Thursday, February 13, 2014

Crossover Covers: The Morris and Chastain Investigations

Justin Gustainis is the author of an excellent series of books featuring occult detective Quincey Morris and his frequent partner, white witch Libby Chastain. Quincey is the great-grandson of the Quincey Morris that appears in Bram Stoker's Dracula; Chastain explains the original Quincey's bachelorhood and marriage proposal to Lucy Westenra by stating that his wife died in childbirth a few years before the events of Stoker's novel. Many other people, places, or things from horror and occult fiction appear or are mentioned in the books, as well as ones from other genres, and therefore I am including the books in the new volumes. For instance, Quincey and Libby's ally Hannah Widmark, aka the Widowmaker, was taught how to use a pair of .45s by "a shadowy, enigmatic man named Cranston," who had a weird laugh and told her that "the weed of Satan bears bitter fruit," an obvious reference to the Shadow. It is worth noting that three of the books published so far have had references to Laurell K. Hamilton's vampire hunter Anita Blake. Since Hamilton's books take place in a world where the public is aware of the existence of supernatural beings, the Anita Blake mentioned in Gustainis' books must be Anita's Crossover Universe counterpart, who has doubtless had very different adventures than her counterpart in what we may call the "Blakeverse."

7 comments:

  1. If I remember correctly, on the Yahoo boards it was mentioned that one of the books makes reference to Matt Helm's boss, but it states it was part of the CIA, not a separate organization like it was in the books. I'm just reminded of this since I finished The Terrorizers a couple of days ago. Not that this is a real prohibition for it being a crossover.

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  2. My theory is that Mac was connected to both agencies, so that he was Matt Helm's boss in the unnamed one and Malachi Peters' at the CIA, but the two were otherwise unrelated.

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  3. To me it would make more since that the author simply got his facts wrong on which organization Peter's belonged to. Or perhaps Mac's agency got folded into the CIA.

    There's a scene in one of Donald Westlake's Grofield books where Grofield is interview by two spies. He says "Let me guess CIA?"

    One of the spies replies, "Doesn't anybody realize there secret intelligence agencies?"

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  4. I'm gonna go with your second suggestion, since I feel it works better than my idea. Thanks, Matthew!

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  5. The last Helm book was published in 93 so I suppose it could have happened after that. Or maybe Donald Hamilton did not choose to reveal that about the agency.

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  6. Peters died while on assignment in 1983, so the latter suggestion would be the most plausible one, I think.

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  7. Anyway, this crossover seems to confirm Matt Helm's place in the CU. The entry in the original Crossovers always seemed to be kind of shaky. The references could be taken as references to fictional characters.

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