Broken Meats (The Harry Stubbs Adventures) by David Hambling (book review).
Having greatly enjoyed the first instalment of Harry Stubbs’ adventures, The Elder Ice, I’m pleased to report that retired boxer and occasional debt collector Harry Stubbs remains as engaging as ever in his second outing, Broken Meats. This time, he finds himself chaperoning a Chinese visitor to England by the name of Yang. Inevitably, things get complicated, with the inexplicable death of a man researching the Ripper killings and a séance that goes completely haywire.
Before too long, we find ourselves in a story involving themes reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, namely the use of occult rituals to cheat death. Cleverly, author David Hambling doesn’t simply transpose the story from Rhode Island to southeast London, but instead supposes that others might have come across at least some of the same forbidden knowledge as Ward. In fact, there’s as much here that taps into the alchemical notion of the homunculus, such as the requirements for heat and flesh, as anything else.
Set in the 1920s, Hambling provides plenty of appropriate detail, from name-dropping boxers of the era to realistically, but sensitively, giving characters the sorts of prejudices you’d expect from people of that time. There’s a nod to the ‘Fu Manchu’ novels of Sax Rohmer, though Hambling stays on the right side of modern sensibilities. Stubbs may find the Chinese characters exotic and sometimes alarming, but he doesn’t see them as anything other than people and does his best to understand them through that lens. There’s a very touching scene about halfway through when Stubbs joins the Wu family for dinner and, in the process, learns how to use chopsticks. Towards the end of the book, there’s payback here, too, with Stubbs finding one of the Wu children in mortal danger.
Counterpointing the apparent exoticism of his Chinese employer are the events that follow from the ill-fated séance mentioned earlier. The mixing of traditional spiritualism with Theosophy rings true, both at just about their zenith of popularity at this point. Lovecraft, of course, referenced both in his stories, and Hambling, perhaps a little too obviously, has one bookish character at the séance named Howard Philips, who ultimately meets a sticky end. Lovecraft fans will not only recognise the name but also approve of his demise: HPL and his peers were fond of sending literary namesakes to their doom when writing their own short stories and novellas!
Stubbs remains a compelling narrator. Partly, it’s the style of English used, somewhat like the inner monologue of a hard-boiled American detective in approach, but with the idiom and style of a working-class Londoner. It’s also the way his thought patterns make sense. He sees things through the lens of his experiences. As a former boxer, for example, he describes fights in a certain way, analysing each moment and reflecting on the outcome. Stubbs isn’t a detective as such, but he has a smart, analytical mind more than capable of drawing inferences from what he’s seen before.
Hambling absolutely nails modern weird fiction, getting the right balance between atmosphere, pace, and the hints and glimpses of the supernatural. On top of that, he does this all in a very British way. I’ve got to assume the parallels with the old TV show Minder are deliberate, what with the former boxer fixing situations on behalf of a local crook called Arthur. Even if that’s mere coincidence, the result is a novella that feels rooted in a certain sort of London everyone knows and perhaps has to deal with from time to time. Broken Meats is a brisk, entertaining dive into the world suggested by The Case of Charles Dexter Ward without being mere pastiche and, as such, takes one of Lovecraft’s best ideas and gives it an entirely new spin. Highly recommended.
Neale Monks
August 2024
(pub: Macabre Ink, 218. 119 page small enlarged paperback. Price: £ 7.83 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-94892-975-2)