Phantom of the 13th Floor by Marilyn Ross

Gothic romances as mentioned in an earlier post enjoyed a long heyday in the '60s and '70s, perhaps fueled in longevity by symbiotic success of Dark Shadows, TV's Gothic soap which began in 1966 and continued until 1971.

Perhaps appropriately, a long series of Dark Shadows paperback tie-ins were released under the pen name Marylin Ross, actually William Edward Daniel or W.E.D. Ross (1912-1995).

Ross also penned a long string of stand-alone gothics under Marylin and a variety of other pseudonyms including tales from perhaps the twilight of the gothic era.

Phantom of the 13th Floor would seem to be from that later edge of the era, released four years after Dark Shadows' cancellation.

It's an engaging little tale set around Christmastime and New Year's in midtown Manhattan and stretches the boundaries of the gothic. It might be called romantic suspense these days. It eschews the usual old dark houses, though there is the ominous Midtown Hotel Brant, modeled on the Drake Hotel.

The heroine's a young Broadway actress who's a bit naive. Joan Crane is the granddaughter of actress Molly Miller who headlined "Me and Molly" in 1928 until her death in a fall during a party at the Brant. Joan's starring in a mid-'70s revival with much of the same production team and living in an apartment across the street from the historic hotel.

She's dating choreographer Rex Grayston, a generically perfect romantic lead, has a cabbie named Archie on retainer, and is surrounded by a circle that includes some familiar with her grandmother or at least the theater community.

A written invitation from Rex lures Joan to a party at the Brant on a rainy December night after a show, and there she encounters a turban-wearing mystic who soon has her in a trance that will quickly be followed by blackouts that coincide with murders. All of the victims have some tie to Joan's grandmother or others involved with the show including the gentlemanly producer of both original and revival.

As Joan becomes a murder suspect, Rex is drawn away to tweak the dances on a show in another city leaving her to fend on her own, and a possibly ghostly or possibly criminal series of events unfolds as Christmas approaches.

Ross tosses several red herrings into the mix, teases a bit of a romantic rival in the police detective investigating the murders and keeps the supernatural viable for much of the tale. Is the ghost of Molly Miller possessing Joan to kill off old rivals? Is the Vaudeville mentalist who once loved Molly really dead or pulling Joan's strings in a twisted act of revenge?

Despite the twists the tale remains a thriller and not a true mystery. The theater world feels just a tad generic. The sense that the novel was penned for a target audience is always there, as is the case with most tales of a type, I suppose. There's also a sense that this is a bit of a soap-on-paper, more in the realm of The Edge of Night if not Dark Shadows. 

None of that's to say it's not a fun, creepy and engaging page-turner with a real atmosphere of a grim and cold winter city as backdrop.

Gothics, especially those by prolific masters like Ross, shouldn't be lost to time. The serve up interesting thrills and chills.

The Sorcerers by Dorian Winslow (Daoma Winston)

In the the latter days of the gothic paperback era, Avon books offered up a brief and now hard-to-find (or at least pricey) Satanic line. Distinguished by a goat's-head logo, each was penned by a different author. They bore titles like Lord Satan, Her Demon Lover and Red Wine of Rapture and appeared from 1973 to 1974. 

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.

As Gilly works to bring Caretha out of her depression and despair, she observes strange behavior and disturbing occurrences including black, inverted crosses smudged about the house. Miss Ming, a Pekingese, serves as a sinister observer, seemingly materializing at inopportune moments.

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.