Conversations - The Book Graveyard

In this month’s installment of Guide to Gothics, Paperback Warrior teams up once again with Nick Anderson of The Book Graveyard to unearth a paperback relic: Dorothy Daniel’s The Tormented, a 1969 gothic suspense novel from Paperback Library. 

The book was successful enough to warrant two printings, one in 1971 and another in 1974. Since then, this book has lingered for decades in the shadowy corners of vintage gothic collections.
But does it earn its place among the genre’s atmospheric greats?

Together, we dissect the novel through our Gothic Litmus Test. 

Stream the audio there, or watch the video discussion on YouTube HERE.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
All right, welcome back everyone to the Guide to Gothics
here on the Book Graveyard. If you're on the YouTube channel,
if you're listening to it on a podcast, you're listening
to it on The Paperback Warrior with me. As as usual,
he set aside a little bit of time. He got
this new job. He's working as a nanny about thirty
miles out of town, the spooky old House. Eric from

(00:30):
The Paperback.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Warrior, Hello, Hello, Hello, welcome to another exciting addition of
Guy to Gothics. I'm teaming up with Nick here, and man,
this has been a great little series. I think we've
done what like four maybe five of these.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah, this is episode four. I know I've been enjoying
it also.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah, we're getting a lot of feedback on these things,
and people seem to dig these gothic books because no
one else is talking about them.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Nick, Yeah, yeah, I noticed that. I think I went
to go look for for anything any You know, you
really don't see many reviews. See there's a couple of
Instagram accounts, but they just post pictures of the books
and that's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, yeah, they cover arts everything with these gothics. But
you and I like to delve. We like to dig
into the contents. What's between those covers.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
It's fun, No, it is, it is, and it's surprisingly
not romantic.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
No, no, they're more Uh, as we discovered over the
last stuff. Four of these that we've read, there are
more mysteries, central mysteries with most of the for the
most part of really good storytelling.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
It's intriguing.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
I agree, Yeah, it would be. I think the Gothic
Suspense is the best title for it.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
Yeah. Yeah, But to be.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Fair, we haven't grabbed any that said Gothic romance on
the cover.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Oh no, we haven't have weey no, because.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
I you know, I think that they do differentiate between themselves. Yeah,
I don't know. This one doesn't say it just says gothic.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
By the way, this is what we're talking about today,
that Dorothy Daniels The Tormented. Look that beautiful.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
Cover, Eric, that's nice. I really like that.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Do you know who painted it? No, it was painted
by Vic Presio.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he does good stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
I've seen some of his, uh, his book covers, and
he probably did some Men's Adventure Men's Action Venture magazine
art too, I would imagine.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Oh yeah, Men's Speaking of men's adventure magazines, did you
see what? Did you see what came in the mail? Oh?

Speaker 3 (02:32):
Yeah, I heard about this. I heard about that magazine.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
The new issue of Men's Adventure Quarterly is out.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, it just came out hot off the presses. I
got my copy as well over the weekend.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Nice. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
It has a guest contributor. Do you know who it is,
Eric Terrence Mayhew, Yes, it is Terrence. Terrence is one
of them. We love Terrence.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
So I was able to, uh to contribute to this
Man magazine quite a bit. Actually, I wrote most of
the introductions for each of these avintage stories, and then
I also got to contribute a pretty robust article on
fem fatale, the femme fatale tropes in literature. So I

(03:18):
did a little ten book spotlight on fem fatales and
the sort of the how to and the murders and
all that fun stuff. How the mystery came together with
the female seductress murderer kind of thing. But it was
a lot of fun. I worked on it quite a bit.
I probably spent it was probably a month of writing introductions.

(03:42):
And those introductions they're not a far cry from what
I do at Paperwreck. We were on the podcast with
digging into an author's alive, their lives, their career, how
the books or how their stories were published, what books
they published, things like that. So each one of those
little stories is like a little miniature paperback weear podcast
feature on that author, and you know, their their footprints

(04:06):
in literature.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Dude, that sounds awesome. Yeah, I haven't. I just got
it in the mail last night, so I haven't even
had a chance to to really flip through it.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah, it's it's really cool, and I really appreciated Bill
Cunningham uh for for collaborating with me on it, and
of course Bob Dice for asking me, and he's the editor.
It's his baby and relatives, Bill's baby. I was happy
to contribute, and I'm working with him now on the
Ron Lesser Volume three book.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
It's a coffee table book.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
If you've seen the first two, it's a lot of
images and things like that, but this volume three is
a little bit different because it's gonna dig a little
bit more into the authors that wrote paperbacks.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
The first two was.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
More like movies, a little bit of pop culture and
and magazines and books and things like that. But this
is more geared to paperback series titles like S O.
B s and and like Buck Cannon Westerns and things
like that. So I was asked to contribute introductions and
commentary on the series titles and the authors that wrote them.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
So it should be a lot of fun. It's gonna
come out I think early next year.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Oh yeah, that's that sounds great. Those those first two
books were wonderful. The first one is the cover for
the Robert Dietrich series, right, the E Howard Hunt.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
It is, Yeah, from the Steve Minley Private Eye series. Yeah, yeah,
this this book. I'm really excited about it. In fact,
I just over the last month or two, I guess
I wrote the article on Jack Higgins for that book,
and I've also wrote an article on the Buckhannon Westerns
on William Ard and then the transition over to Brian

(05:49):
Garfield and then the other guy that took over that series.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
I can't think it's his name right now, but but yeah,
it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
I'm I'm contributing to it now, still writing stuff, and
as soon as my busy season at work gets done
here about early December, I'm going to return to that
project and writes some more and you've.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
Been killing it.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
You got to you gotta leave some time man for
our gothic.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
Book, right yeah, yeah, yeah?

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Uh, how are we going to get this gothic book? Gal?
All that manly stuff.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Well, what consumed my my month of November so far
has been my John Shirley interview. Because John Shirley, you know,
legendary writers, wrote just about everything, and I really wanted
to talk with him about a lot of different things.
And if you're a fan of men's action adventure from
the eighties, he wrote The Traveler and he wrote The Specialist,

(06:38):
and so I really wanted to dig into those titles.
And one of the things that I wanted to ask him,
and you'll you can follow it on the interview, it's
on paperback Warrior as a podcast in audio or in video.
But I wanted to ask him why he never wrote
any mac Bolan books, or why he didn't write Nick
Carter Killmaster books, because he was right there in the
eighties writing tons and tons of books and tons of titles.

(07:02):
But I was like, why didn't you ever write a
mac Bolan or a kill Master? So his response kind
of surprised me. So you can check it out in
the interview.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, you released it in
the middle of the night.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
Yeah. Always.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
I always pick up and there's a Paperback Warrior episode. Yeah,
eight hours old already.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
Well, you know my idea behind that is if you
put it in the middle of the night, when people
wake up and they grab their phone to check their
text messages, the first thing they're going to see is
the notifications on their screen, and there it is. There
you go, You're back where your notification. It's just my
way to sprinkle in joy in the morning.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
That's night. It brings joy to my life.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
That's right, It's great.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
That's yeah. I love it. I look forward to it.
I got a lot of work to do, and I'm
gonna listen to it while I'm doing work today after
this recording.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
Awesome, sounds great.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
All right, So you want to uh, let's let's get
into this book here. This is Dorothy Daniels The Tormented. Yes,
Dorothy Daniels was a huge she's a huge name of
the of the Gothic suspense era. Yeah, sixties, seventies.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, she's she was a pretty heavy hitter when it
comes to Gothics. I spoke briefly about Dorothy Daniels on
Paperback Where Your podcast, episode number seventy eight, which I
did back in with Tom back in twenty twenty one.
On that feature we did we did well on that episode.
We did a feature on Norman Daniels, a prolific writer
that turned out hundreds and hundreds of like pulp stories.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
He came up with characters and things like that.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
But he also wrote tons and tons of paperbacks, series
title standalone books across a lot of genres. But Norman
Daniels married Dorothy. I can't remember what her maiden name was,
but he married Dorothy in nineteen thirty one when.

