Alright alright alright, settle down, you: Devils & Demons: A Treasury of Fiendish Tales Old & New as edited by the husband-and-wife team of Marvin and Saralee Kaye is not some sorta Satanic how-to primer, but a compilation of 52 stories by various authors, famous and otherwise, from 1925 up to 1987 (this particular edition from the Dorset Press is from 1991, one of a score or books I picked up from the Barnes & Noble overstock section). And if you (like me) thought that stories ‘bout ghouls and ghosts were only for the tawdry and the lowbrow, well then, brother, check out some of these authors: Isaac Asimov, Charles Pierre Baudelaire, W. Somerset Maugham, Bertrand Russell, Robert Louis Stevenson, William Makepeace Thackeray and H.G. Wells, along with the more usual list of suspects, including Poul Anderson, Algernon Blackwood, Tanith Lee, Sheridan LeFanu, H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker. Rating an anthology can be, overall, rather difficult, what with a whole slew of stories from different authors, different styles and, especially in this case, different eras. Having read it as a kid and rediscovering it as an adult, I can say without any sense of foreboding that this book was a resounding…meh. None of the stories, I think, are that memorable, and while reading horror written by some of the famous non-horror authors I mention above was interesting, the book also has its fair share of mediocre fair from others I never heard of (and for Marv and Sara to include a couple of their own pieces was rather cheeky, to boot). If you find a copy on the used or remnants pile – like I did – eh, I say go for it, but there’s no need to go hunting this particular tome down.
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