In screenwriter Thomas Wheeler’s cinematic debut novel, an occult thriller set in New York City in 1919, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his fellow members of a secret society known as the Arcanum including magician Harry Houdini and voodoo priestess Marie Laveau investigate a gruesome murder, rescue horror writer H.P. Lovecraft from jail, consult evil mystic Aleister Crowley, learn the truth behind the ancient Book of Enoch, try to solve the mystery of a tribe of lost angels and otherwise save the world. All the supernatural shenanigans, however, can’t disguise that these characters, with their contemporary sensibilities, are crude caricatures of their real-life originals. Lovecraft, for example, is reduced to a perverse boyish demonologist, while Laveau is a sexpot who speaks in a Caribbean patois: “So, how we s’posed to get him outta that jail?” Each vividly written chapter is so obviously a film scene that credit should be given for art direction. The author uses nearly every landmark available in 1919 New York for a setting, but a wealth of well-researched period detail is no substitute for a true feeling for an era’s zeitgeist.

Wie so manches gibt es auch das vorliegende Buch nicht auf deutsch. Warum es dennoch hier Erwähnung findet ist, das es 2010 von Eric Morgret verfilmt wird. Mit Hugh Jackman als Harry Houdini, Gary Oldman als Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Christian Bale als H. P. Lovecraft und Gina Torres als Voodooqueen Marie Laveau.