Speaker 3 (08:50):
He was twenty six. And Dorothy she had been writing
romance short stories that incorporated like medical stuff.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
And nurse fiction. But her agent suggested that she should
transit into the red hot market of gothic novels, and
so she did. She wrote her first one, which was
called Shadow Glenn. It was published in nineteen sixty five,
and then man she went on a tear. She wrote

(09:18):
tons of these things like Dark Island, The Stone House,
Ghost Song House on Circus Hill, the House of Many Doors,
which I feel like we just have to read. Yeah,
you get the idea. But from nineteen sixty five through
nineteen seventy five, think about that, a ten year period
of time, she had collected sales figures of over ten
million copies, and she wrote. In that ten year period

(09:42):
of times, she wrote one hundred and fifty novels, including
a three book series based on the old TV show
Strange Paradise. So, Nick, something I mentioned on that podcast episode,
it just it fascinates me, is the picture Norman and
Dorothy Daniels in their house for all those years, just

(10:04):
clanging away on the typewriter. And they collaborated on some books.
They also wrote like TV scripts together as well. But
Dorothy would she would type up Norman's manuscripts because he
I think he hand wrote his manuscripts, so she would
type them up, edit them. And my guess is that
they both probably played a huge part of writing each
other's books in terms of like editing, sparkling ideas, and

(10:26):
checking their faults on the books. But think about this
for a second, like, think about this, here's the scene
at the Daniels house. Like I don't know, let's say
like nineteen sixty eight, they have breakfast, then they go
to their corners of their house and they just start
banging out stories on their typewriter. And then at lunch
they converge and they talk about their morning. And you know,

(10:49):
Norman's probably like, I spent you know, two hours getting
this team of commandos.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
Behind enemy lines.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
They can blow up this Nazi train, but I can't
figure out how to get them to the train without
you know, without coming with an idea that that would
give them the location of the train. And She's probably like, well,
just put a spy in, their female spy and he
falls in love with her, and she ends up giving
up the information because she loves them.

Speaker 3 (11:14):
And then she'll tell him.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
About her castle and her ball that she's got coming
up in the castle and how to come up.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
With a poisoning. It's just amazing to me.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
It does, Yeah, especially because they were successful. So not
only do they have this like dream life where the
bouncing ideas off of each other.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
Yeah, but yeah, I mean yeah, I mean she's writing
one hundred fifty books in ten years and he probably
wrote the same.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
And there was what was he writing in the sixties
and seventies.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Oh man, he wrote action adventure.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
He wrote World War two tons of World War two books.
He would write with standalone World War Two novels, action adventure.
He wrote TV tie ins, He wrote a movie at novelizations.

Speaker 3 (11:59):
I don't know if you wrote sci fi.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
He wrote his own. He wrote some of his own gothics.
And there's there's rumors out there that he wrote some
of these gothic novels under Dorothy Daniels. And yeah, and
but he wrote a ton of stuff, man, I mean.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
Yeah, I reviewed one of her books, hold On, let
Me Go Grab.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
It because doing that I was just thinking this up.
So Norman Daniels wrote, He wrote crime noir, He wrote sleeves.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
He wrote military fiction, as I mentioned, military fiction, romance,
the TV Talian novels like like The Rat Patrol for example.
And he also wrote television scripts. He penned scripts for
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Sugarfoot Cult forty five, Zane Gray Theater

(12:50):
for Theater General Electric Theater. And then Norman Daniels was
also writing westerns as well. And he also wrote espionage
because he had the Man from Eight series and he
wrote see I Think I had. He wrote two books
starring a Cia agent named Bruce Barron.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
And.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Oh yeah, I think I got some of his espionage books.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
He also wrote a series of police procedural novels starring
Kelly Carvel. Yeah so anyway all over the place, just
you name it, he wrote it.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, yeah, that's so. Yeah, when I was doing the
So this is the one that I read before the
Maya Temple. Oh yeah, yeah yeah Dorothy Daniels. Yeah, which
she goes to Mexico. If you look, if i'll put
the cover up there, but there is a temple and
the temple has one light on.

Speaker 3 (13:48):
Yeah, it has to write that's hilarious.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
This was so, this was amazing. I was an instant
Dorothy Daniels fan. After the Maya Temple.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
Well, I wrote, I read one of hers. I want
to post it here if I could find it. But yeah,
image of a ghost, and I didn't like it as much.

Speaker 3 (14:08):
No, no, it wasn't as good.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Well, this Maya Temple was very pulpy. I mean it
was like it was pure, almost like Indiana Jones Gothic.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
Oh interesting, okay, yeah it was.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
It was cool and it had like they dosed her
somebody doses her with with LSD or something and she's
like tripping, tripping in this hotel room. It is hilarious.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
So you read one Dorothy Daniels. I read one Dorothy Daniels.
So this is our second Dorothy Daniels experience.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
M hmm.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
Hopefully it's Hopefully it's a good one.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
Yeah, yeah, I mean was it? Did you read it?
Or was it a good one?

Speaker 2 (14:50):
I was teasing her, Yeah, I was teasing. So you
want to kick it off the chapter one?

Speaker 3 (14:55):
What do you want to do?

Speaker 1 (14:56):
So? Yeah, The Tormented By Dorothy Daniels's first public in
nineteen sixty nine. This beautiful cover that I have here
is from nineteen seventy four. Oh y, yeah, I'll put
the other covers up there, the first and the second. Yeah,
I think this is the superior cover. I don't know
if you looked at the other ones.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
But yeah, behind me is is the first one.

Speaker 3 (15:18):
I think the first cover not as good.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
I think there's one where she's like, there's like a
ghost in a graveyard. That one was pretty cool too.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
Yeah. Yeah all right.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
So yeah, our star our start of the show this
go around is Sharon Aldrich. Yeah, she was a young lady.
She grew up on a plantation, estate. There was eleven
miles out from the city of New Orleans. So the year,
the year is eighteen eighty two. That was I was

(15:51):
kind of surprised by that, that it was we went
back a little ways.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
Yeah, yeah, I And honestly, I don't like Gothics from
that time period. I like mic ethics to be modern.
I like them to have, you know, cars and stuff.
But you know, you picked this book, so that's where
I went with him. Else I wouldn't. I wouldn't go
with a stage coach era.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
Well, it doesn't say that it's from stage coach era
on it. I was surprised. But to be honest, they're
not going anywhere. They don't need the car. No, they
don't the villa.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
Yeah yeah, other than just maybe a couple of mentions
of horses or something, that really isn't anything to really
suggest that this is eighteen hundreds.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yeah, so she is. Yeah, the year's eighteen eighty two.
Sharon's mother becomes deathly ill. Her father sinks the all
the family wealth trying to save mom. Yeah. Mom unfortunately
doesn't make it, and then you know, just like just
like what happened with Johnny Cash. Yes, the dad dies

(16:55):
from a broken heart. Yeah, ex hostly, yeah, not too
long after, and then it all just falls apart. The
estate falls apart, plantation falls apart. I think that at
this time Sharon's only seventeen. I did the math. It
doesn't tell you, but yeah, I did the math. So
I think she's seventeen and she has to sell the

(17:18):
estate to pay back the bank. So the bank's taking
most of the money from this estate. And she has
a little, her meager inheritance, and she moves to the
big city of New Orleans.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Yeah, yeah, and she gets enrolled into the I think
I had it written down here. It's like a finishing school.
Miss Claiborne's finishing school for her education, and she ends
up studying really to be a teacher, which back then
they call it a governess. When you're at home teaching school.

