Best 1937 Adventures (7)
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May 11, 2017
One in a series of 10 posts identifying Josh Glenn’s favorite 1937 adventure novels. Happy 80th anniversary!
William Sloane’s occult/sci-fi/crime adventure To Walk the Night.
Professor LeNormand, an astronomer, is killed by a mysterious fire — was it murder? suicide? spontaneous combustion? When two former students of his investigate, one of them, Jerry, falls in love with LeNormand’s beautiful young widow, Selena. Jerry and Selena marry — and soon enough Jerry dies mysteriously, too. The other former student, Bark, finds Selena curiously cold and unwomanly. Is Selena possessed? An alien? A time traveler? Is Bark a closeted homosexual who was in love with Jerry all along? A truly strange and unclassifiable story, written beautifully.
Fun fact: In a HILOBROW post, Barbara Bogaev calls To Walk the Night a “complex, surprisingly modern study in alienation.”
Let me know if I’ve missed any 1937 adventures that you particularly admire.