Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Brad Strickland Strikes!

The Hand of the Necromancer (Johnny Dixon, 2 Copies, Softcover and Hardback), The Bell, the Book, and the Spellbinder (Johnny Dixon, Softcover), The Specter from the Magician’s Museum (Lewis Barnavelt, Softcover), The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost (Johnny Dixon, Hardback), The Beast Under the Wizard’s Bridge (Lewis Barnavelt, Hardback), The Tower at the End of the World (Lewis Barnavelt, Hardback, Illustrations by S. D. Schindler), The Whistle, the Grave, and the Ghost (Lewis Barnavelt, Hardback, Illustrations by S. D. Schindler), The House Where Nobody Lived (Lewis Barnavelt, Hardback, Illustrations by Bart Goldman.), and The Sign of the Sinister Sorcerer (Lewis Barnavelt, Hardback, Illustrations by Bart Goldman), by Brad Strickland.

Frontispieces by Edward Gorey up until ‘The Beast Under the Wizard’s Bridge’, then Gorey passed away. It was his last published piece of artwork before his death, apparently. Something about knowing these are Strickland corpse-grinding puts a damper on my enthusiasm; he also began leaning rather heavily on borrowings from M. R. James, which Bellairs did sometimes as well, but with a lighter hand. I was relieved when Strickland stopped and so could I.

Ranking: Keepers.

File Code: Juvenile Fantasy Series. Fantasy/Horror.

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