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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Obeah versus Voodoo,
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This review is from: Shades of Evil (Paperback)
Hugh Barnard Cave is a name well-known to fans of the American pulp magazines of the thirties and forties, for classics such as the vampire novella Murgunstrumm, and for more risque tales in shudder pulps like Spicy Mystery Stories (though what counted as spicy back then would hardly raise an eyebrow today.) For tales in this latter category, he sometimes used the clever nom de purple plum, Justin Case (read it slowly.)
Cave returned to the horror genre with a number of novels written between the late seventies and his death in 2004. These are surprisingly lacking in the "shuddery" quality that made his pulp work so memorable, but equally surprisingly, they add nice character touches, carefully worked-out plots, and well-integrated details about locales like Jamaica, the setting of much of Shades of Evil. We learn about local cuisine, clothes, and especially the flavor of local culture. The best character in the novel is the easygoing cab-driver Ken Daniels. He'll accept whatever pay the hero feels is fair, and he ends up doing most of the work, and most of the thinking, himself, but takes little credit. (Perhaps it's not so surprising that the mature Cave gave us characters like this: the pulps did not favor heavy characterization, but Cave managed to slip a lot of it in.) The story deals with magical vengeance by the power of Obeah, and how it is resisted by love and also by Voodoo, which, we learn, is quite distinct from Obeah and is presented in a positive light, as a religion practiced by Ima Williams, a housekeeper who turns out to be much more. Cave's horror novels lack the intensity of his early work, and also lack the fear-inducing qualities of many modern horror authors, but make up for it with mystery, nice characters, real knowledge of local flavor, and the deft touch of a man who obviously never lost his love for his craft after producing so many memorable works for so many years.
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