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TITLE: The Lucifer Chord
AUTHOR: F.G. Cottam
GENRE: Horror
PUBLISHED: September 1, 2018
RATING: ★★
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism
During this pandemic, I discovered the soothing power of horror. As the pandemic swallowed up the globe and life became increasingly uncertain, horror provided me with a safe space in which to immerse myself in the terror I knew was bubbling inside me, but which I could not direct in any way that I could control. I could not control a virus, or a government seemingly hellbent on ripping my country apart, but I could control my engagement in a horror story, regardless of its medium. It also helps that I’ve been lucky enough to discover some truly excellent examples of the genre. I've had the pleasure of reading Sylvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, Jonathan Sims’ Thirteen Storeys, and Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians.
It was with these hopes that I picked up F.G. Cottam’s The Lucifer Chord. It follows researcher Ruthie Gillespie, who’s just been hired to write an essay on musician Martin Mear, guitarist and frontman of the (in)famous band Ghost Legion. There are plenty of salacious rumours surrounding Mear, not least the fact that his supposed death in 1975 may have had something to do with his interest in the occult – an interest that, so his diehard fans claim, granted him and his band their meteoric rise, and which might allow Mear to return from the grave. Ruthie’s determined to figure out the truth, but as she begins researching Mear, she realizes that perhaps there is some truth to the legends after all.
Stories of musicians dabbling in the occult isn’t really anything new, but it’s something that tends to attach itself most frequently to musical virtuosos and prodigies, and, strangely enough, to players of stringed instruments, usually the violin and, in more recent years, the electric guitar. The composer Giuseppe Tartini, for instance, was said to have cut a deal with Satan that led to his creation of the Devil’s Trill Sonata, the work for which he is most famous. Niccolo Paganini is also supposed to have made a deal with Satan, said to be the reason behind his incredible virtuosity on the violin.
In more recent musical history, a few rock musicians and their bands have been associated with the occult. Some, like AC/DC, rejected the notion entirely, while others latched onto the association for their own reasons. Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi, for instance, made use of a particular chord progression that became one of Black Sabbath’s signature sounds – and which, apparently, was also a signature sound of the fictional band in this novel. The chord progression was well known even in medieval times, when it was dubbed the “devil in music” by medieval composers. It’s quite clear that this chord is the source for this novel’s title.
Another source of inspiration for this novel are the rock stars who went further than just riding the hype of being associated with the occult. The most well-known example is Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, whose interest in the occult was so deep, he attended seances, bought rare books and artifacts at auction, and even bought Boleskine House, which was where occultist Aleister Crowley lived during the last year of the 1800s and into the early years of the 1900s. Page had bought the property hoping the atmosphere would help provide musical inspiration, though in the end he wasn’t in residence at Boleskine for very long. In the years since, Page’s involvement with the occult has led to some interesting legends being told about him and the band, most notable of which are the deaths of John Bonham and Robert Plant’s son Karac, who are whispered to have been victims of Page’s demonic dealings. As the reader progresses through the novel, it becomes very clear that the author drew heavy inspiration from the legends surrounding Page for the character of Martin Mear – perhaps a little too heavily, some readers might argue, though there are many others (myself included) who are not too troubled by the similarities.
Now, while all of this makes for an interesting backdrop for a horror novel, the rest of the novel doesn’t quite live up to the hype of its concept. Let’s begin with the protagonist, Ruthie Gillespie. Aside from the subject matter one of the very first things that piqued my interest in this novel was the choice of a female protagonist who was also a researcher: fascinating, especially for a reader who is accustomed to the tropes of eldritch horror and who has a familiarity with the protagonists in stories derived from Lovecraft’s works. Unfortunately, Ruthie’s not quite as interesting as she ought to be. I attribute this to the fact that she comes across as rather flat; she has emotions, sure, but they all seem rather dulled and muted. It’s difficult for the reader to feel invested in her, because she reads so much like a cardboard cutout being moved by the author across the stage of the story. A part of me thinks that Ruthie is experiencing a bout of depression, which can manifest as dulled emotions, but I have read novels that have featured characters with depression, and they do not strike me as being quite as uninteresting as Ruthie. This has led me to suspect that while it might indeed be possible to attribute Ruthie's flatness to depression, I may also be trying to make excuses for the poor characterization.
Another thing I did not appreciate very much is how Ruthie’s relationship with Michael Aldridge is written. As I’ve said before, I have no issue with romance as a plotline in anything I happen to be reading, but it has to be executed well, and fit well into the story. Unfortunately, the romance between Michael and Ruthie isn’t quite done as well as I might like, and is, I think, one of this novel’s major problems.
First, it may strike the reader that the connection between Michael and Ruthie comes completely out of left field. This is due to the fact that there is a novella prequel of sorts, titled The Going and the Rise, that explains how Michael factors into Ruthie’s life. If the reader picked up The Lucifer Chord after reading The Going and the Rise, they might not take much issue with Michael’s appearance in the story and his connection to Ruthie. But for readers who have not read the novella, nor were aware there was even a novella to begin with, they might wonder just who this person is and what his past is with Ruthie. For my part, I was able to figure out that there was a prequel novella to The Lucifer Chord before I’d started it, and got to read it before starting the novel.
