silence is independently wealthy and of a philanthropist, so goes away for five years and comes back as a Psychic Doctor who only takes cases that interest him. This book contains three of those cases: A Psychical Invasion, Ancient Sorceries and The Nemesis of Fire. John Silence is a man who is strong, honorable and good. He has learned all about the light and the dark sides of our world, as well as those other worlds where evil clay live. He has somehow been inoculated against the dark, so he can help people who have gotten into trouble with things they should not have messed with. He will not take any compensation for his services, even though he is highly professional, gets good results and everyone respects him.

These three stories were drastically different. The first is my favorite if I had to choose. The second starts slow, but finishes with a bang, and the third is interesting, as it is told from the POV of his assistant, Mr. Hubbard, instead of the Doctor. The third story is much more like the first, in that it suck you into the mystery quickly and doesn't let you go until the last pages.

Blackwood's prose style is almost tangible to all five senses. He gets so close to mastering it with onomatopoeia and other cadence techniques that he uses that I believe that the experience of Blackwood being read orally by an amazing sexy voice would be the perfect thing to do - like adding a platinum setting to a pigeons blood ruby. The voice would bring out the texture, the cadence, the sounds and the tones that Blackwood intentionally writes in his prose. His greatest example of this is in The Willow.

These three stories are fun, well written, and a great example of their genre. I love John Silence as a character. Highly recommended.