Crossover of the Week

I covered James A. Moore and Charles Rutledge's book Blind Shadows in a previous post. Today, I give you my write-up of its sequel.

Late August 2012

CONGREGATIONS OF THE DEAD

            Sheriff Carl Price and Wade Griffin battle the Reverend Lazarus Cotton and his congregation of vampires. Price and Griffin’s ally Andy Hunter refers to an old colleague of his named Crowley. Another ally, Carter Decamp, reminds Griffin that he said that the Great Old Ones only have limited power on Earth because our reality is naturally resistant to supernatural forces. Griffin’s girlfriend Charon recognizes copies of Unspeakable Cults and the Ruthvenian in Decamp’s personal library of occult texts. Decamp says that he only knows of two other surviving copies of the Ruthvenian, a book of lore and spells dealing with vampires, both of which are in the possession of a colleague of his. Charon remarks that she thought the Ruthvenian was a myth like Alhazred’s Necronomicon, but Decamp indicates that the Necronomicon may not be mythical. Charon notes that Pursuivant’s Vampiricon suggests garlic as a means of repelling vampires.

            Novel by James A. Moore and Charles R. Rutledge, Arcane Wisdom Press, 2013. Jonathan Crowley is a recurring character in Moore’s fiction. The Great Old Ones are at the center of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos; Price and Griffin battled one of the Old Ones, Shub Niggurath, in their first appearance, Blind Shadows. The Necronomicon, penned by Abdul Alhazred, also plays a prominent role in the Mythos. Friedrich von Juntz’s Unspeakable Cults (or Unaussprechlichen Kulten in the original German) is a Cthulhu Mythos tome created by Robert E. Howard. The Ruthvenian is a recurring book in the interconnected fiction of Donald F. Glut. Decamp’s colleague who owns the other two surviving copies of the book is Dr. Adam Spektor, from Glut’s comic book series The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor. The Vampiricon was authored by Manly Wade Wellman’s occult detective Judge Keith Hilary Pursuivant, and is mentioned in the Pursuivant stories.