Where Human Pathways End

When four of Shamus Frazer's supernatural tales appeared in two anthologies in 1965, editor Charles Birkin hailed him as a 'welcome newcomer'. Yet this 'newcomer' had, in the mid-1930s, been acclaimed as a master of satirical irony, and a natural successor to Evelyn Waugh. In the intervening thirty years, Frazer had been a teacher in England, a Marine serving in Europe during the Second World War, and a lecturer in Singapore, where he wrote several school texts, one of which, The Crocodile Dies Twice, has become a standard school text.

Although Frazer turned to the supernatural tale late in his career, his flair for the genre was clearly recognised by the praise his stories received. Five of his weird tales were published before his death in 1966, but the author had completed a further five; and he had intended to publish all ten stories together in a single volume, Where Human Pathways End.

Ash-Tree Press is proud to make this collection available for the first time. In his introduction, Richard Dalby looks at the varied career of Shamus Frazer, while the author's widow, Joan Neale Frazer, provides a glimpse of the colourful private life of the writer. In these ten tales and one poem set where human pathways end, the dead and the un-dead meet in settings both domestic and fantastic, where the weird and horrific are never far away, and where the human protagonists find—often to their cost—that they have no place.

CONTENTS: Introduction by Richard Dalby; 'A Portrait of Shamus' by Joan Neale Frazer; 'Florinda'; 'Mr Nicholas Loses Grip'; 'The Yew Tree'; 'The Tune in Dan's Café'; 'The Fifth Mask'; 'The Cyclops Juju'; 'The Deepest Lady in Singapore'; 'Walking on Air'; 'Khorassim'; 'Obituary'; 'The Tree'; Bibliography.