Whiskey Tales - Jean Ray

Whiskey Tales by Jean Ray / ISBN 9781939663368 / 240 page paperback with flaps from Wakefield Press *** Originally published in French in 1925, Whiskey Tales immediately established the reputation of the Belgian master of the weird, Jean Ray, whose writings in the coming years would come to chart out a literary meeting ground between H. P. Lovecraft and Charles Dickens. A commercial success, the collection earned Ray the appellation of the “Belgian Poe” and announced a new talent, even though this first book had been but the culmination of an already lengthy writing career as a journalist and short-story writer. A year later, however, the author would be arrested on charges of embezzlement and serve two years of a six-year sentence in prison, where he would write some of his best stories. Something of a prequel to such story collections to come as Cruise of Shadows or Circles of Dread, Whiskey Tales finds Ray testing different genres, but already steadfastly opposed to the psychologica