Smell of Evil

"Never fails to shock and surprise you . . . brimming with unexpected twists." - Sunday Express "[N]ot for the squeamish. Be warned, if you are at all sensitive, leave him well alone. He deals unflinchingly with such subjects as murder, rape, concentration camps, patricide, mutilation and torture." - Hugh Lamb "[M]ore than a definite touch of the great master, Edgar Allan Poe." - Dennis Wheatley "Horror and fantasy stories . . . engagingly told." - Publishers Weekly "Few writers of horror today approach the standards of Birkin." - Ulster Star A sinister baron and his wife inflict unimaginable tortures on their young niece to compel her to sign over her fortune. - In the aftermath of World War II, a German woman's garden is lush and beautiful, for an appalling reason. - Missionaries in Africa get a gruesome surprise when their converts take a biblical text too literally. - A child's fantasy becomes a deadly game with a macabre ending for his adult playmate. The thirteen stories in The Smell of Evil (1965) reveal Sir Charles Birkin (1907-1985) at his diabolical best. Largely eschewing ghost stories and tales of the supernatural, Birkin pioneered a different type of modern horror fiction, describing in exquisitely polished prose the sufferings of ordinary, decent people who encounter inexplicable cruelty and evil in their everyday lives. An important and neglected figure in 20th century British horror fiction, Birkin returns to shock a new generation of readers in this edition, the first in more than 30 years, which features a new introduction by John Llewellyn Probert.