Occult Fiction: Where to begin or look?

[The Highwayman]

Hello and Happy New Year Everyone,

Having just finished True Detective, I was hoping to take some suggestions and recommendations on occult fiction or something in a similar vein to the show. I was looking for an interesting detective kind of story with twists and turns, and possibly serial killers or killers attached to some sort of occult like connection. Thank you all very much and have a great night!

[The Highwayman]

Anyone? Could be in short story, novel, graphic novel, or any form at all.

[Calidore]

Was there occult in True Detective? I'd thought it was just a straight-up crime show (haven't seen it yet). Could you give some other examples of the kind of stuff you like and are looking for?

[The Highwayman]

Thanks for your response. I greatly appreciate it! There is nothing overtly occultish, such as outright paranormal happenings, however, there is quite a bit of occultish activity going on. I think you'll enjoy it. It's a pretty great and engrossing story, one which is very well paced.

It's kind of difficult I suppose to say what I'm looking for. I guess a detective story, but something more, like True Detective was to me. There's a killer or a serial killer and detectives pursuing him, her, or them, however, there is more in the sense that perhaps there is a sort of mystic quality to it, where perhaps there is freaky stuff happening. Does that make sense at all?

[NikolaiI]

I can't think of too many off the top of my head. . Sherlock Holmes occasionally deals with the occult, right? I say that - I haven't ever read but only a few of original Holmes stories, although I did read a book of, I'm not sure what you'd call it, but fan faction sort of. . . it was from a Mammoth book. . one second, okay. Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes. .

I am going a bit off-topic, but - I mentioned Holmes partly because of the movies; and you were mentioning True Detective, so it came to mind. . .

As far as the occult and detective connected, I don't know of much, but Hard Rain was a nice story, I'm sure you'd like it.

They aren't like what you're describing, exactly, but since you mentioned occult, the best book I've ever read, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship has a bit of that kind of thing, but it's a very mellow book, I'd say would be a good word for it. :) And - Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf, comes to mind.

[JCamilo]

TD is mixing Lovecraft like stories with the detective fiction, hard Boiled case. The genre mixing could be in borges's short Death and compass. Also you could try, albeit not detective like, the tales of Arthur Machen and his novels. The series if filled with American Gothic references, so you could try a pulp with real supernatural background the novel Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg that was adapted to a decent movie with De Niro and Mickey Rourke by Alan Parker named Angel Heart. Alan Moore has an entire series of Swamp Thing comics put together with the name American Gothic with John Costantine and the Swamp Thing investigating supernatural events, at least on the first part of the stories. You can go to the previous references, like Robert Chambers King in Yellow and Ambroise Bierce short stories that provided the Carcosa background. There is no harm reading Poe and Conan Doyle (maybe Chesterton) because the detective duo is clearly their influence. It will not hurt watching Twin Peaks again, it is a supernatural-detective series, albeit the style and philosophy is another.

[NikolaiI]

Lovecraft - that was one I was going to mention but forgot, and Poe too.. good call J :)

[The Highwayman]

Thanks everyone. I appreciate all of the suggestions and will look into them. I just very recently discovered the Yellow King and Carcosa mythology and think I will begin there!

[Dark Muse]

I haven't seen True Dectective but based on what you have said here are a few books that sprang to mind that you might find intersting

Club Dumas
The Dante Club
Foucault's Pendolum
The Secret History

[Calidore]

Just thought of a good one: The List of Seven by Mark Frost. The main character is Arthur Conan Doyle himself, who goes to a seance at which a couple of people are murdered and gets caught up in a bigger plot when he investigates. It's straight-up pulp adventure using Doyle and other real people as characters and is hugely entertaining.

[Pompey Bum]

I can't think of too many off the top of my head. . Sherlock Holmes occasionally deals with the occult, right? I say that - I haven't ever read but only a few of original Holmes stories, although I did read a book of, I'm not sure what you'd call it, but fan faction sort of. . .

The word you're looking for is probably pastiche. Sherlock Holmes pastiches were written from very early on, and unfortunately some draw on the occult in an apparent attempt to sex up Doyle's formula (a dumb idea). The original stories seldom touch on the supernatural, though, and when they do (The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Adventure of the Devil's Foot), there is always a perfectly scientific solution to the mystery. And Holmes, of course, is the very model of a 19th century rationalist.

I'll second Nik's suggestion to read the Sherlock Holmes stories just because they are so much fun. But I would avoid the pastiches if I were you. Even the best of them aren't all that good.

I'm surprised, by the way, that no one has mentioned A Turn of the Screw yet (perhaps because everyone's already read it). The OP may also want to check out an old Scottish novel that has been enjoying a revival lately, James Hogg's The Suicide's Grave: Being the Private Memoirs & Confessions of a Justified Sinner. I haven't read it yet, although I noticed it on one of Dark Muse's lists. Beyond that, I suppose there are the usual suspects: John William Polidori, Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker. As for more modern books, I'm not a big Ann Rice fan, but there's always that sort of thing.

[Paulclem]

There's always the overtly occult Dennis Wheatley with such works as The Irish Witch, The Devil Rides Out, To the Devil a Daughter etc. The style is a bit dated, but they make good thrillers

[Dark Muse]

Just thought of a good one: The List of Seven by Mark Frost. The main character is Arthur Conan Doyle himself, who goes to a seance at which a couple of people are murdered and gets caught up in a bigger plot when he investigates. It's straight-up pulp adventure using Doyle and other real people as characters and is hugely entertaining.

