The Edge of Running Water

A mad scientist, a house alone on the point, an infernal machine, hostile townspeople, the mysterious medium and an obsession with communicating with the dead; add to this a beautiful young woman and a young psychologist hastily summoned to take part in a final experiment and you have all the elements that you might expect to find in an episode from an early sixties "Twilight Zone", but this was written in 1937 and conjures up an atmosphere of mystery and suspense that should keep the reader turning the pages.

The story is told in the first person by the Psychologist summoned to the house and starts with:

"The man for whom this story is told may or may not be alive, If he is I do not know his name, where he lives or anything at all about show more him, except that there is something that is vital for me to tell him.............."

We follow Richard Sayles as he makes his journey up to the House standing on a point above the river Kennebec in Maine. The taciturn people of the local town and the difficult journey on a badly worn track to the house sets the scene and the gloomy interior and the changed appearance of his mentor the scientist Julian Blair starts to make this story genuinely creepy. We know something bad is going to happen and hope it does not involve the scientist beautiful sister in law Anne. Julian Blair's appointed guardian: Mrs Walters is unfriendly and secretive and it falls to Richard to try and find out what is going on. The mystery of the death of the housekeeper Elora Marcy staged dramatically on the second day of Richards stay along with unnerving sounds coming from Julian Blair's laboratory takes the story headlong down the road of a suspense shocker.

William Sloane has a good story to tell and his characters are strongly realised, as is the New England landscape heading into the Autumn. The love story between Anne and Richard is well handled and is well juxtaposed with the horror story that develops. The death of Elora has elements of a well worked detective murder mystery and fits into the story and serves to rouse up the local population against the city folk in the house on the point. The climax when it comes does not disappoint and while we may not be too surprised, because of the many films that have followed it's blueprint it has an eerie quality to it that is most satisfying. (Sloane's book was used as a basis for the Boris Karloff feature; The Devil Commands)

"It was a nightmare experiment... in Evil" screams the blurb on the front cover and for once this carefully crafted horror/suspense story delivers the excitement that it's front cover seems to promise. I thoroughly enjoyed it saying to myself "Ah they don't write stories like that anymore" Satisfaction guaranteed for those people not too jaded by modern horror schlock novels. Of it's kind a four star read. show less

The second and final book that Sloane wrote, and an even better entry than his first one, which also kicked ass.

Sloane's strength is his slow build of dread, and the hypnotically spellbinding female characters he creates. This time, he managed to do it twice, with both Anne and Mrs. Walters.

Once again, a book I believe should be read cold, without knowing too much about it, so I'll just say, READ WILLIAM SLOANE. He's worth it.

Suspenseful story about a scientist trying to create apparatus to enable him to communicate with his dead wife and featuring a vividly created thoroughly evil female character.

Classic late 1930s mystery - science fiction novel, involving a mourning electro-physicist who attempts to use his scientific knowledge to construct an apparatus to speak with his dead wife, and those on the other side generally.

There's a few tropes such as the simple country townsfolk, the creepy medium, the seemingly mad scientist, but overall it's a well put together tale on what was at that point, in 1939, seemingly the cutting edge of electro-science to the lay person.

Worth a read for those interested in early novels and science fiction, although this is more science than your traditional early science fiction novels involving space, it could even be classified as horror depending on your genre views.

One of the finest fantasy/horror novels ever written. Professor Richard Sayles visits an old colleague, Julian Blair, who has retreated to the coast of Maine after the unexpected death of Blair's wife. There, Sayles meets a variety of characters, while slowly the import of what Blair is doing, and what Blair THINKS he is doing, becomes horribly clear...