Gerald Suster – The Devil’s Maze

Gerald Suster – The Devil’s Maze (Sphere, 1979)

 

With his death in November 1977, Dennis Wheatley left a vacancy for a new British dark master of Black Magic, and three of the applicants, as it were, were serious occultists turned pulp horror authors Jack Shackleford, Eric Erickson and Gerald Suster. The Devil’s Maze, Suster’s debut, has so far eluded me, but writing in the current Paperback Fanatic, Stephen Sennitt has no hesitation in proclaiming it Suster’s finest novel, a tribute to Arthur Machen which takes the Welsh mystic’s The Three Imposters as its inspiration.

William Hope Hodgson – The Ghost Pirates

William Hope Hodgson – The Ghost Pirates (Sphere, 1975, 1981)

Cover of the 1981 edition

There were rumours that the Mortzestus was haunted.

But when she had sailed two weeks out of ‘Frisco before a fair wind, the crew dismissed them. Until, unaccountably, the rigging went slack. A ghostly form was seen to climb up from the sea. A great weight crashed down from the mast. The shadows thickened and an unnatural mist descended around the ship, leaving her helpless. Then a legendary ship bore down on the Mortzestus and it looked like the fate of the crew was sealed — to disappear on a calm sea … without a trace.

“We know of nothing like the author’s work in the whole of present day literature” – Bookman
Introduction by Gerald Suster, author of The Literature of Fear

Dennis Wheatley Library Of The Occult edition, 1975

The Ghost Pirates is Volume 33 in the Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult

Gerald Suster – The Elect

Gerald Suster – The Elect (Sphere, 1980)

They meet in Paris in 1776, in London in 1912 and in Washington in 1938. They planned the violence, revolutions and bloody, bitter wars that followed.

THEY MET AGAIN IN 1984.

The conspiracy was almost complete. In the Vatican, the newly appointed Pope was preparing his first Encyclical, guided by a voice like Christ’s. In America, Democratic Candidates for the Presidential election were falling like flies. A centuries-old aim was close to attainment.

Nine men were poised to plunge the world into an age as dark and forbidding as Hell itself, an age of anarchic bloodshed. An age completely dominated by THE ELECT.

The devastating novel of occult power and awesome conspiracy.

Vault of  Evil thread on The Elect

Thanks to Mr. Mark Samuels!