Right after I posted my previous post that one poped in my head, and I thought I should have included it. I really enjoyed that book.

[Carousel]

I read quite a few Dennis Wheatley novels on the occult when very young and they are a surprisingly rattling good read. Unfortunately he finds it impossible to resist lecturing the reader with his far right theology. Wheatley's heroes are all headstrong flag-waving lunatics willing to lay down their bodies, minds and souls for Queen and Country.

If you can ignore his entrenched political views his books make a good read.

[Paulclem]

I read quite a few Dennis Wheatley novels on the occult when very young and they are a surprisingly rattling good read. Unfortunately he finds it impossible to resist lecturing the reader with his far right theology. Wheatley's heroes are all headstrong flag-waving lunatics willing to lay down their bodies, minds and souls for Queen and Country.

If you can ignore his entrenched political views his books make a good read.

Agreed.

It is ostensibly occult based, but this is based upon a view of witchcraft that is a romantic view.

[easy75]

To the Highwayman, I loved True Detective to! I think you are looking for something modern, hard boiled, and with that creepy, hair raising sense of the possibility of the supernatural. When I was watching the series I thought of a book by James Lee Burke. He is one of my favorite authors. Most of his stories are set in Louisiana (like True Detectives) and he writes some of the creepiest villains around. Here is a sort of long review from the authors website, of the book I was thinking about. I bolded the part that might suck you in :) If you've read the New Testament you might remember when Jesus confronted a man possessed by spirits and asked his name, the man replied "My name is Legion, for we are many...."

James Lee Burke, acclaimed by critics as "America's best novelist," "the Graham Greene of the bayou," and "a poet of the mystery novel," returns with his popular character, Dave Robicheaux, in a novel rich with atmosphere, ripe with menace, and filled with the kind of crackling dialogue that has made Burke a consistent New York Times best-selling author.

When a beautiful teenage girl is killed, the victim of a particularly savage rape, New Iberia, Louisiana police detective Dave Robicheaux senses from the very start of the investigation that the most likely suspect, Tee Bobby Hulin, is not the actual killer. Though a drug addict and general ne'er-do-well, Hulin just doesn't fit the profile for this kind of brutal crime.

But when another murder occurs -- this victim a drugged-out prostitute who happens to be the daughter of one of the local mafia bigwigs -- all clues once again point to Tee Bobby Hulin, and the cries for arrest become too loud to ignore. The dead girl's father, however, prefers to take matters in his own hands and sets out to find -- and punish -- the killer himself.

But before Robicheaux can solve these crimes and bring the killer or killers to justice, he is forced to battle his own inner demons, including a painkiller addiction, a habit that begins as the result of a brutal and humiliating beating he suffers at the hands of the mysterious and diabolical character known as Legion. A fixture in the area for years, Legion was once the overseer on a local sugarcane plantation and now gets by doing odd jobs. In temperament, however, he's still the malicious and malevolent bully he always was, a man defined by evil and seemingly possessed with supernatural skills of survival.

Added to the mix, and on the good guy side of the balance sheet, is Clete Purcel, a longtime buddy of Robicheaux's and a confirmed boozer and womanizer. Clete comes to New Iberia for a visit and is quickly drawn into the struggle between the various forces of evil in the town, including Jimmy Dean Styles, a black man intent on maintaining his empire of corruption; Joe Zeroski, a trailer park mafioso with palatial aspirations -- and of course, Legion Guidry, the devil incarnate, in whom Robicheaux finds himself facing a challenge and an enemy unlike any he has ever known. And soon, what began as a duel of wits has turned into a dance of death.

Gothic, dense, brutal, touching, and always compelling, Jolie Blon's Bounce is classic storytelling from a writer who has been dubbed "the Faulkner of crime fiction."

[Calidore]

I've never felt anything occult about James Lee Burke, but I'll second him as being an astonishingly good mystery author, one of very few in the genre that I've tried to read all the works of (the others that come to mind are Carol O'Connell and Charles Willeford).

[easy75]

I've never felt anything occult about James Lee Burke, but I'll second him as being an astonishingly good mystery author, one of very few in the genre that I've tried to read all the works of (the others that come to mind are Carol O'Connell and Charles Willeford).

Glad there's another fan here. I've read almost everything he's written and I can think of several stories where he plays around with the supernatural pretty heavily. Burning Angel, Jolie Blon's Bounce, and In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead come to mind quickly and I am pretty sure there are a few others. Plus it's southern Louisiana. There is always voodoo in the air :)

[Anymodal]

First of all, a novel written by the creator of True Detective: Nic Pizzolatto`s Gavelstone
9486


Also Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce (he invented the first Carcosa in one of his short stories), Edgar Allan Poe, Horacio Quiroga's stories (he is an Argentine writer), etc.

[ennison]

If I'm remembering rightly I think the later volumes of Simon Raven had a tendency towards the occult. Not an area that I like. Raven was an interesting writer though although a quite odd fellow. Bisexual and immoral. He ditched a pregnant girlfriend and when she had the temerity to write seeking financial support for herself and the baby (IMAGINE! The cheek of the BRAZEN HUSSY!)on the grounds that they were hungry he wrote back suggesting she eat the baby!

[nourel]

Hello. Please I am a moroccan girl. I have a BA dissertation to write. I decided to deal with superstition in ' the adventures of Huckleberry Finn ' Mark Twain. Is it a good choice ? can you guide me please ?

[ennison]

Well there is superstition present - with which Twain has much fun (as he has with it in Tom Sawyer also) Do you think there is enough "meat" there for a worthwhile analysis?