Today, March 5, marks the birth of two greats in the field, Henry S. Whitehead (1882-1932) and Mike Resnick (1942-2020).

Whitehead was a close friend of H. P. Lovecraft and a contributor to Weird Tales. His reputation as a writer of weird fiction is excellent, but he is not as well known today as he should be. He died young, and if he had lived I have no doubt that he would have continued to write more excellent stories.

The story I read for this post was “The Shut Room”. It was originally published in the April 1930 issue of Weird Tales and concerns his occult detective Gerald Canevin. While much of Whitehead’s fiction concerns voodoo and the West Indies, this story takes place in England.

A friend of Canevin’s catches him after church one Sunday and asks Canevin to accompany him to a country inn in which all manner of leather items have been disappearing. The story is set shortly after the end of WW I, but the crucial events in the tale occurred just over a century earlier, in 1818, when a notorious highwayman was killed there.

This was an excellent blend of classic ghost story and occult investigator, very much in the vein of both M. R. James and William Hope Hodgson. In fact, Whitehead makes reference to Hodgson and his stories of Carnacki the Ghost Finder more than once.

“The Shut Room” is currently available in Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S. Whitehead and Fighters of Fear.

Mike Resnick is much better known for his science fiction than for his fantasy, but he did write some fantasy. What I’ve read of it is very good. Case in point, “Occupational Hazard”. This is the first story in the collection The Hex Is In: The Fast Life and Fantastic Times of Harry the Book.

Think a fantasy version of Damon Runyan’s Guys and Dolls with magic.

Humor is one of the hardest things to write. Resnick made it look easy. I’ve always enjoyed Resnick’s humorous work. I think it’s because his sense of humor is very similar to mine.

Harry the Book is a bookie who uses magic to help him out. While there may not have been any voodoo in “The Closed Room”, there is plenty in “Occupational Hazard”. It’s being used to win bets on horse races. Resnick was a big fan of the ponies, and his knowledge shows.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story. It didn’t make me laugh out loud, but it did elicit a few chuckles and some grins. After the way this week has gone, they were sorely needed. I’ll be reading the rest of this collection.

We lost Mike just over a year ago. I only met him once, a one of the first Fencons, but his passing was like the lost of a close friend. I’m glad there’s still some of his work out there for me to discover for the first time.