Because this boat isn't just unlucky, it's evil. It was built for Henry Spalding, a soldier and sorcerer who committed suicide yet still casts his malevolent spell nearly a century after his death. Suzanne must uncover his last, terrible secret before  destroys the man she loves.

From Publishers Weekly

When businessman Magnus Stannard buys Dark Echo, a haunted yacht, at the start of Cottam's overstuffed occult thriller, it fulfills a dream from his impoverished childhood: to own the luxury boat he saw in one of his favorite books. But Dark Echo's American builder, WWI hero Harry Spalding, had an unsavory history of evil exploits, and everyone who's owned the ship since his suicide has suffered misfortune and a grim death. Magnus and his son, Martin, become the latest victims of the yacht's malignant legacy when, after setting out in it to cross the Atlantic, the ship reveals the malevolent mission it has chosen them to complete. Cottam (The House of Lost Souls) works up a byzantine backstory for his spook ship that's imaginatively complex, but that thwarts thrills with its confusing historical detail, digressions into Martin and Magnus's relationship, and shifts of narrative viewpoint. What could have been an exceptional tale of maritime terrors reads more like a horror story adrift at sea. 

From Booklist

Can a haunted object continue to cast the spell created by its evil, long-dead creator? That may be the case of Dark Echo, the oceangoing yacht in this religious-suspense/horror blend spanning the better part of a decade. Cottam sets the scene with a stunning description of nonhuman malevolence embodied in the fog covering 1917 Rouen. Add five deeply buried corpses forming a five-pointed star, a pentagram used in rituals involving animal sacrifice, and a priceless and missing holy relic thought to have delivered the final death blow to the crucified Christ, and this is one compelling story. Along the way, readers will enjoy uncovering the secrets of the regatta-winning racing schooner and its owner, the dashing millionaire Harry Spalding, as Suzanne, a contemporary heroine with a knack for research and the determination to save the man she loves, delves deep and discovers a box filled with 80 years of darkness. A shivery and entertaining read for the beach or firelit evenings.

