I’ve slowly made my way through 3 David Case books over the last 2 years. I read his novel, The Third Grave, in a day, but then I started on his short stories, and they were so good that I decided to pace myself. Pretty much everything I read by him was extremely enjoyable. His horror is weird, dark and scary, but it’s also well written. I actually don’t have much to say about Case’s books other than that I loved them. This post is more a collection of notes for my own personal reference rather than a detailed review. Read all of these books if you get the chance.

The Third Grave

The Third Grave had been on my to-read list for a long time when I got around to it. It was a very entertaining mystery about a man’s quest for immortality. It has zombies and mummies. It starts off in Egypt, but most of the story takes place in a small village in England. There’s some fairly predictable turns, but I enjoyed it overall. This originally came out on Arkham House, but it was recently republished by Valancourt Books.

Valancourt also put out 2 collections of Case’s short stories. The stories in The Cell are linked by a werewolf theme. They’re not strictly about werewolves, but there are wolves or dangerous wolf-like creatures in all of them. I was really impressed with the standard of writing in this collection. Every story was enjoyable.

The Cell & other Transmorphic Tales

The Cell
This a werewolf story told in first person. The narrator has a cell in the downstairs of his house where locks himself on full moons. (I think I read a similar story by Elizabeth Massie.) The narrator is such a piece of trash, so nasty about his wife and women. LOL. Excellent character development. Very Poe-ish in ways. I loved this story.

Strange Roots
Quirky story about a scientist obsessed with researching werewolf DNA. Well crafted, humourous story.

Amoung the Wolves
Awesome story about a series of horrible murders. Eugenics murderer who kills after getting caught in a bear trap aand axing off own leg to escape from wolves. Horrid but good.

Cross to Bear
Delivery to missionary in Africa who doesn’t listen to the natives’ warnings about jaguar-men

The Hunter
A novella about 2 old hunting friends who get involved in a murder mystery in the English country side. Pretty good.

Fengriffen & other Gothic Tales

Fengriffen is a collection of Case’s gothic stories. Again, I really enjoyed this book.

Fengriffen
Very gothic story about a cursed manor. The rich guy is a real piece of trash. Excellent. I love this stuff.

Anachrona
Short story about some lads meeting a robot. Not a painful read or anything, but quite different to the other stories here.

Foreign Bride
Another very gothicy story about a rich man and his female companions.

Dead End
This one is pretty long, but very enjoyable. A lad who works in a museum goes on a trip to South America to research some weird creature sighting. Meets a famous scientist over there who is clearly up to something shady. Far more similar to the stories in the other collection, but has a element of genetic engineering that makes it Frankensteiny and therefore gothic?

The above collections were put out by Valancourt in 2015. Collections with similar titles were released in the past, but they contain different stories. The 1969 collection called The Cell: Three Tales of Horror contains ‘The Cell’, ‘The Hunter’, and ‘Dead End’. The 1971 collection called Fengriffen and other Stories contains ‘Fengriffen’, ‘Strange Roots’, and ‘Among the Wolves’. I’d recommend reading the Valancourt versions just because they contain all of these stories and more. I have my eye on a few other books by Case that I’ll hopefully get around to in the future.