The City of Unspeakable Fear - Jean Ray

The City of Unspeakable Fear by Jean Ray, translated by Scott Nicolay / ISBN 9781939663900 / 194-page paperback published in 2023 by Wakefield Press *** Miss Marple meets H.P. Lovecraft in Ray’s genre-defying tale of ghostly intrigue and murder. Published in occupied Belgium in the dark year of 1943 a few months after his celebrated novel Malpertuis, The City of Unspeakable Fear remains one of Jean Ray’s most curious works. Haunting an ambiguous interzone between detective novel, horror fiction, and Anglophile parody, it follows the misadventures of presumed police officer Sidney Terence Triggs upon his retirement to the sleepy English country town of Ingersham. A cast of characters worthy of Charles Dickens awaits his transplantation, from the sympathetic old clerk Ebenezer Doove and the three haberdashing Pumkins ladies to the druggist Theobold Pycroft, the eccentric department store owner Gregory Cobwell, the autocratic Major Chadburn, the feared Lady Florence Honnybingle, and a mot