Compleat Crow

CONCERNING TITUS CROW

FROM ONE POINT of view: 'No man ever knew Titus Crow better than I did; and yet his personality was such that whenever I met him — however short the intervening time since our last meeting — I would always be impressed anew by his stature, his leonine good looks, and by the sheer weight of intellect which invariably shone out from behind those searching eyes of his . .

And from another: 'He was tall and broad-shouldered and it was plain to see that in his younger days he had been a handsome man. Now his hair had greyed a little and his eyes, though they were still very bright and observant, bore the imprint of many a year spent exploring — and often, I guessed, discovering — along rarely trodden paths of mysterious and obscure learning . .

Mysterious, obscure learning .. .

Titus Crow is an occult investigator, a psychic sleuth, an agent for Good in the detection and destruction of Evil. During WWII, as a young man, he worked for the War Department; his work in London was concerned with cracking Nazi codes and advising on Hitler's predilection for the occult: those dark forces which Der Fuhrer attempted to enlist in his campaign for world domination.

Following the end of the war, and from then on right through a very active life which encompassed many 'hobbies', he fought Satan wherever he found him and with whichever tools of his trade were available to him

at the time. Crow became, in fact, a world-acknowledged master in such subjects as magic, specifically the so-called 'Black Books' of various necromancers and wizards, and their doubtful arts; in archaeology, paleontology, cryptography, antiques and antiquities in general; in obscure or avant-garde works of art — with particular reference to such as Aubrey Beardsley, Chandler Davies, Hieronymous Bosch, Richard Upton Pickman, etc. — in the dimly forgotten or neglected mythologies of Earth's prime, and in anthropology in general, to mention but a handful.

As a collector, particularly of strange bric-a-brac and outre objets d'art, Crow had few peers in the years before . . . before his transition. But of that latter — change — sufficient has already been recorded elsewhere.

A one-time writer of macabre short stories, he occasionally chronicled his own adventures; at other times such work was undertaken by his lifelong friend Henri-Laurent de Marigny (son of Etienne, the world-famous New Orleans mystic), while others of his adventures were reported by mere acquaintances.

All of the Titus Crow adventures, in short story or novelette form, are here collected for the first time in one volume. They are presented chronologically, as best as may be determined, and along with The Burrowers Beneath and the 'post-transition' novels, they complete the Crow canon.

In addition to the tales in which Titus Crow is a primary actor, there are three other closely related stories: The Mirror of Nitocris, the one and only personal chronicle of Crow's apprentice and fellow traveller, de Marigny; Inception, in which Crow plays only a cameo role; and lastly The Black Recalled, in which nothing of Crow appears at all!

Or does it?

Only one thing remains to be said. In the light of Titus Crow's fascination and lifelong affair with matters of dark concern, much of this volume is naturally taken up with narratives of relentless horror. Therefore — it is not a book for the squeamish.

You have been warned!

Brian Lumley

Brixham, Devon,

England

May 1985