FINGERS OF FEAR {1937}

MY LATEST HALLOWEEN READ IS A MAELSTROM OF HORRORS!  The one and only novel of J.U. Nicolson, FINGERS OF FEAR piles on macabre horror after macabre horror throwing everything into the plot but a haunted kitchen sink!   Here's what the fine edition from Valancourt Books synopsizes on the back cover blurb:  "Utterly ruined by the stock market crash of 1929, Selden Seaforth has lost his money, his job, and his wife. When an old school friend, Ormond Ormes, offers Seaforth a job cataloguing the library at the mansion of Ormesby in the Berkshires, it seems as though things may finally be turning around. But almost as soon as he arrives at Ormesby, it is clear that something is terribly wrong. Ghosts stalk the corridors, and Seaforth awakens to find a mark made by a human mouth on his neck. Is there a vampire, a werewolf, or something even worse, at Ormesby? Seaforth must try to piece together the secrets of the strange Ormes family, but things take a still more sinister turn when the first brutally murdered corpse is found . . .

The only novel by J. U. Nicolson (1885-1944), Fingers of Fear (1937) was hailed by Karl Edward Wagner as one of the finest supernatural horror novels ever written, and it is perhaps unrivaled in its ability to evoke a weird and uncanny atmosphere of eerie dread." A little more over-the-top than THE ELEMENTALS by Michael McDowell (which I told you about several days ago), FINGERS OF FEAR is a novel of howling horrors!