(17:52):
She's going to be a or a governess.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
Oh yeah, way to educate me there, Eric, I didn't
realize that. I thought just another word for nanny.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
No, she's a governess. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
Governess is as a popular thing in Gothics, but you
also see it in the movies, like I don't know
if you ever saw The Innocence, it's a black and
white movie based off of Turn of the Screw by
Henry James. Yeah, she's she's a governess. She goes and
lives at the mansion with these kids. And that's a
great movie. We should review that movie on here. Sometimes

(18:23):
this is a little after thing. Yeah, it's a great movie.
Have you ever read Turn of the Screw?

Speaker 1 (18:28):
I have it? I have it.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
Though, we should review that.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
Perhaps we should review that next, because that is a
that's a gothic.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
It is, it's gothic. Is a gothic horror, gothic suspense.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
It's just straight up gothic. I would say gothic. It's debatable.
It could be gothic horror, it could be gothic suspense.
There is supernatural in it. There's a supernatural.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
Okay, well yes, and no, don't spoil.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
It already yet. Well, speaking of supernatural, this is why
we chill is this book because we've been talking about
trying to find the supernatural gothic and this one touted supernatural.
It looked like it was gonna happen.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
Yeah it did.

Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, we're not there yet.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
We're not there yet.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
And Sharon isn't at the at the mansion yet. Well,
she's at the train station. She's she's answered a letter
from from this guy named Craig who's requested a governess,
and so she submitted her resume just like we all
do nowadays. You submit your resume hope you get the job.
So she sees that there's a request for this governess

(19:33):
job and the governess is going to be taking care
of this man, this man's daughter named Cassie. So she
submits her resume and as the book begins on the
first page, she's been accepted. And she hasn't even met
the family or anything. She just got word of her
resume was accepted and she's got the job. So she

(19:53):
arrives by train at the train station right outside of town,
and she's kind of anxious because she doesn't the family.
She doesn't know anything about them. She just knows she's
going to go there and get a brief interview and
then probably just go straight to work. But there she
ends up meeting as servant of her childhood home named Marshall,
and Marshall caes her and because Sharon and she's like Marshall,

(20:17):
and she now realizes that for meeting Marshall that she's
going to be returning to her childhood home, the Pillars,
which is what it was called.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
Oh yeah the Pillars.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
I France mentioned that, Yeah, she's going to be working
at her childhood home, which is kind of a tough
thing to do really.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Yeah, it would be. And she's instantly like, oh no,
I'm not doing this. Yeah, and then Marshall convinces her like,
you've got to come meet this girl. She needs you. Yeah,
And I think that really sets up the whole reason
of why why she stays through all this turmoil that
she's about to go through.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah, because you think about it, She's returning to her
childhood home where her mother died, her father died, the
house got sold off. I mean, imagine growing up in
this full plantation and then losing everything and then they're like, hey,
we want you to come here and and act as
a as an a police this house that you no
longer own or live in. So but so anyway, so

(21:12):
she so, yeah, she she gets on the on the
on the ride there with Marsha when he takes her
to the house, and what happens.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
What happens We meet the family the Boma. Yes, yeah,
so we got we got the dad Craig.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Yeah, he's a.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
He's a gentleman. He's a southern gentleman. Yeah, very professionally
loves his daughter and he's very excited that Sharon is
there to help out. And then we got then then
we got Emily, his wife. She does not love the daughter.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
No, she does not love Craig.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
Craig, she doesn't really like people or like being alive.
I guess I don't know.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
She doesn't. Yeah, you're right.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
She doesn't love herself. Yeah, she doesn't love Craig. She
doesn't love Cassie. She doesn't love herself, but she does
love her her sister, Emily. I know.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Her sister is Sarah.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
Sarah, that's right, Yeah, Emily is is who we're talking about.

Speaker 3 (22:13):
Yeah, Sarah Sarah.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
If you thought, yeah, if you thought, you met Emily
and you're like, oh damn, this is terrible, and they're like, well,
check this out. Here's Sarah one of the most absolutely
miserable people ever.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah, she's absolutely a terror. And yeah, she's awful. And
then there's also sporadically going in and out of the
house is Craig's brother. His name is Bart and they
and they say at the beginning I think in the
first chapter that he's a gambler.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
Yeah, a lot of.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
So we don't. We don't. She doesn't meet bart yet,
she just knows of him.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
And then of course there's the daughter of Cassie, who's
very was she excited at first?

Speaker 2 (22:55):
I know, she like instantly is like, yeah, Cassie isn't
all that excited about Sharon's arrival because and she explains
later on, I don't know if you many tell that
part now or not, but so she when Sharon goes
up and she meets the family, she goes up to
get introduced to Cassie and they spend a little time together,

(23:18):
and Cassie explains that anyway, we already had two teachers
but they quit because of the ghosts, and Sharon's like, oh,
that's just you just have a crazy, make believe imagination,
like you know, there's no such thing. And she's like, no,
there were two people here before you that had the
same job, and they've all been ran out of the
house because of the ghost. And then Cassie says that

(23:40):
the ghost touches her sometimes and that you can't actually
see the ghost, but she's there.

Speaker 3 (23:46):
And then.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
Sharon tells Cassie that there's some childhood books up in
the attic. She asked if she's ever been up there
to check out the attic, and Cassie says no, And
Sharon's like, hey, there's a lot of my childhood looks
up there in a drawer, and I'll go with them
for you. So she goes up to the attic and
when she's in the attic, she hears this female voice

(24:09):
call her name, and you know, and to set the
atmosphere of this place, this place has seventeen rooms, nick
five bathrooms. It's got two drawing rooms. It's got a library,
a conservatory, a ballroom, dining room, breakfast room, kitchen. It's

(24:30):
a charming abode.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
It's the house from Clue.

Speaker 3 (24:33):
Right.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
Yes, well it's your typical, you know, huge, huge, wealthy
family house.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
It's your typical murder mystery house.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
Murder mystery house. Yeah, it's perfect. Now. Then there's also.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
Some talk, I guess in I think this first chapter,
there's some talk about a girl named Janelle who was
apparently attacked by dogs. But we don't know the whole
story yet, but this plays a huge part in the book.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yeah, Cassie mentions it that her. What would it be
her cousin, her aunt, because it's the niece of the
mom and the sister.

Speaker 3 (25:11):
I guess it would be her first cousin.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah. So she was nineteen year old woman that was
living there when they first bought the house, and she
was killed by wild dogs. Torn apart, Yeah, torn apart
by the dogs. They let you know that it was
brutal and wild dogs.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
And then there are some people in the house that
that Sharon remembers and knows, like, for example, Floe Crawford,
who is the she's the cook, she's the servant, she's
kind of the head of the servants at the house.
And Flow and Sharon knew each other from the previous
Sharon's previous life there, so it Flows the nice lady.

(25:53):
She's sort of the ally here, so she's kind of
she's kind of cool. E. I don't know how far
you want me to go with this. You've got notes
that I do.

Speaker 1 (26:03):
But well, well, first we got after hearing this story
from Cassie. You know, Sharon doesn't really believe it, but
she did hear those. Yeah, she did hear her name
being called, and she goes out into the the family
cemetery where her parents are out in the lawn. Yes,
which technically she still owns. Yes, it was part of

(26:27):
the deal that she this is really her cemetery. So
out there is mom and dad, and then surprised they
also buried Janelle there, which they weren't supposed to.

Speaker 3 (26:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yeah, Sharon explains to them, Hey, look in the in
the settlement, she was heir to the grape the grave site,
so she has a say so one who gets buried there,
And they buried Janelle there without telling her, So that's
why they had to tell her kind of about the situation.
Else they're just like, hey, f off, we're not telling anything.
But it's like, hey, I gotta note, I gotta know

(26:59):
why this strange one is buried there.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
Yeah. While she's out there, she hears her name again. Yes,
but it's not it's not threatening, it's just you know.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
Yes, I'll say.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
When she comes back inside, she has a long conversation
with Craig and he does the unexpected. He actually confirms
mm hmm, Okay, yeah there is a ghost, and.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
Yeah there is a ghost, and yes, Janelle was ripped
apart by wild dogs.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
And by the way, you aren't just selected for your
talent and skill and your resume.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
We picture for a reason.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah, we know who you are. We think it's your
mom that's tormenting us, the ghost of your mom.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
So if we bring you here, maybe the ghost will
go away.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
And Sharon's like, I'm just leaving, like I don't want
to have any part of this, Like you're absolutely insane.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
All of you are insane.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
But then you know, but because she's hearing her name
spoken by a ghost, She's like, Okay, but wait, maybe
I should stay.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah for mom. I gotta stay for mom, And I
gotta stay for this, for this little girl because her
mom sucks.

