Francis St. Clare & Frederica Masters
Mar 30, 2007 13:16:47 GMT -5
Post by Gloomy Sundae on Mar 30, 2007 13:16:47 GMT -5
"Having created a psychic detective of my own, I was delighted to meet Mr. Wheatley's Neils Orsen, and a very able investigator he is too. How nice it would be if he and my fellow could work together one day" - R. Chetwynd-Hayes in his introduction to 13th Fontana Book Of Great Ghost Stories (1977).
Chetwynd-Hayes' sleuth is Francis St. Clare, "The World's only Practicing Psychic Detective", and I've no idea how many stories he shows up in. Three I've been able to locate are The Wailing Waif Of Battersea (Night Ghouls, 1975), The Gibbering Ghoul Of Gomershal (Kamtellar, 1980) and The Cringing Couple Of Clavering (Tales From The Hidden World, 1988). St. Clare has an assistant, Fred, with whom he is always squabbling, and the stories are very much from the Oh-my-aching-sides Great Grand-Dad Walks Again end of the R.C.H. spectrum. Wheatley died in 1977, but one can only wish that he had made some kind of public response to Chetwynd-Hayes' proposal.
Fortunately, my friend John Llewellyn Probert was able to flesh out the St. Clare list on Vault, and here are his findings:
"I was very fond of the Fred & Francis stories as a kid, and often wondered why they were never collected. Now I realise that the style is a bit too samey to have the stories running one after another, and the squabbling dialogue quickly gets repetitive. The first story was called Someone is Dead and appeared in the collection The Elemental & Others. My favourites are this and The Headless Footman of Hadleigh from Fontana's Tales of Fear & Fantasy. The last appeared in the late eighties William Kimber published collection Tales from the Hidden World. Like all RCH stuff the earlier ones are better. A novel The Psychic Detective appeared from Robert Hale in 1993 but it's as rare as hen's teeth & copies go for upwards of £70-00 on abebooks.
I've just gone through my RCH collection and here's the list of Fred & Francis short stories in order:
Someone is Dead The Elemental
The Wailing Waif of Battersea The Night Ghouls
The Headless Footman of Hadleigh Tales of Fear & Fantasy
The Gibbering Ghoul of Gomershal The Fantastic World of Kamtellar
The Astral Invasion Tales from the Dark Lands
The Phantom Axeman of Carleton Grange Tales from the Haunted House
The Cringing Couple of Clavering Tales from the Hidden World
Someone is Dead was reprinted in Steve Jones' Dark Detectives from Fedogan & Bremer a couple of years ago as well."
Chetwynd-Hayes' sleuth is Francis St. Clare, "The World's only Practicing Psychic Detective", and I've no idea how many stories he shows up in. Three I've been able to locate are The Wailing Waif Of Battersea (Night Ghouls, 1975), The Gibbering Ghoul Of Gomershal (Kamtellar, 1980) and The Cringing Couple Of Clavering (Tales From The Hidden World, 1988). St. Clare has an assistant, Fred, with whom he is always squabbling, and the stories are very much from the Oh-my-aching-sides Great Grand-Dad Walks Again end of the R.C.H. spectrum. Wheatley died in 1977, but one can only wish that he had made some kind of public response to Chetwynd-Hayes' proposal.
Fortunately, my friend John Llewellyn Probert was able to flesh out the St. Clare list on Vault, and here are his findings:
"I was very fond of the Fred & Francis stories as a kid, and often wondered why they were never collected. Now I realise that the style is a bit too samey to have the stories running one after another, and the squabbling dialogue quickly gets repetitive. The first story was called Someone is Dead and appeared in the collection The Elemental & Others. My favourites are this and The Headless Footman of Hadleigh from Fontana's Tales of Fear & Fantasy. The last appeared in the late eighties William Kimber published collection Tales from the Hidden World. Like all RCH stuff the earlier ones are better. A novel The Psychic Detective appeared from Robert Hale in 1993 but it's as rare as hen's teeth & copies go for upwards of £70-00 on abebooks.
I've just gone through my RCH collection and here's the list of Fred & Francis short stories in order:
Someone is Dead The Elemental
The Wailing Waif of Battersea The Night Ghouls
The Headless Footman of Hadleigh Tales of Fear & Fantasy
The Gibbering Ghoul of Gomershal The Fantastic World of Kamtellar
The Astral Invasion Tales from the Dark Lands
The Phantom Axeman of Carleton Grange Tales from the Haunted House
The Cringing Couple of Clavering Tales from the Hidden World
Someone is Dead was reprinted in Steve Jones' Dark Detectives from Fedogan & Bremer a couple of years ago as well."