Urban Book of the dead is my second book to be published, after 'The Unrequited Zombie'. It is a rather less experimental work, though still unusual, vivid, and descriptive. I would describe the book as both psychedelic and surreal, being rather pedantic about the use of those two words. That is, if it were surreal I would be dealing with a psychological work, something that looked towards expanding knowledge of the Id, that primitive part of our nature that is repressed by social conventions and the need to plan to get what we want. It is, in that it is self gratifying without recourse to opinion, it is every animalistic urge that can only be released through art, because to do it any other way would have terrible repercussions. Having said that, next to my early work, it is not particularly arty or deep. It is psychedelic because it looks to reaching a higher consciousness by through creativity, to reach a state beyond the normal level of seeing things, it is also psychedelic and surreal in the commonly understood sense, it is 'trippy' and sometimes deals with drugs. It starts like this… "I floated above my body, I was a bubble fit to burst, I squeezed and struggled with my form, my clothes gripping and distorting my figure with their relative solidity, were the same ghost like material as the rest of me. Down below my face stared back at me; distorted and grotesque as the spirit shapes on the bark of trees, I felt my ghost face and it was etched there too, deforming me, chiselled by a million molecules of heroin, I had my wings, hung as from a pin, spread and feathered, and spanning the whole nicotine ceiling. I stared at the blue marbled arm; growing out like the gnarled branch of a tree, the fingers gesturing me towards it, and hanging from it, the syringe full of bubbles, blood and a quicksand of powdered death whirling like a vortex. A spoon lay on the floor and a small bit of cigarette filter in it, all having served a purely symbolic process. It seemed years of injecting powders and stuff flicked down to a dirty lemonade had paid off, perhaps a bubble could kill you after all." The book is I think taking one thing at least to a new level in literature, egomania. That is because the concept of the book is I the authors fight with god who is defeated, whilst at the same time dealing with my real life struggles as I go back through things that really actually happened to me in my drug filled and violent life as a drug dealer and through prison etcetera, and, changing them. I say egomania but again I mean the Id, the ego compromises, the Id does not. It is a very angry book because I am taking back the control that was taken from me, in that, to a very large extent I did not choose my life but it was forced on me, as with all the mishaps of all my dead friends who did not survive, through suicide, alcoholism, heroin overdose and murder. Enter God. God then is a symbol for society, capitalism, and the state, and also, plain bad luck. So is God then not God, is the book not satanic? My interest in black magic personally does not extend to believing in it, or God in any accepted sense either. I believe in magic as will, that Hitler could gain power through will is magic, that people can realise the future not through clairvoyance but precognition, taking in the world around them and understanding consciously or unconsciously where it is all going to lead, that kind of magic I believe, the other sort I only have a fair knowledge of as an interest and I am not a Satanist, that would be a misplacement of effort. "The noise got louder, but lower, rather than higher, so it travelled further and vibrated the walls. Crack's appeared in the walls in the form of a hundred distorted faces of people I had known, adventured and suffered with. A fragment of glass from a picture of 'Judith with the head of Hollerfernes' hit me in my eye, almost bursting my substance, which it settled in like a bloody monocle, magnifying the African tribal Fang mask in the centre of the wall, with its pale long wooden nose and owl like brow, its jutting chin; appeared to grow eyes that searched with the deepest hideous depth around my room and the dead body of me whose 'nakedness' I wanted to cover from the gaze. The mask bowed and came out of the wall, after it a huge body wearing the blue pinstripes of my wall paper and looking every bit the business man, come to settle my accounts, I was not about to make it easy. The scrambled voices became one, the word "Jonathan!" boomed. This was God, this was the confrontation I had been waiting for my whole life." The meaning of that is obvious in the pinstriped suit I think, but also a little later the meaning and symbolism is made totally obvious. "God spoke "I am the unity, I am the morals and the law, think like me and my triumphs will be your triumphs because there will be no difference, surrender all self generated thought of conflict, all difference is imaginary, it is not held and is alien to mind." I replied simply, my head turned to him from my place on the ceiling, "I am my desire." -A little later it gets really obvious. "With haste I flew forward and stabbed God in the eyes with my fingers, which flattened against the harder substance of Gods eyes, I cried out "This is for poverty, this is for the atomisation of life, this is for your prisons and the police, for all my friends who are lost yet alive, and all those you sent to hell which is a place on Earth. This is for everything." Soon events from the past unfold, and people I knew come into the picture such as Jay. Jay was a traveller; that is he moved from town to town, lived rough and begged. He had the unnerving attribute of being both friendly, warm, and a complete psychopath, loyal and perverse, he was a real good character for a book. I meet Jay again fishing in Hell. "I dropped my line in the molten lead from my rod. Immediately the rod bent almost double, despite its thickness. It pulled so hard I estimated that what ever was on the end must have been over two hundred pounds. I reeled in my rod and a giant fish splashed on the end of it, it looked like some kind of gigantic roach, its tail splashing molten lead at me as its body curved in the waves trying to get away. I landed the fish in the boat and it suffocated there its mouth open and body heaving, I marvelled at the square scales on its silver body, bigger than my hands. As I stood fascinated, the body of the fish, distorted as if something inside was trying to push its way out, a fist punched its way through, then two hands, pulled the fish apart, then before me was the crouched naked body of Jay, covered in a stinky fish slime, he held his nose and spoke nasally. "Hello Monster!" he said smoothly. Jay stood up tall, rocking only slightly; and threw chunks of fish in the water, now without the protection of its tough outer layers, the bits of fish flamed up as they entered the sea, with puffs of flame and billows of smoke. He held the rest of the carcass above his head, his arms at full length, and chucked that in after it; there was a huge flaming that threatened to engulf the boat, but it went out fast. I was pleased to see Jay, I had him picked out as my right hand man, there was something about him that persuaded you to trust him at the same time as acknowledging he wasn't entirely trust worthy, a slightly sly warmth, a look in the eyes that said he was tough and dependable, but somehow self centred. But, however he was useful, very handy; a good person to know. I asked a searching question. "How are you here? As far as I know you're still alive." Jay looked at me long and hard "Doesn't bloody look like it does it Monster. In Hell as well. What did I do to deserve that? A few fights, drug dealing, a couple of rich burglaries, fucking a tree on LSD, underage sex and a sexual assault in McDonalds that was nothing but feeling some ones leg, and I'm in Hell." Yes, he was really like that and he did all those things. The character of Jay is a rich part of the book, to which I am indebted to knowing him, not that many people will ever read it, but I live to write, quite literally. Another theme of the book is the yearning for togetherness, community, against the very real need for individuality, adventure and subjectivity. The two themes run through every religion, philosophy and form of politics to a varying degree of scientific application. It is not as simple as one or the other and both sides in the book take both approaches. There is no answer in human nature between the two, it is irreconcilable and all we can do is draw attention theoretically to the issue between fascism and anarchism, individuality and togetherness, though we do find more honest and liveable conditions in libertarianism than dictatorial politics. The problem between wanting togetherness and a shared identity, but being repulsed at having to give up subjectivity so pervades the book that many characters rebel against the human form, whilst not giving up the need for community, and become many headed monsters. But, the book insists, the need for adventure is the unifying theory that makes sense of our misery and creates a symbiosis between the conflicting forces. "As the ship rowed closer I realised it was the rule of these creatures, my brave men which is what they were, to reject the human form given by God for those of their own imagination, and to conjoin like the ultimate pack of animals, or; what I had seen in human riots when a crowd does indeed become a single and very different animal than the sum of its parts. I saw men who had formed their joints together to form the bodies of double kneed, twelve-foot men with two heads. Two had done that. The dragon with seven necks and six heads was also there, waiting in futility for my strange communion, for I was still attached to the human form, it still represented for me a thing of beauty and free autonomy." The book is all about conflict, but as Buddhists say, all conflict is imaginary, so I think, we are all in a state of symbiosis in a world where assistance between organisms is the norm even when it appears in the form of its opposite. That's all I want to say about the book.

