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Three Impostors

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Horror master Arthur Machen's crowning achievement, a still shocking compendium of interwoven short horror tales. In late 19th century London, a scientist and an unpublished writer join forces as amateur detectives in an attempt to solve a minor but puzzling mystery which ultimately leads to the discovery of a truly diabolical conspiracy. In the course of their investigations, the two men find themselves repeatedly surrendering their attention to a series of seemingly outlandish tales spun by an assortment of eccentric story tellers. The stories, which all deal with imposture of some kind, are only tangentially related to each other, yet offer the somewhat bumbling sleuths important clues to the mystery at hand. Machen builds suspense slowly and methodically, masterfully leading the reader on to a completely unexpected, gruesome climax. Comical, tragic, sophisticated, violent, horrific, and even downright disgusting, THE THREE IMPOSTORS is a classic horror novel of sly deception and wit.

The 1995 Everyman paperback is the only critical edition of this remarkably rich book released to date, offering a scholarly introduction (by editor David Trotter) that carefully details Machen's main influences (chiefly Robert Louis Stevenson) and themes (imposture of various kinds, also derived from Stevenson). A short text summary nicely encapsulates the narrative's various twists and turns. Finally, a section entitled "Machen and His Critics" provides a welcome offering of mostly contemporaneous critical responses to this remarkable book; while many of these reviews were laudatory, quite a few passionately outraged quotes reveal just how shocking THE THREE IMPOSTORS must truly have been in its time.

Arthur Machen can easily be described as one of the writers who provided the foundation to the 20th century fantasy and horror literature. This one is a great collection of horror stories, most of which has a quite Lovecraftian style. If you are new to Machen, and/or like stories with a tinge of "Mythos Horror" in them, you'll definetely like this one.

I first read Arthur Machen (pronounced MACK-ken) back when I was in college in the early 1970s. I was already a fan of supernatural fiction especially the Victorian ghost story as exemplified by M.R. James and Sheridan Le Fanu. I first found out about Machen when I saw him listed as an influence on H.P. Lovecraft and I had read one of the stories from THE THREE IMPOSTERS, the often excerpted THE NOVEL OF THE WHITE POWDER and was suitably impressed. THE THREE IMPOSTERS, in its entirety, is a truly remarkable work that links several diverse stories into a framing story of amateur sleuths trying to solve a tantilizing mystery. The writing is suitably colorful, the imagery is astonishly vivid, and the climax is as gruesome as anything that I have come across in books or movies since then.

Machen crops up in fantasy/horror anthologies a lot especially his stories THE GREAT GOD PAN, THE BOWMEN and THE WHITE POWDER which is the most terrifying of the tales told in THE THREE IMPOSTERS. While that story can certainly stand on its own as can another called THE NOVEL OF THE BLACK SEAL, they really need to be read within the context of the entire book so that you can really appreciate Machen's skill at constructing a narrative that is deceptively simple yet surprisingly complex. My old Ballentine paperback has seen better days since I first bought it in 1972 so I am glad to see THREE IMPOSTERS in an improved edition as well as available on Kindle, a development that would no doubt have pleased Machen who being an author, journalist, essayist, and translator, would have wanted to reach as wide a reading public as possible.

This little book is an unexpected but welcome surprise in the world of literature. Jorge Luis Borges wrote the introduction in the Spanish edition that I own. And he was right, few people know the existence of this great mistery novel, otherwise it would be already a classic.

In has the flavour of Dickens and the imagination and dexterity of Agatha Christie.

His name is Arthur Machen.