Speaker 3 (28:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
And this whole time through these first two chapters, Sarah
and Emily are ghastly like they're just the worst humans
Towards Sharon. They degrade her and kind of make fun
of her, poke at her. They tell her that she's
not wanted, she's definitely not supposed to be around Cassie
or Craig, like they hate her, like with a passion.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
Yeah, they blame her for the ghosts, even though the
the ghost was around before came back. Yes, so it's
not just you know, these ghostly whispers, which would be fine.
If there was just ghostly whispers, that's no big deal.
But there's all out attacks, there's screaming ghosts. Now while

(28:57):
Sharon and the family are sitting around talking about it. Yeah, coincidence,
vases get thrown across the room like stuff gets smashed.
It gets crazy.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Yeah, it gets escalated from like the first twenty minutes
of Poltergeist to like the middle half of poulter Ghost.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
So I have a question for you here is what
did you think of this, this first encounter with the
violent ghosts.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Yeah, because the things that are being picked up and
thrown kind of kind of led me to believe that
maybe there is a ghost because there's going to be
a lot of mechanical stuff that's going to be happening
in eighteen ninety or whatever to make things fly off
like that.

Speaker 3 (29:41):
I mean, you would have to have a lot of explanation.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
Like I'm thinking, oh, well, it's probably one of the
sisters behind a wall or something with a rope and
they're making I was like, there's no way that's gonna fly.
This must be a ghost, like it literally ghost throwing stuff. Yeah,
then it led me to believe, like maybe instead of
a ghosts. Maybe it was a telekinetic power that one
of the people in the house had.

Speaker 3 (30:05):
What did you think?

Speaker 1 (30:07):
I thought that the whisper ghost was real, and I
thought that the other one was a setup because we
still haven't met what was his name, Bart? Yeah, Bart, Yeah,
we still haven't met Bart yet. Now this stuff is
going crazy while he's not there, So there's someone missing,
and I don't know, just stuff. Usually ghosts are more subtle, yeah,

(30:31):
or at least, like you said, this is the beginning
of poultry Geist and then the end like there was
no between, there was no build up, and I was like,
this is just too crazy. This has gotta be a
human being.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
And and then as chapter three things it's classic Gothic
suspense gaslighting because Sarah comes upstairs and she's like, Sharon,
we're so sorry.

Speaker 3 (30:58):
We've behaved awful.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
We really do appreciate you being here, and we really
want you to stay. Please stay, We'll be better now.
It's a classic gaslighting, and Sharon's like, I don't know,
like this is all just so weird. And then later
in that chapter, Sharon and Craig have a sort of

(31:20):
a heart and heart conversation, and then we learn, well,
I should say during the ghost attack, Sharon notices that
Craig goes to comfort Sarah, but Sarah like slides all
the way to the other side of the couch and.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
Won't go near him. Emily his wife, Emily, Yeah, I
keep saying, Sarah.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
It gets It's confusing because they don't name Emily for
a little while, she was missus Beaumont.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
Yeah. Yeah, So Craig goes to his wife and she
slides all the way down the couch to get away
from him, Like she don't even be touched by him.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
So he tells her in chapter three like, hey, Emily
and I don't have a good relationship. Emily does, really,
you know it doesn't. We just don't have a good
relationship because because Sharon's like, what's up?

Speaker 3 (32:05):
You know, why? Why? Why didn't Why is she acting
like that? And then in chapter three she also meets Bart.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
Yeah, she's uh. She comes out of her room and
he like tacks her, Like right, what is that was
such a weird?

Speaker 2 (32:20):
Yeah, he was just like hovering in the hallway just
waiting for her to come out.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
I thought he like put his hand over her mouth.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
And was like he did quiet, Yeah, don't tell anyone,
I'm here. Yeah, it was weird. Yeah, I don't know
really why he did that, but yeah, but she.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
Is like, ah, you jerk. And then he's like we
want you want some coffee and she's like okay. Sure
likes him because he's really charming. He's a he's a gambler, playboy,
good looking. He is like a younger version of Craig
the Dad.

Speaker 3 (32:49):
Yeah he is.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
So there we have kind of like we have all
the players, we have the setup, so we have so
now we have our mystery, like what you know, why
is this really a ghost? Why is Emily and Sarah
like that? Why aren't they the way they are? Why
doesn't Emily care about her own daughter?

Speaker 3 (33:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (33:10):
I was like, what's going on there? Maybe it had
something to do with the dead girl and the cemetery
or something, right, you know, is there a love triangle
that gone gone bad?

Speaker 3 (33:20):
Yeah? Well it seems like there's a lot of bad
people in the house in a way because Flow that morning.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
The next morning, she warns Sharon that Bart is a
bad person, like he's a scoundrel. She tells him he's
a dirty scoundrel. Yeah, and to stay away from him.
So and then Sharon's like, wait a minute, So Sarah's
a bad person, Emily's a bad person. Bart's apparently a
bad person. Like there's it's starting to show through that

(33:47):
Craig is like really the shining light here, Craig, Craig
and Cassie are great.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
Yeah, and she wants to leave, but she stays for
one her mom. If her mom is really upset, she
wants to put her at ease. And then and then
Cassie the daughter. She can't just leave this poor girl
with these horrible people.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
Right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
And then Sharon and and Craig have another heart's a
heart conversation, but it's more of like a deep discussion
about Cassie and all the things that are happening there
with the ghost. And I could tell, like just from
their conversation that they have a mutual respect for each other,
Like Craig really respects Sharon, and she really respects him

(34:34):
as a dad, And even though he's having a bad
relationship with his wife, she still respects him as a husband.
She could see that he's trying to run a business
and trying to run a family, and he's got a
lot on his plate.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
Yeah, not to mention having a stupid ghost hanging around
all right the cook.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
Do you remember what was the cook's saying, Flo Flow?
So Flow is like, oh, yeah, there's ghosts here, she
tells Sharon, and then she's like, but they don't. The
ghost stuff doesn't happen after everyone goes to bed, and
I was like, okay, well, then you're setting it up
to to where it's not a ghost, right, So it's

(35:11):
a little disappointed.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you make a
good point there.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
And you know, once again, I'm gonna bring up Scooby Doo.
I know you like to point out that I bring
up Scooby Doo, but it is it's legit, Like it
feels like an episode of Scooby Doo where someone's got
to costume bon and they're trying to scare people away, yeah,
from the house for some monetary purpose, like they want
to buy the land or yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
Yeah, it was kind of like maybe Bart is teaming
up with somebody to do that, and oh, I guess
we should mention I don't know if you want to
mention it here or not, but about Sarah and her
fascination with Bart.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
Oh yeah that.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
Yeah, man, she's in love with Bart. Yeah yeah, she is,
like badly, and he wants nothing to do with her.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
No, who would.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
He doesn't like her, he doesn't like her at all,
And she's like obsessed with Bart.

Speaker 3 (36:09):
She wants him badly.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah yeah, so's she already didn't like Sharon. And the
second that Bart shows even the tiniest little attention to Sharon,
she's even worse. Now.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yeah, she's let me go get another gallon of gas
and throw it on this fire. But then we get
to the nighttime and Sharon decides. After there her discussion
with Craig about things happening and kind of getting a
little bit of new respect for him, Sharon goes for
a walk at night, which this is typically in Gothic suspense.
This is where something major is going to happen, like

(36:44):
the character is going to get run over by a
horse or or attempted to get run over by a horse,
or falls down a well or something sinister. But she
just goes for a walk and she ends up meeting
Craig outside and they talk some more and they discuss
Bart's idea. Bart has this idea of getting to the
heart of the matter, and how's Bart want to get

(37:05):
to the heart of the matter.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
What does he want to bring in?