Woonwagenbewoners, of het nu zigeuners of 'reizigers' waren, hebben altijd hun zaakwaarnemers gehad. In de vorige eeuw waren dat nog bevlogen schrijvers en filantropen, in de afgelopen eeuw van voortschrijdende professionalisering interesseerden vooral juristen en maatschappelijk werkers zich voor de trekkende bevolking. Maar nog in de jaren zeventig werden die beroepskrachten kritisch gevolgd door een particuliere 'troubleshooter' als Lau Mazirel die zich in woord en daad verzette tegen ambtelijke bemoeizucht. Wetenschappers koesterden lange tijd, net als zovelen, vooral een dweperige belangstelling voor zigeuners, die overigens makkelijk kon omslaan in geleerde lasterpraat over hun erfelijke belasting. De afgelopen jaren zijn echter, buiten het politieke of particuliere initiatief om, een aantal studies verschenen die de beeldvorming over de groep van trekkers nagingen, of het beleid van de overheid door de tijd heen onderzochten. Van het eerste is Wim Willems' Op zoek naar de ware zigeuner (besproken in de boekenbijlage van 7 oktober 1995) een goed voorbeeld, en het tweede stelde Annemarie Cottaar zich ten doel in haar proefschrift Kooplui, kermisklanten en andere woonwagenbewoners. Het beleidsonderzoek vat zij overigens breed op, want zij beperkt zich niet tot een overzicht van de gevoerde politiek, maar gaat steeds na in hoeverre de vooronderstellingen die de beleidsmakers over bijvoorbeeld afkomst en zwerflust van de woonwagenbewoners koesterden op werkelijkheid berustten. Zorgelijke minderheid Het onderzoek van Cottaar heeft vooral 'gewone woonwagenbewoners' tot onderwerp, 'reizigers' dus, en maakt alleen aan het einde, ter gelegenheid van de Duitse vervolgingen, uitvoerig melding van zigeuners. Trekkers zijn er altijd geweest, met schepen, tenten of langs logementen, maar de woonwagen verscheen pas ruim honderd jaar geleden in Nederland. Eerder maakte de erbarmelijke toestand van de wegen het reizen met een rollend huis vrijwel onmogelijk. Van een paar duizend in het begin van de eeuw is het aantal woonwagenbewoners opgelopen tot dertigduizend vandaag de dag. Al lang voor het bereiken van dat nog altijd bescheiden getal waren de reizigers evenwel van quantité négligeable tot zorgelijke minderheid uitgegroeid. Cottaar behandelt achtereenvolgens de herkomst en de beroepssamenstelling van de groep, de reacties van de overheid op hun aanwezigheid tot de afkondiging van de eerste wettelijke maatregelen in 1918, het bestaan van de woonwagenbevolking onder die wettelijke erkenning tot de Tweede Wereldoorlog, en de bedreiging van de groep door de Duitse maatregelen. Heel kort stipt zij de maatregelen aan die wel na de oorlog getroffen zijn, zoals de concentratie in regionale kampen, maar die een ideologische origine in de bezettingstijd hebben. De vele officiële documenten waaruit zij de wordingsgeschiedenis van een minderheid samenstelde worden afgewisseld met tellingen die ze heeft verricht naar herkomst en de beroepen van de voorouders van een veertigtal huidige woonwagenbewoners in Den Haag en Overijssel. En die statistieken worden weer prettig onderbroken door oude reizigers zelf die herinneringen ophalen aan een tijd waarin de mensen nog 'niet zo wantrouwig' waren. Want, laat Cottaar voortdurend weten, de woonwagenbewoners hebben steeds te kampen gehad met een vooroordeel tegen reizende lieden. En naarmate de leefwijze van de Nederlanders en de regelgeving van de overheid steeds gezetener werden, deden zulke processen als 'positietoewijzing' en 'stigmatisering' zoals Cottaar ze in navolging van het knarsende wetenschappelijke spraakgebruik noemt, zich vaker voor. Onderstandsplicht Uit de stambomen die ze van de woonwagenfamilies reconstrueerde blijkt dat de meesten van boeren- af een andere eenvoudige afkomst zijn, en niet van zwervende bendes of gedroste soldaten afstammen, zoals sommige folklore wil. De voorouders hadden vaak prozaïsche redenen om het huis te ruilen voor een woonwagen, uiteenlopend