THE DEATH WHISTLE. London: Anthony Treherne & Co., Ltd., 1903. Octavo, pp. [1-4] 5-509 [510], original red cloth, front and rear panels ruled in blind, spine panel stamped in gold, white endpapers with geometrical pattern printed in gold. First edition. Edwardian weird mystery thriller. Published later in the U.S. by Street & Smith in 1906 as THE WHISTLE OF FATE. "Pot-boiler thriller, mostly criminous with romantic subplots, 'though introducing genuine, if marginal, SF and supernatural elements to spice the mix. The former involve Rodway, an eccentric scientist who develops a perpetual motion motor, once engaged it generates electrical power indefinitely. No bunkum, the thing actually works. The latter concerns the hero, Andrew Bruce, whose ancient Scots clan is haunted by Shon, the spectral Gairloch piper, whose keening dirge "Buaidh no Bas" presages a death in the family. Alluded to several times in the novel, the "wild wail of his weird pipes" is prominently featured in Chap. XXXI, its consequences learned in the following chapter. The 'Death Whistle' of the title has nothing to do with the above; this "quaint air" acts as a password between members of a criminal conspiracy, bonded under the Seal of Eight Men, vaguely Masonic but mostly to do with jewel thefts, bond frauds, counterfeiting and assorted profitable villainy. The novel is entertaining enough as a mystery, more coherently plotted than many a Marsh thriller, but markedly less weird and uncanny than, say, THE JOSS or A SPOILER OF MEN." - Robert Knowlton. A "creepy thriller." - Sullivan (ed), The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, p. 283. Wilson, Shadows in the Attic, p. 354. Not in Bleiler (1948; 1978) or Reginald (1979; 1992). Hubin (1994), p. 554. Several tiny, faint stains on front cover, spine panel a bit sunned, hairline cracks along inner hinges (inevitable for this book). A very elusive book; Marsh's scarcest weird novel. (#171044).
Price: $1,250.00
No statement of printing.