Speaker 1 (37:08):
He wants to bring in a medium. Yeah, but it's his.

Speaker 3 (37:11):
Friend, Yeah, guy named John, John Mackie Mackie.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
Yeah, and he's mentioned it before before Sharon showed up,
but no one was into it, especially Emily and Sarah.

Speaker 3 (37:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
And then yeah, like Sharon and Craig talk a little
bit more about that, but like, hey, you know, Bart's
got this idea about this medium and they talk about
it and I can't just remember it. Do they decide
that they're going to pursue the medium based on their conversation?

Speaker 3 (37:41):
I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
I think it was brought up. And then the stuff
with the ghost on the stairs happens.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yeah, yeah, Well, well, when they come back from the
from the walk, they end up going back to the
house together, even though they didn't leave together, Like Craig
was just out walking by himself. Then he just met
Sharon who just happen to be walking by herself. But
when they come back to the house, Sarah's there, and
Sarah's like, oh, I see what's happening. You're both out
on a midnight walk together. She's like, I'll be sure

(38:11):
to go tell Emily about this. Yeah, And Craig's like,
don't even bother, I'll go tell her right now, right
just to get you out out of the picture on
this rumor that you're going to propose, I'll just tell
her right now.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
I hate Sarah so much. Yeah, kick her out of
the house, Craig, what are you thinking?

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Well, then you get to that part where you're talking about,
because that night, I think Sharon hears like some screaming
or something and she goes out the hallway.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
Yeah, it's a there's a vase that's smashed downstairs, and
then she goes Yeah, she goes out of her room
and she's going down the stairs and there's a ghostly.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
Mist, yeah, gray mist.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
And and there you have a little another little gendre
trope of the attack on the main character.

Speaker 3 (39:02):
So there's a trap for Sharon on the stairs.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
There is, but it's not the ghost like you would
think it would be. The ghost seems to be protecting her. Yes,
So they find so the family comes out, like Craig's out,
Sarah's out, there's everyone kind of witnesses this ghost and everything.
And then there is little stones laid laid on the stairs. Yeah,

(39:28):
there's a trap.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
For her, Yeah, for her to fall down the stairs
and to get her out of the picture. But the
ghost kind of like keeps her from falling.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
The ghost saves.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
Her, which now says, Okay, maybe it is her.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
Mother, right, maybe it is And yeah, maybe they the
mom does want these people out of here. She's sick
of them. It's like a beutle juice. They're just really
annoying people. They just want them out of their house.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
Yeah, and then we go back to more gas lighting
because now Emily goes back up to Sharon after that
whole incident and everything's going crazy, and she goes back
to her and apologizes, please stay.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
Now there's another attack though, there's they go downstairs to discuss.

Speaker 3 (40:10):
The miss Yeah, and while.

Speaker 1 (40:12):
They're sitting around and they're like, they describe the rocks,
and Bart's like, all those are the rocks that I
put around the jail's Janelle's grave, So why would they
be out here on the stairs.

Speaker 3 (40:25):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
And you think it's random, but it's not.

Speaker 3 (40:28):
It's not random.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
It's not random. And then uh, while they're discussing it,
then there's another Uh, storm of ghosts and stuff gets
smashed and and the ghost specifically targets Sarah. Yeah, they're
in her big mouth. Yeah, shut up. She won't leave
everyone alone, and they like throws a chair or something

(40:50):
at her.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
So at this point I was thinking that it may
be Cassie's telekinetic power causing this. Oh, that's what I
was thinking. Well, she's like, she's the one that's causing problems.
I want her to be gone, but I was wasn't sure.
And then you get the Then you get the gas
lighting from Emily being Sharon Sharon to stay, and then

(41:15):
Bart announces to the family that John Mackey, the medium,
is going to be coming.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
Yeah. They're finally like, okay, it's time. Yeah, I am
to get my good buddy the medium in here.

Speaker 3 (41:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
Then chapter seven is the aforementioned medium seance.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Yeah. Yes, and it's straight out of like a nineteen
fifties movie.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
Yeah, unseen yep. The ghost is basically the ghost says
in the seance.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
The ghost says Sharon, Sharon, there's danger. Oh, I'm trying
to help my dear, my dear, and that's it.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
That's all.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
Yeah, it was good.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
But Sharon immediately recognizes the voice as her mother's.

Speaker 3 (42:05):
Yeah, that's my mom my, mommy.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Yeah. I gotta say that some of this was like
it's really obvious. I was kind of bummed on the
I was like excited that there was ghosts, but then
it was just so.

Speaker 3 (42:19):
Friendly, right, Yeah, it's a very friendly ghost.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
Yeah. It's kind of was ruining the spooky atmosphere. And
then I still thought that the the stuff being thrown
was somehow a real person. And yeah, like you said,
is it Bart trying to take over because he's a gambler,
he's probably in debt. Yeah, so maybe he got together
with this guy and they're going to try and scare
him and somehow he's gonna get it or that's that's

(42:46):
kind of what I thought was going on. Yeah, because
the ghostly stuff is just too ridiculous, Like when there's
the ghost is screaming and it sounds like they're screaming Sharon. Yeah,
but it's so crazy that it's like I think it's Sharon. Yeah,
and the other ghost does stay Sharon.

Speaker 3 (43:07):
Right.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
So yeah, the medium, he's terrified, he's like nothing ever,
nothing like that ever happened to me before. And he
runs out into the into the night. He's out of there.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Yeah, yeah, he's gone. And then I have here. Chapter eight,
Bart goes and talks to Sharon and he does the
you know the kiss.

Speaker 1 (43:34):
No, that's Craig. Craig and an outburst kisses. Sharon takes
off to his library. Bart talks Shannon into going in
and telling Craig that it's all good, which she agrees
with and does, and then everything is okay.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
And then the next morning is when Bart tells Sharon, Hey,
Craig's falling in love with you.

Speaker 3 (43:51):
Yes, and let's plan a ball. Let's have a ball.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
Yeah, yeah, How are we going to fix all these
problems that are going going on?

Speaker 3 (44:01):
More people to the problem.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
We need some joy in this house, that's the problem.
We're gotta have a giant ball there's a giant ballroom.
We're not even using it. No, you get in there,
dust it pull the the white sheets off of everything.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
Nick, here's what they're doing. They're gonna have a dance off.
That's what it is. They're gonna solve every conversation with
a dance off.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
They're honestly, that would be amazing because at this point,
I'm like, something different needs to happen because I'm kind
of losing losing it here, right, yeah, because it's just
the same thing up and number where it's like nice
ghosts scary ghosts. Yeah, and then there's not enough unfolding,

(44:44):
right and you know, at least bring the dogs back in.
What's up with those those killer dogs? And they do?
We get more, We get some killer dogs. It kind
of kicks it into gear here a little bit around
ball time.

Speaker 3 (44:58):
We definitely get some more dogs. We're doubt about it.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
So Sharon is like, oh, this is when she gets poisoned.
She's uh, she eats a cookie from the kitchen. She
goes upstairs and she's eating the cookie and she's like
takes eats half of it and she goes, I don't
feel good and throws or whatever.

Speaker 3 (45:16):
Yeah, poison cookie. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
We're like, okay, another human thing that's happened, like the
stones on the stairs, like the stays on the stairs,
is another human interaction that's caused this possible trap.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
Right, So yeah, so now we have there's well she
doesn't this kills me because she doesn't know that it's
a poison cookie, which comes right, obviously, you were fine,
you ate the cookie and then now you're throwing up yes. Cookie.
And then a couple of nights later, she has some ham.
There's some ham left outside of her door, and she's like, oh,

(45:50):
she left ham for me. Yes, flow left ham for me,
a plate of ham. And but she's not hungry. So
she hears barking outside. She sees the wild dogs running
through the yard and she's like, I know what will
make them go away. I'm going to feed them this
ham out in the door, and the dogs eat the ham.