van agrarische bodemuitputting tot de noodzaak, voor een kermisartiest, om regelmatig van publiek te veranderen. Vaak genoeg keerden ze tijdelijk of definitief het reizend bestaan weer de rug toe. De onbedwingbare treklust waar het oudere maatschappelijk werk zo bevreesd voor was, blijkt nergens uit de tellingen. De actieradius van een woonwagen was heel regionaal. Daarbinnen waren woonwagenbewoners letterlijk van alle markten thuis. Vaak waren ze ambachtsman èn koopman, matten ze stoelen èn brachten die aan de man. Ze verhuurden zich als knechts, en hun vrouwen gingen langs de deur met galanterieën (snuisterijen). Kortom, ze pakten alle werk aan. Cottaar doordringt de lezer van de idee dat er eigenlijk niet zoveel geks of crimineels met de groep aan de hand was, en dat de autoriteiten dus andere motieven moesten hebben om zich zo ongastvrij te gedragen. De reden vindt ze in de 'onderstandsplicht' waar de negentiende-eeuwse Armenwet om draaide. Die berustte oorspronkelijk bij de geboorteplaats en, niet onbegrijpelijk, had die er bezwaren tegen mensen te ondersteunen die zelden of nooit ter plekke waren. Maar toen de zorg voor de woonwagenbewoners, als groep, na 1918, aan elke gemeente waar ze zich mochten ophouden toeviel, verzette zich dus ook elke gemeente tegen de kosten die dat met zich meebracht, en binnenshuis had de plaatselijke politiek er geen moeite mee te bekennen dat men het vooral niet aantrekkelijk moest maken voor woonwagenbewoners om een standplaats te kiezen. Giftige praatjes Hoewel ook Cottaar niet geheel vrij is van een zeker zaakwaarnemerschap, weet zij aannemelijk te maken dat de ondersteuning voor woonwagenbewoners weinig meer bedroeg dan voor 'burgermensen', en dat de politierapporten niet het predikaat 'gevaar voor de openbare orde' wettigden dat zovele gemeentelijke instanties hun in de loop der tijden hebben opgeplakt. Onderlinge nijd en schrielheid werden door het lokale gezag verpakt in giftige praatjes over de onzedelijkheid van de reizigers, en dat rechtvaardigde dan weer hun lompe behandeling. Maar hoe een groter publiek, hun klandizie zogezegd, over de woonwagenbewoners dacht komt in het proefschrift nauwelijks aan de orde. Het is geen ondraaglijk onrecht dat de historica aan het daglicht brengt, en slechts een enkele gemeente zag in de oorlog de kans schoon zich nu eens voorgoed van die lastposten te ontdoen. Het optreden van de lagere overheid werd ingegeven door eigenbelang en kortzichtigheid. De folkloristische kletskoek die daarbij ten beste werd gegeven vormde een voedingsbodem voor racisme, maar op het kritieke moment weerstonden de meeste verantwoordelijken die gevaarlijke verleiding. Cottaar heeft het verhaal van 'de mensen van de reis' tot dat ogenblik, het einde van de oorlog, zorgvuldig en enthousiast verteld. Dat aldoende ook een klein eerherstel heeft plaatsgevonden is meegenomen.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. British author Cottam (Dark Echo) makes his U.S. debut with a riveting supernatural thriller. A decade earlier, while on a research trip to London's notoriously haunted Fischer House on the Isle of Wight, psychically sensitive journalist Paul Seaton barely escaped a demonic entity that occultist Aleister Crowley had summoned in the 1920s. Now, Paul investigates a new tragedy: four unfortunate philosophy students encountered something so foul at Fischer House that it killed one and threatens the sanity of the three survivors. The only way for Paul to help the students and redress the shambles that his life has become since his nightmare experience is to return to Fischer House and lay the evil that still stalks the grounds. Cottam evokes influences that range from Dennis Wheatley (who has a minor role) to Shirley Jackson, and conjures a mood of paranoia perfect for Paul's unsettling adventure. Rich in atmosphere, the book builds to a shattering finale. (July)
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Review

