The Dead of Night by Oliver Onions

In the opinion of myself and others much better qualified, Oliver Onions wrote one of the ‘all-time great’ weird tales, ‘The Beckoning Fair One’, which for me ranks next to Machen’s ‘The White People’ and Blackwood’s ‘The Willows’. This collection carries all of the author’s supernatural tales (a few rare ones may have escaped), though a couple are comedic in tone.

It is fair to say that Onion’s style is unique, and to some an ‘acquired taste’. The narrative can meander sometimes, diluting the supernatural element to a state so rarefied, it can lose its ‘bite’, though even where the meandering is at its worst, it is quite well written, and doesn’t feel like too much of a chore. That said, and especially in ‘The Beckoning Fair One’, he maintains a creeping sense of impending doom, which casual fans of supernatural fiction, who may not have read Onions, will surely enjoy.