The Mountains of Madness

By Hugh B. Cave

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1587670690
• ISBN13: 9781587670695
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Cemetery Dance Pubns
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.8" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Old-fashioned horror

In this strange, short novel of voodoo, love and history, protagonist Dan Colby wakes up under a full moon in a graveyard on the Caribbean island of St. Joseph. Bewilderment gives way to fear as he realizes he has no memory of how he got there or who he is, besides a name. The last he remembers is meeting a friend in a hotel room in New York City. "Strangely, though, he couldn't remember the name of the hotel or that of the friend." The story then switches to a coffee plantation where an older, sophisticated man and his beautiful young peasant wife greet a young, white visitor, Janice Hall. She is researching an ancestor, a sea captain who had helped the plantation's white owner and some others escape during the slave revolt that led to the island's independence. Cave alternates between Dan's nightmarish stumbling through island terrain, beset by hallucinations, evil desires and fragmented memories and Janice's halting probe into the past. In one hallucination he sees a young girl and attacks, rapes and murders her. The next morning, seeing a similar girl in the flesh, he is powerless to subdue his murderous urge. Chased, cursed, and reviled, he naturally finds his way to the plantation. Voodoo charms meant to curse the white interlopers and the plantation are found throughout the property. Workers refuse to work, accidents plague those who try to help, horrifying nightmares haunt Dan and Janice as they struggle to discover who is trying to destroy them and why. This is an old-fashioned sort of story from a veteran horror writer who has published nearly a thousand pulp-fiction stories and 49 novels in his 70 years of writing. Its tight plot and suspenseful prose transcend the pulp genre however, offering a nuanced view of voodoo in a highly entertaining story.