The Shaver Mystery Book Eight!

The Shaver Mystery Book Eight wraps up my look at these bizarre tales by Richard S. Shaver from way back in the 40's and 50's. The stories have been bristling with imagination and while Shaver's writing style is bewildering at times, it's almost always filled with energy and momentum. I've been confused many times reading these stories, but rarely bored. Armchair fiction claims to have two more volumes of Shaver's work due out eventually. But this latest was released in 2020 and that seems a long time between volumes. 

"Witch of the Andes" kicks off this volume and it's a harrowing tale of an American agent who flies to the Amazon basin to check up on a scientist who has gone silent. He finds him deeply imbedded in his research which  has resulted in new life forms, including a twenty-foot woman of immense intellect. Other creatures are small flying men and other kinds of life. The scientist falls out of the narrative fairly quickly, but we learn his creations know his secrets and using them create life on a scale which comes to threaten the whole world. 

 

"The Crystal Sarcophagus" is a short story about a small town in which a scientist sets up shop and seems have discovered a very strange way to stop aging and so tap into mankind's amazing potential. This is a snappy little tale that gets right to its point. 

"The Sea People" is a sequel to an earlier Shaver story called "The Cult of the Witch Queen". The only problem is Armchair Fiction hasn't reprinted this story yet. So we begin in the middle of a truly strange tale a man is hiding from his past but finds himself in jail in Canada. He is taken from the security of his cell by a race of hostile Venusian mermen and merwomen who find themselves in conflict with a witch named Hecate. The man's earlier involvement with her makes them think he might prove useful as a hostage. But a mighty undersea battle results with devastating results and only this fellow holds the key to victory. What follows is grim stuff indeed. 

(Richard S. Shaver in the 70's)

These are pretty decent Shaver stories. While technically part of the Shaver Mystery series the first two feel they could've been told apart from that mythos while the third seems fresh as well. The notion of the ancients is kept at bay in all of these stories. Over the course of the last few months, I have found Shaver a fascinating writer and his stories are compelling if utterly bizarre. Many aspects of the stories put me in mind of the work of Jack Kirby to be honest. So much so that it inspired me to take a good long look at Kirby's masterpiece during his birthday month of August. More on this in a few days. 

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