It was the time when every TV detective battled satanists, from McMillan and Wife to Ironside ("Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Murder" featuring Jodie Foster and a cameo by Rod Serling). Cults and the dark lord must have seemed like perfect adversaries for gothic heroines historic and contemporary.
I've wanted to explore some of the gothics for a while, so I've been nabbing the occasional title. I sought out an affordable Avon Satanic and ran across a reasonable, "good condition" edition of The Sorcerers by Dorian Winslow, a pseudonym of Daoma Winston. I didn't key in on that until I opened to the copyright page, but I once owned Winston's hardcover thriller Mira, so I was pleased to return to her work after many years.
Despite what the logo might lead you to believe, The Sorcerers is not a tale of black-robed cultists and late-night rituals with chickens and blood. It's actually a well-crafted if slow-burn mystery with elements of The Fantastic. Is black magic at work at Walker Hill, the creepy mansion at the core of the story? Or is human evil and superstition?
That's indirectly what the heroine, Gilly Davis, must find out when she accepts a job as companion to Caretha Walker, a woman turned into an agoraphobic emotional invalid by the accidental death of her child.
Recently devastated herself by the decampment of her husband John with her best friend, 23-year-old Gilly accepts the job from Mason Walker, a man of "imposing good looks." He's wealthy and has pretty much taken in most of Gilly's family at Walker Hill in the remote town of Cumberland, surrounded by red hills and shrouded in mist.
Caretha's sister Megan indulges Caretha's taste for fortune telling and dressing dolls as if they are members of the household, practices Mason strives to obliterate as detrimental.
There's a musty old attic, a mysteriously departed former employee, weird visions in a mirror, a burned out residence in town and soon mysterious accidents and a death.
There's certainly a Dark Shadows feel to it all, but everything's subtle, building to revelations in the final few pages, tying things together in a satisfying fashion almost in an Agatha Christie vein. I suppose the less patient reader might find things a little slow, but it's all to a purpose.
The romance component may really be what's lacking or at least taking a back seat to other goings on. It comes late in the slim (160-page) novel and without much real justification that we're shown. It's really like genre requirements had to be shoe-horned in around the mystery, but so it goes.
In general, I liked this volume and its quiet, moody horror. It's not for all tastes, but it's not a bad entertainment, especially for a cold, dark night's reading.
This is not an impulse buy proposition. Keep an eye peeled wherever you shop for used books.
