Crossover Cover: Whistle Up the Devil

 

Are you a Golden Age of Mystery fan?

Then you'll love this novel, the first of two featuring amateur sleuth Algy Lawrence, which has references to Wilkie Collins' Sergeant Cuff, Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin, Clayton Rawson's Merlini, John Dickson Carr's Dr. Gideon Fell, Freeman Wills Crofts' Inspector French, and Rupert Penny's Chief Inspector Beale!

For more information, be sure to pick up a copy of my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3 when Meteor House publishes it! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover of the Week

April 17, 1922

THE COVENTRY STREET TERROR 

Charles St. Cyprian and his assistant Ebe Gallowglass are called in by Special Branch to investigate a series of apparent vampire attacks. Inspector Boothroyd thinks it might be poison, “like that business in Brichester last year.” Vampires are, save for that brief, unpleasant incident during Victoria’s reign so inventively described in Stoker’s book, mostly extinct in England. St. Cyprian says maybe Thibaut de Castries was right when he said, in Megapolisomancy: A New Science of Cities, that cities were the new dark forest of man’s fear. St. Cyprian considered placing a call to the Westenra Fund but decided against it. Edwin Drood helped the fund’s founding members kill a frisky Wallachian. The head of the fund is Lord Godalming. St. Cyprian tells Gallowglass, “Trout isn’t the most imaginative sort, but he and Cuff know the score. They were involved in that Myrdstone business, a few years back.” They are helped against the vampire by Baron Palman Vordenburg, who mentions a certain theater in the Boulevard du Temple where the undead congregate at times. He identifies the vampire as Lothar Karnstein, who was the lover of Countess Dolingen of Graz. St. Cyprian tells Trout and Cuff that Lothar is not exactly Raffles, running about in disguise. 

Short story by Josh Reynolds in Casefiles of the Royal Occultist Volume Two: Hochmuller’s Hound, 18thWall Productions, 2020. Brichester is a town in the Severn Valley in Ramsey Campbell’s Cthulhu Mythos stories. The brief, unpleasant incident during Victoria’s reign is a reference to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The Westenra Fund is named after the late Lucy Westenra, who was turned into a vampire by Dracula and subsequently staked by Van Helsing and company, including her fiancé, Arthur Holmwood, Lord Godalming. Countess Dolingen of Graz is from Stoker’s “Dracula’s Guest.” Thibaut de Castries and his book Megapolisomancy: A New Science of Cities are from Fritz Leiber’s novel Our Lady of Darkness. Edwin Drood is from Charles Dickens’ unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Inspector Trout is from the movies The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises Again. Cuff may be a descendant of Sergeant Cuff from Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone. “The Myrdstone witch-cult” is mentioned in Lin Carter’s Anton Zarnak story “Curse of the Black Pharaoh.” Baron Palman Vordenburg is a descendant of Baron Vordenburg from J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla.” The Karnsteins are Carmilla’s family. The theater in the Boulevard du Temple is the Théâtre des Vampires from Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. A. J. Raffles needs no introduction now. 

For many more crossover writeups like this, check out my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, to be published by Meteor House! Much like the first two volumes, this book is an AUTHORIZED companion to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover Cover: Brimstone

Aloysius Pendergast encounters Count Isidor Ottavio Baldassare Fosco. Fosco is identical in name, appearance, and personality to Count Fosco from Wilkie Collins’ novel The Woman in White, which he actually refers to at one point. Therefore, the contemporary Fosco is probably a descendant of his earlier namesake.

Crossover Cover: Wyllard's Weird

In this novel, set in 1881-1884, Mademoiselle Beauville, a female fashion designer, has “cherished one bitter and unappeasable hatred, and that was against Messrs. Spricht, Van Klopen, and the whole confraternity of men-milliners.” Later Beauville boasts about a client, “I made all her gowns, and I was proud that she could challenge comparison with actresses who squandered their thousands upon such impostors as Spricht and Van Klopen.” Hilda Heathcote “had read of gentlemanlike murderers—assassins of good bearing and polished manners—Eugene Aram, Count Fosco, and many more of the same school.” Rick Lai notes, “Van Klopen was the criminal fashion designer who was part of the Mascarot blackmail ring in Emile Gaboriau’s Lecoq series. Van Klopen was still at liberty in Gaboriau’s non-Lecoq mystery novels set in the early 1870s. Eugene Aram was a real-life murderer from the 18^th century. His life was fictionalized in Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Eugene Aram. Count Fosco is the villain of The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. Mentioning Fosco alongside Aram implies that both were historical criminals whose lives were fictionalized.”

Crossover Cover: Sharpe's Escape

In this Richard Sharpe novel, Rifleman Matthew Dodd, a member of Sharpe's South Essex Light Regiment Company, Rifleman Matthew Dodd, is separated from the regiment at the Battle of Bussaco. Author Bernard Cornwell has confirmed that this is the same Matthew Dodd who appears as the title character of C.S. Forester's novel Death to the French. There are other crossovers involving Sharpe as well. In the TV movie Sharpe's Justice, Sharpe meets Captain George Wickham of the Yorkshire Militia, who chronologically must be the son of George Wickham and Lydia Bennet from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Also, in the book Sharpe's Tiger, Sharpe steals the supposedly cursed diamond known as the Moonstone (from Wilkie Collins' novel of the same name) from Tippoo Sultan. Patrick Lassan, one of the protagonist of Cornwell's Starbuck Chronicles series, is Sharpe's son. Finally, Sharpe has a cameo in Simon Scarrow's The Fields of Death (which I have yet to read and write up, but plan to eventually), part of Scarrow's Revolution Quartet, four books which portray the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars from the point of view of the future Duke of Wellington and Napoleon Bonaparte. In The Fields of Death, Sharpe is only referred to as Richard.