But even with that head start, there’s no denying the fact that their romance, as a whole, chafes at me as a reader because it strikes me as the kind of romance written by the type of writer characterized as the “white male cishet writer in your creative writing class”, to quote a meme made of such men. It begins in The Going and the Rise: Michael is introduced as a married man with a daughter, and he’s just bought a parcel of land on the Isle of Wight where he intends to build a vacation house for himself and his family. In an attempt to find out more about the history of the location, he contacts Ruthie, whom he finds immediately attractive. There’s a spark between them, despite the fact that he finds Ruthie’s fashion sense a bit outré and that she’s younger than him, but he does his best to not be attracted to her, though throughout the novella he does think of her as attractive, and may have even had a fantasy or two about her. But his primary sin in all of this is that he doesn’t tell Ruthie that he’s married until he absolutely has to. By the time this is revealed in The Going and the Rise, there are much bigger things happening and neither Ruthie nor Michael have time to really hash things out between them.
Now, there has been plenty of ink spilled about how a certain class of male author tends to write women in fiction. The awful sex scenes are more notorious, of course, but even when there is no sex graphically described, or even female body parts graphically described, they still have absolutely no idea how to write a scene and make it romantic. Take a look at this excerpt:
‘I’ve lived to tell the tale.’
‘On the contrary. You’ve lived because you’ve kept it to yourself. It’s my heartfelt wish that you go on living.’
‘Heartfelt?’
‘It was never just lust, Ruthie. I’ve had feelings for you since the afternoon we first met on the seafront at Ventnor and I think you knew that then and I’m sure you know it now.’
There is something about Michael’s words in this scene that the author must have thought was romantic, even tender, but to me, as a woman, it just sounds downright predatory and controlling. Those are “red flags,” as my friends and I would say, and had she been a real person we would have advised Ruthie to back away from Michael, and fast. Then again, given that Ruthie is barely characterized in a way that resembles an actual living, breathing person, and instead reads and functions as more like a cardboard standee instead of anything resembling a protagonist and complex character, I suppose that point is moot.
Another failed aspect of this novel is the writing style. Take a look at the following excerpt:
Ruthie spent the next couple of days preparing for the interview she wasn’t at all confident she’d get. Doing that was the best way of readying herself for it if she did. She didn’t want to embarrass Jackie Tibbs, the school friend who’d tipped her off about the research job, with a show of ineptitude in front of Jackie’s boss. If she got an audience with Carter Melville she’d arrive well informed. This preparation also distracted her from dwelling on recent events in her private life. She’d a tendency to that she kept rediscovering was as painful as it was futile.
Aside from the rather flat statement of facts and actions, that last sentence tripped me up when I got to it, requiring more passes than I think is appropriate before I finally comprehended it. This and many other similar statements abound throughout the novel, catching the reader at unawares and destroying any sense of immersion. It makes one wonder whether or not an editor actually took more than a cursory look at the manuscript, because I rather get the feeling it could have used a lot more polishing before making it to final print.
I also wonder if an editor’s steadying hand could have reined in the story’s structure itself. There is a clear sense of a story arc going on, but its overall structure is weakened by constant switches in character point-of-view, as well as introduction of plot elements like ghosts and cults and demons in a manner that leaves one wondering: “Where in the world did that come from?” It’s clear the author is trying to tie this novel in with the other novels he’s written before, but since it’s never made clear in the novel’s blurb, nor in any of the online material about the novel, that it’s connected to other books, many of these elements only make sense to those who’ve read those other books – which might not be the case for a great many other readers who come to this novel thinking it’s a stand-alone. For that matter, the willy-nilly introduction of those other elements feels more like a desperate attempt to raise the stakes, to make things more “spooky” by implying the possible involvement of restless ghosts, or a demon-summoning cult, or an immortal businessman who might be the devil himself – or all of the above. Hence, it starts to feel like the author is throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks, instead of taking a more careful approach to his craft. Again, I think a more conscientious editor would have curbed this tendency, but now I wonder if there was one at all.
Overall, The Lucifer Chord is a novel that seems interesting but turns out to be quite the letdown. Though the concept upon which the novel is founded will likely draw readers in, the rest of it just doesn’t function as it ought. The protagonist reads like a cardboard cutout of a person; the romantic subplot reads like something written by that “white cishet man in your creative writing class” type of person one sees so many memes made about; and while there’s a plot arc, the rest of the story itself just goes all over the place and makes one wonder if an editor looked this manuscript over before sending it to print. I also wonder if there is any other author who’s written a story around a similar concept as this one, and I find myself wishing that is the case, as well as hoping they’ve done much better than this – though I suppose, given how this novel has turned out, doing better won’t be very difficult, given how low this novel set the bar.