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First published in 1922, The Undying Monster secured Jessie Douglas Kerruish's place in the history of British Weird fiction. The novel was adapted for the screen in 1942, and remains one of the definitive twentieth-century tales of lycanthropy and occult detection. 'Where grow pines and firs amain, Under Stars, sans heat or rain, Chief of Hammand, 'ware thy Bane!' The Hammand family have been hounded by an ancient curse for generations; now, after the close of the First World War, the only two survivors are Oliver and Swanhild. When Oliver is beset by a creature in the forest surrounding the Hammand estate, the siblings resolve to meet the curse head on before it seals their fate in the form of a violent death. Enlisting the service of the occult detective Luna Bartendale, the investigation begins to unshackle the Hammands from their doom, and the stage is set for battle with an immortal force of savage horror.
About the author
Jessie Douglas Kerruish (1884-1949) was a British writer of romantic, horror, and historical fiction, descended from an ancient Manx family. She was a regular contributor to
The Weekly Tale-Teller, finding success with the publication of
Miss Haroun-al-Raschid (1917) and
The Girl from Kurdistan (1918), novels set in North Africa and the Middle East, before publishing her best-known work,
The Undying Monster, 1922.
Summary
First published in 1922, this cult novel is a heady brew of black magic lore, Norse mythology and weird mysteries spilling out of an eldritch ‘fifth dimension’ – complete with the first female occult detective to appear in an English novel, the ‘White Witch‘ Luna Bartendale.