(46:10):
And then the next day she goes for a walk
and there's dead dogs littered throughout the estate. Yeah, you
know what could have killed these dogs?

Speaker 3 (46:20):
Eric? And then you realize that the food was.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
Then yeah, So then she's like, oh it was it
was poison. She goes down to the plantation, I think
to talk to Craig and she finds meat laying around.
Someone's feeding the dogs to keep them around. And then
she realizes that, you know what, Hey, maybe Janelle, maybe
it wasn't random that she was killed. Maybe someone murdered her.

(46:48):
They set her up to be eaten by wild dogs.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
Yes, correct, And then we have a ball. And then
we have a ball. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
In that instant with the poison attempt, Sharon, she does
call out to the ghost.

Speaker 3 (47:06):
She's like, help me.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
Here with this, after I'm almost been murdered by poison.

Speaker 3 (47:11):
But she does call out to her mom, which she
thinks is the ghost. She calls up to her mom,
but she doesn't hear anything back.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
It's just no response, all right. So we're just gonna
let you know right now that we're gonna spoil the
ending of this book. If you're planning on reading The Tormented,
then stop watching now. Maybe skip ahead. I'll put the
time stamps or whatever. Yeah, because this ending is just
too cherry not to talk about. Eric.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Yeah, it was a dip into some pretty crazy waters.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
So we got the ball. There's a huge fight before
the ball, but we we ball on. So we're at
the ball, they dance with each other angrily. Sharon is like,
you know what, I've had it. I'm out of here.
She goes upstairs to go pack and to get the
hell out of there, and who shows up at the door.

(48:03):
But it's Sarah and she's got a gun. He's got
a gun trained on Sharon. Yeah, and she's not letting
her out alive. She's gonna march Sharon out the front
door to be eaten by those wild dogs, which I
was really hoping for us, man, I hope somebody is
eaten by wild dogs. And Emily comes in and is like, no, Sarah,

(48:27):
we're not doing this, We're not killing Sharon. And Sarah
has cracks now and she admits that she was the
one who killed Janelle because she loves Bart so he's
getting Janelle out of the way. And then after she
admits it, then ghost Janelle shows up and attacks Sarah,
and Sarah freaks out and runs outside, and Emily follows,

(48:51):
and Sarah runs and jumps into the bayou why not
and Sarah and Emily runs in after her to try
to save her, and.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
What happens They both drowned.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
The Yeah, it was kind of like all this stuff
that's happened in the house, with all the ghost stuff.
I mean, I get that this was a pretty big
revelation or whatever, but to just run out and jump
into a lake, this seemed kind of cop out.

Speaker 3 (49:21):
I don't know, it's go jump in a lake.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
It's yeah, what should we do with how should we
end this? They both go jump in a lake, And
not only that, but a year later, Sharon and Craig
get married.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
Yeah, and they've got Cassie is basically their daughter and
the marital daughter.

Speaker 3 (49:39):
And the happy ending. Yeah. It takes me back to
the beginning of this.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
Conversation when we were talking about the Daniels sitting at lunch.
I mean, does Dorothy go, how do I kill off
these two bad people in this house?

Speaker 3 (49:50):
Damn'm jumping a lake, pass.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
Me the sugar, you know or whatever, jumping a little Yeah,
maybe I can do that this afternoon.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
I'll work on It's like, yeah, the wild dogs is
definitely Norman was put in some more wild dogs.

Speaker 3 (50:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:09):
I think the wild dogs do burst into the house again.
I think the door gets open and wild dogs run in,
and then Sarah runs out of the house. I remember,
but something like I know the dogs are there, and
she runs and jumps into the Yeah, into the bayou. Man.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
I thought it was kind of cool at the end
when they hear the noises outside or whatever, and someone
goes and opens the door and those dogs are there
and they're coming in, and then they start shooting. I
think they used a shotgun or something and shoots two
dogs at least Oh, yeah, yeah, killing.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
I was like that was kind of.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
It was kind of ominous that they heard the knocking
outside and they're like, now confronting this evil I guess
in a way, and they end up shooting those.

Speaker 3 (50:51):
Dogs, right.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
At the same time, though, I almost had throughout this
book with all the talks of the dogs outside and stuff,
it kind of reminded me a little bit of Sherlock
Holmes Hound of Baskerville with the dog talk, you know,
because they were like the hound, the hound did this,
the hound did that.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
Oh yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
Can't go out at night on the moors because the hound.
It kind of reminded me a little bit of that
too interesting.

Speaker 1 (51:16):
I was just I was watching that last night actually coincidentally,
the Basel Bone, the Basil raft Bone version.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
Yeah, I hear he's the best Sherlock Holmes, I think so.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
Yeah, but I don't know, I haven't watched a lot
of it. I don't know much about Sherlock Holmes.

Speaker 3 (51:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
So yeah. The ending, the ending is that are the
are the ghosts real? Eric? Were they real?

Speaker 3 (51:39):
Yeah? Most definitely? Yeah, They're real, Yeah, most definitely.

Speaker 1 (51:42):
And I yeah, I think it was just as I
saw it. It was the the mom ghost was the
nice one the angry ghost was Janelle. Yeah, the attempts
on her life as far as the rocks and the
poison were sarah mm hmm. It was all pretty I
don't know, pretty face value there. It was the mystery
kind of fell fell apart after the medium, I think

(52:08):
I was like, Okay, I got it now.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
Yeah, So before we bring on our little tests here
to determine if this was a gothic Uh, did you
enjoy the book? What were your Did you enjoy the
book overall?

Speaker 1 (52:21):
I did until the part where I said that something
needs to change. I was like okay, and I was
also disappointed because I wanted it it. Yeah, it had ghosts,
but I mean was it creepy at all? Were the
ghosts parts creepy? It's just the parts where it was
like the violent poultry geist was just so over the
top that I was like, this is too much. This

(52:42):
isn't this isn't ghostly anymore. It doesn't have that feel
to it. So it was kind of a difficulty in
that aspect.

Speaker 3 (52:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
In her book, Images of a Ghost is kind of
the same thing. There's a there's a spirit that keeps
haunting the house. There's a ghost and they're like they're
trying to determine if it's real or not. It wasn't
real in that book. It was all like a I
don't know, projector or something. But it was kind of silly.
But this book, the only scary part for me really

(53:11):
was this at the very beginning, when she's in the
attic looking for those books and she hears the voice.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
I was like, oh.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
I was like, and I think I sent you a
text and said, oh, I'm on like page fifteen.

Speaker 3 (53:19):
This is kind of creepy. But that was it.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
Then it kind of went away. The idea of the
menacing dogs outside sort of had like a you know,
a nineteen seventies early eighties, you know, when animals attack,
feel like the pack or something like that. So I
kind of I kind of like that part of it.
But like you said, I started to get bored with

(53:43):
this book. I read it in about two days, but
I started getting bored after the recycled chapters. You know,
something happens, they talk about it, there's gas lighting, back
to square one, have breakfast start over again, some great,
some stupid thing happens. It started getting really repetitive.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
Yeah, there was no resolution along the way. There was
nothing happening. It was just saying back and forth and
back and forth. Yeah, and it was kind of throwing
like there was just so much shade on Sarah right
at the beginning that it's not like it was built
up to be, Oh, she's the villain, surprised, Like yeah,
of course from the first sentence, the moment you meet her,

(54:20):
you're like, yeah, she's the villain. She's terrible.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
Yeah. Yeah, I don't know for me.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
You know, if I was rating this like zero to five,
I would say, like maybe two point seventy five.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
Maybe it's just slightly above average.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
Yeah, but I mean it's still just going through the
motions for the most part. Yeah, And if she was
going through the motion, if the author was going through
the motions like this, I could see her turning out
one hundred fifty books in ten years, because there really
is a whole lot.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
Of substance here.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
Yeah, there's a lot of recycled things for a majority
of the of the book. And you know, and it
kind of something you and I talked about before we
even started this courted interview was like your modern TV
shows like you see on like Amazon and Netflix and
Hulu where they have like twelve episodes and they're all
like forty nine minutes each. Man you get into like

(55:13):
episode three, five, seven, nine, whatever, it's just boring nonsense.
There's just people talking in a room and then going
to another room to talk. Nothing actually happens. So it's
always been my theory is like on those shows, they
come up with a beginning and they come up with
an end, and they're like, just fill in the rest
because we only had about two hours of story here.