"Skillful characterizations draw you into a relentlessly congealing atmosphere of menace and dread. A compulsive and truly disturbing read. I hope to see more from F. G. Cottam, and soon.”

--F. Paul Wilson, author of the Repairman Jack series

"A mad spiral of mystery and horror, totally engrossing and richly evocative of the decadent twenties, The House of Lost Souls is a remarkable debut."

--Keith Donohue, author of The Stolen Child

 

"The House of Lost Souls is an elegant ghost story that will keep you up all night and haunt you long after the last page."

--Carol Goodman, author of The Night Villa

 

"Energetically reviving a neglected genre, Cottam delivers convincing chills alongside engrossing and highly cinematic heroics."

--Kirkus Reviews

 

"A riveting supernatural thriller. . . . Rich in atmosphere, the book builds to a shattering finale."

--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Echoes of The Blair Witch Project resonate throughout this chilling novel. Cottam's ... adrenaline-charged prose is drawn tight with suspense."

--Financial Times (UK)

"In this brilliant and chilling novel real events in the past impact on the present and a terrible sense of foreboding will keep readers on the edge of their seats until the very last page."

--Lancashire Evening Post (UK)

"F.G. Cottam employs old-fashioned suspense combined with modern horror imagery to produce a fine example of the genre."

--Times Online (UK)