This is very much a pulp horror novel: there are the usual formulaic background characters, like Gela Tyrrel, Max's beautiful secretary who loves him dearly and can't understand why he keeps marrying women who treat him so badly when she could treat him so well. This is a competent novel, easily Wilfred McNeilly's best and better by far than his poorer efforts as 'Peter Saxon' like Dark Ways to Death or The Haunting of Alan Mais but still it's not a patch on the professionalism of Through the Dark Curtain or The Vampires of Finistere, Saxons by other hands. Only the Englishman, the aged and drunk scriptwriter, seems to know what is wrong.
Max's complete bitch of a wife hits it off with the Conde immediately and a couple of Max's crew are found dead. Apparently, he has faked the disappearance of his family, due to his ancestors' excesses. But then, during dinner, a living Conde Delmorte appears to welcome them to his castle.
Max's crew promptly move in, and soon discover some of the castle's various nasty secrets, from a booby-trapped staircase with a spiked pit beneath, to the Conde himself: three hundred years dead and walled up alive with his servants in the dungeons. They check with the local powers that be and find that the owner is the Conde Delmorte, but he has been dead for centuries. Hal C F Astell - The Last Page Bookshop - The Horror Reviews - The Torturer - Peter Saxon Home -įilm director Max Grant is in the Spanish countryside with a small crew scouting for locations to use in his next picture, when out of the mist appears a bleak castle that seems purpose built for his needs.
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