Speaker 1 (55:33):
It's what it is. Yeah, because I don't make movies,
don't make money anymore like they used to, so they
just stretched it out into like the whole season.

Speaker 3 (55:43):
Season.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
It probably would have been a great movie if you
wouldn't have stretched it out into these twelve hour long episodes.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
Yeah, I've watched so many of them that I posted
on my own Facebook recently. I was like, I'm just done.
I don't want to watch any more of this garbage. No,
I don't care how great the trailer looks, and I
don't care or how great the first episode is. You know,
by episode three is just gonna be dialogue, nonsense, nonsense
for forty five minutes, and you're gonna get four minutes
of actual Hey, we're gonna propel the story now with

(56:10):
these four minutes.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
Yes, I'm not into it.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
I agree, thanks for tuning into grumpy old guys. Yes, gosh, yeah,
well man, I so agree with you. I have such
a hard time and my wife always wants to watch
check out dor stuff. Shes like, well what about this?
And like you said, it's like by the third episode,
I'm like, okay, Like even if they nail, even if

(56:37):
they're like this is good, Like the Stranger Things that
first season was awesome, they did it, but after that,
like the stories that, I don't know, it's over. Man.

Speaker 3 (56:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
Now we got another season coming out, which it looks
almost kind.

Speaker 3 (56:50):
Of post apocalyptic. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
I don't know what to make of it. I'm not
sure for all watch it or not.

Speaker 3 (56:56):
I don't even know.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
I think I only made it to like two maybe
two a half seasons.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
Yeah, there's nothing really all that original about any of it. Yeah,
upside down, it's just another just a parallel dimension like
you see in all these Marvel movies, you know, alternate dimension.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
And to be fair here we have the same complaints
about this book that was written in nineteen what I
say sixty four. That is Yeah, It's just I think
when you're just cranking out so many of these things
that it just kind of gets a little watered down.
And yeah, and what are you gonna do with it?
I mean, does it deliver in the aspects of for

(57:34):
the Gothic fans, I mean, yeah, kind of, but it
has the they had to be getting getting tired of
it getting a little stale. I know, if you compare
this to the shadow guest that the first one we did,
remember the Hillary Woe one, Oh yeah, yah, yeah, Well,
it has the ghostly things that happen. It's while he's upstairs. Yeah,

(57:56):
and it's just a couple of noises downstairs and he
runs down. There's nothing there. See someone out out in
the field, maybe a shadow goes out there, there's nothing
there that is creepy. That was great. That was great
ghosts atmosphere, even though it wasn't didn't turn out to
be a ghost. I thought that that had what I
was looking for as far as supernatural ghostly, and I

(58:18):
just thought that this kind of ruined it by going
full full create full poltergeist.

Speaker 3 (58:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
Oh, I think the difference is, you know, you look
at something like Hillary Wall. He's a master storyteller. He
studied his craft and he didn't write a lot of books.
I mean he wrote he I mean he wrote a
lot of books, but he didn't write like these, you know,
one hundred and fifty books. And what he did write,
I think he spent a lot of time with and
I think from what I researched with him on my
podcast was he would study detective stuff and he would

(58:48):
study police procedurals and he would he would.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
He would fine tune the storytelling.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
Where you have someone like Dorothy Daniels, and really Norman
Daniels gets the same kind of criticism.

Speaker 3 (59:03):
He was a guy who wrote for quantity. He was
writing to pay the mortgage.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
They both were, and they didn't spend a lot of
time on their craft. It was just a lot of
people would consider Norman Daniels to be like C grade literature.

Speaker 3 (59:15):
But you know, you and I like C grade literature,
Yes we like it.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
But when we when we say, hey, Norman Daniels wrote
The Man from Ape and then you say, well, compare
that to Donald Hamilton who wrote Matt Helm Well, This
Night and dayly different things. You know, Norman daniels Is
is very pedestrian, and you know, uh, Donald Hamilton.

Speaker 3 (59:36):
Is is a spot on like he's he's got a
he's got a great.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
Uh talent, So he kind of kind of look at
that that way when you look at somebody like like
the one we were going to do a couple of
weeks ago, Like Michael Aavaloni when he's writing his Dead
Win in Noon. Like that guy, even though he wrote
a lot of garbage, I mean when he was on,
when he was really on and when it was really
passionate about something he could write, and he wrote really well,
and with his Gothics from what I've read, are really

(01:00:03):
really good. So I think I think we're running into
like the pedestrian level Gothic, which I think William Ross
is very pedestrian. And we haven't really read him together,
but I've read a lot of his books and it's
very pedestrian. But it's enjoyable. Yeah, it's a popcorn movie basically.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
Yeah, I think it was with so many books. I mean,
they're not all going to be the right stand out,
but you know when they do hit that charm. I
mean that one the Maya Temple, you know, Maya Temple
is charming as hell, like original great. I mean, it's
from the same era that she was writing. She just
you know, what are you gonna do? Hit a whole mine,
every every app bat Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
I mean, I would recommend this book to readers. I
think you're enjoying it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:45):
I think it's a great way to It's like lesson
to her pages. You're not going to spend weeks in
this book.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
You can read a couple of days and and it's
a good escapism. Who doesn't want to go to the
big seventeen room mansion for a couple of nights?

Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
Yeah, in the bayou, wild dogs outside, Yeah, apparitions.

Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
Yeah, So do you want to put it to the test.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
Let's put it to the Gothic litmus test. Ignore all
those other gothic podcasts and their means of determining gothicness.

Speaker 3 (01:01:19):
Yeah, all those guys.

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
This is the number one. We invented. It the only
one that matters Gothic litmus test. So we got cover art.
Do we have a woman running from a house? I
guess we'll go off of mine? Is that all right?
But what's yours? Does yours have a woman running from
a house?

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
Yeah, there's a light on.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
Oh man, I don't know, so which what do we go?
What do we go for? Here?

Speaker 3 (01:01:48):
I mean it looks like she's kind of running yours
is running, so you know she's sitting in a chair.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Maybe she's about to get up and start running. Kind
of does look like that?

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
Yeah, I would say yeah, because I mean there's the
light on back there. And with this, with this one,
it looks like she's in motion.

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
Yeah. And that is the first I think that's the
first edition to we'll give it to us.

Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
And it does say paperback library Gothic by the way,
because we were wonder if it's a Gothic suspense, but.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
Oh yeah, yeah, mine says Mine just says gothic. It's
it's a Warner Warner Books.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
And by the way, mine's right. My book is right
off of Uh. I ain't ashamed. My book is right
off archive dot org. Just downloaded that pdf right off there.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
That's cool. There's a I just saw a ghostly hand
open your door back there.

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
Yeah, that's that is That is the nice Sarah. That's
my wife Sarah. She's nice, not like the means Sarah Eric.

Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
Yeah, and I I tell her about all the gothic books.
That well, I pretty much tell her about all the
books I read.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
And I told her about the gothic book, this gothic book,
and she figured it out.

Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
Like I was halfway through it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:12):
I was like, tell me how this book ends, and
she always figures it out.

Speaker 1 (01:03:16):
She knew. She knew that Sarah and Emily were headed
down to the bayou.

Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
Yes, She's like, they're they're in like some kind of plot.
They've done something bad and they're going to continue to
do something bad because they're behind it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
I was like, well, kind of sort, I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
But yeah, yeah, all right. So we got yours has
one light on, right, yeah, one light. Mine has candles,
but there's three of them. We'll give it to you.
We'll give it to you the original, that's right. And
then we got our themes. We got a stranger in
a strange land. Oh, this one's hard.

Speaker 3 (01:03:55):
That's not the case in this one. She's not in
a strange land.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
No, she's not. She's very aware, very familiar. Is there
gas lighting?

Speaker 3 (01:04:04):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, plenty of that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
We got a handsome man with questionable motives. Yeah, because
we got but Craig is like he has he doesn't
have questionable motives.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
No, big bad Bart does though, and he's a handsome guy.
He's a man with a slow hand.

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
Didn't you say that joke last time I did.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
I'm gonna I'm gonna insert slow hand in every episode.
I'm gonna be like Seinfeld with Superman. It's gonna be
in every episode. Slid in there, all.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
Right, I'll try to point it out next time. Do
we have romance?

Speaker 3 (01:04:45):
I thought so.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
I felt that the little little bit of chemistry between
Sharon and Craig. I thought you could cut it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):
With a knife.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
That was romantic. I didn't think there was romance at all.
M M.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
That's okay, we can I think we can probably score
it as no romance and probably still gonna win.

Speaker 3 (01:05:06):
Here.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
We'll split it, We'll split it. Was there mystery, Yeah,
plenty of that, plenty of mystery and suspense, hints of
the supernatural.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
So then we have the job where do we I
have literally nurse type job written down?

Speaker 3 (01:05:29):
Governess governess, governess for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
And then we got the isolated setting yep, and not yeah.
Not only is it like eleven miles out from the
big easy, they're kind of trapped with the whole dog
thing going on, even though they're not trapped. You kind
of get that in the back of your mind.

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
Yeah, no doubt said, don't go out, don't go outside
the dogs.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
And then we have the the atmosphere. Does it have
got gothic atmosph fear?

Speaker 3 (01:06:02):
Hmm, that's a good question. Well, I mean he does.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
The author does take the time to describe the seventeen
rooms and all those things to give us a big,
cavernous place to explore. There is the cemetery scene.

Speaker 1 (01:06:19):
I think there's a few there's a few scenes that
are more gothic, but most of it is like just daytime. Yeah,
talking about things, I mean the part where the dogs
are running and she looks out her window at night,
the part where it's in the middle of the night
and she's going down the stairs. That is that's really
that's very gothic.

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
Yeah, I think it had some atmosphere, the addict scene
in particular. Yeah, yeah, I think I think that works.

Speaker 1 (01:06:47):
All right, we'll give it some one, two, three, four, ten.
I thought I had eleven questions, but we got ten
this time.

Speaker 3 (01:06:58):
Are you sure poisonous did have poison and his cookies wasn't.

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
On there on the goyic.

Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
Did the book contain poisonous cookies?

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
Poisonous cookies? We could add one aspect from every book
that we read, probably should emergency bathroom bathroom stop.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
Yeah, yeah, no bathroom, no bathroom stuff other.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
Than yours, like like and Diamond's editors should have done yes, right, No, no,
that was my favorite part of that book.

Speaker 3 (01:07:42):
Who we getting Yeah, yeah, that was a real highlight
of the year.

Speaker 1 (01:07:45):
Honestly, So this does past the litmus test to got
ten out of twelve. I don't know something like that.
I think you I said it had less romance than
you did. I gave it a zero for romance. You said, yes, yeah,
so your score is a little higher in the Gothic

(01:08:06):
litmus boss cookies check. I wrote it down. I'll add
it to the list. Yeah, yeah, I think that we
officially recommend The Tormented by Dorothy Daniels.

Speaker 3 (01:08:22):
Yeah, I can do that in good faith.

Speaker 1 (01:08:24):
I think it would be a good place for someone
who wants to know what the genre is like to.
Maybe maybe we thought it was a little boring because
we've read a few of them now, yeah, maybe we're
a little let down for that. But if you read
this first you'd be like, oh, I get it now,
I get what this is about.

Speaker 3 (01:08:40):
For our next book. I don't know turn it are
we doing? Are we doing?

Speaker 2 (01:08:47):
We're doing Gothic suspense or Gothic romance, but we're not
doing just straight up gothic. So I don't know if
the Turn of the Screw would really fit.

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
Does it fit any of the tropes?

Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
Yeah, yeah it does.

Speaker 2 (01:09:01):
You've got a big house, you've got a governess coming
to uh a strange land to take care of kids.
You've got hints of the supernatural. I don't think there's
any romance at all. There's zero. I don't think there's
any gat well, no, I don't think there's gas lighting

(01:09:21):
because most because most of the book is is going
to be her and these two, these twins. That's that's
like the parents are just gone. They're leaving her in
charge of their their twins while they're gone. So she's
in this big house with.

Speaker 3 (01:09:36):
These two kids.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
Yeah, there's hints of ghosts similar to this, where the
kids are like, I think the ghosts have ran off
the other teachers and the parents are like, it's just
because the kids are tormenting the the governess. But then
the Governess is like, wait a minute, there are things
happening here that hear bizarre.

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
Yeah, let's do it. I mean, plus I already own it,
so bonus.

Speaker 3 (01:10:06):
Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:10:08):
If you look at the tour version of it, there's
a tour paperback that's got a girl running from a ghost.
Oh nice, but she's very gothic romance looking. There's a
couple other book covers that kind.

Speaker 3 (01:10:20):
Of have the same thing.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
But it would be cool to do the book and
then also the movie The Innocence, which is based.

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
Off of it, The Innocence.

Speaker 3 (01:10:32):
Yeah, but I don't know where we would get The Innocence.

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
How old is it? It's probably on YouTube.

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
It's a black and white movie. It's nineteen sixty one.
The Innocence, Yeah it is.

Speaker 3 (01:10:44):
It is on YouTube four K enhanced.

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):
Is it free?

Speaker 3 (01:10:50):
It's free. I'm watching it right now. Yeah, it's free.

Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
Nice.

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
This guy says it's the best ghost story ever committed
to film, hands down. The foreboding atmosphere and it practically
drips off the screen.

Speaker 1 (01:11:03):
I'm in Yeah, I'm just look at that screenshot. There.

Speaker 3 (01:11:09):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:11:10):
How gothic is that? That's cool? Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:14):
They're calling it a Gothic psychological horror, but I don't
know it's I think it fits this. We'll probably do
that for January, since holiday season December. People don't really man,
I really care too much about our gothic talking December.

Speaker 1 (01:11:28):
I don't know what that's when people go crazy for Gothics.

Speaker 3 (01:11:33):
During the holiday season.

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
Well, it's definitely not in the middle of summer.

Speaker 2 (01:11:39):
No, we can try it. Yeah, you can try it,
all right.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
So, yeah, we're gonna call it there. Uh be on
the lookout for our next episode, Turn of the Screw.

Speaker 3 (01:11:52):
Henry James.

Speaker 1 (01:11:53):
I think Henry James.

Speaker 3 (01:11:54):
Yeah, he wrote wrote that I don't know literature. Yeah,
Henry Jane.

Speaker 1 (01:12:00):
All right, there we go. We're gonna be doing that one.
And thanks everyone for sticking around. Thanks everyone for tuning in.
We love doing these and we love that people are
watching them.

Speaker 3 (01:12:11):
It's very exciting, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
Yeah, thanks for watching, appreciate it, Thanks for listening. If
you're listening to on Paperback Worry podcast, thanks for tuning
in to another conversation with Dick the book Graveyard. And
if you're watching on video, I apologize for our behavior
today and our look.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
All right, we're out here. Bye everybody later.