The Mephisto Waltz

by Fred Mustard Stewart

Standard wear. All books guaranteed.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Suspense, Demons, Thriller

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

American popular novelist, several of whose books were filmed.

Stewart came to be best known for his intercontinental sagas. Year in, year out, the 600-page mark didn't daunt him, a far cry as this was from early hopes as life as a concert pianist, something which had inspired his 1st novel The Mephisto Waltz (1968) which also began his lucrative connection with the film industry. Born in Anderson, IN, he was the son of a banker &, after the Lawrenceville school, near Princeton, NJ, he studied history at Princeton University & later piano at the Juilliard School in Manhattan. By the 1960s, he realised he wasn't going to succeed as a pianist & with marriage to a literary agent, Joan Richardson, in 1967, he began to write, & found immediate success with The Mephisto Waltz.

With The Methuselah Enzyme, Stewart showed wit, but it was clear that it wasn't Henry James. There was, however, a certain charm to Six Weeks (1976), told by a married aspirant for a Democratic senatorial nomination who becomes infatuated with a cold-cream heiress, largely at the behest of her 11-year-old, would-be nymphet daughter who, beset by cancer, has less than two months to live. Nabokov it isn't, but certainly better than the 1982 film with Dudley Moore & Mary Tyler Moore.

Reviews

[Grady Hendrix · Rating 1 out of 5]

“Who are these people of the occult? How long does it take them to drive a woman out of her mind?” Fred is a trained concert pianist, which is why the only parts of this book that have any conviction are the piano playing scenes. Satanism book written by someone whose knowledge of the occult doesn't extend past TIME magazine covers, it was sold with a flexi-disc 45rpm of Liszt's titular "Mephisto Waltz," which is probably the most interesting thing about it.

“Oh, God…but there is no God! There is only Satan!”

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a totally cheesy 1969 horror novel, along the lines of Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist. I devoured it with equal parts enjoyment and chagrin. It's wonderfully dated - the protagonists are thrilled with their newly renovated kitchen and its blue vinyl countertops - and effusively sprinkled with the most ghastly product placements. Myles and Paula Clarkson smoke TarGard Viceroys, use a Chemex coffeemaker, drink Diet Rite Cola, someone drives an XK-E (it's assumed we know, until the next page reveals, that's a Jaguar), someone's mother is described as a "Lady Clairol blonde." Paula wears Shalimar, her nemesis Roxanne wears Joy. Lots of sherry is drunk, but only specific brands. My favorite sentence (I still have no idea what it means, since Arthur Treacher to me just means horrible, frightening, marine fast food) is "He's so stuffy he makes Arthur Treacher look sportivo." It's written with many explicit stage directions, along the lines of "Paula moved to the window and looked pensive," almost as if Fred Mustard Stewart had in mind selling it to a movie studio. Which happened, it was made in 1971 with Alan Alda and Jacqueline Bisset and I must see it.

I won't reveal any spoilers but the basic plotline is that Myles Clarkson is a failed concert pianist who has had to fall back on writing as a career. He gets an interview with famous pianist Duncan Ely, whose chilliness evaporates when he sees how large Myles's hands are. Ely and his daughter Roxanne befriend Myles and his wife Paula and are massively interested in them and their lives, leading Paula to become suspicious. What do they want? A Faustian bargain, it turns out.

You don't have to know anything about classical piano repertoire to read the novel, but it will enrich the cheesy experience. (Fred Mustard Stewart, like his protagonist, had planned to be a concert pianist and had studied at Juilliard.) What made me suspicious wasn't the demonic happenings as much as Myles's Carnegie Hall program: the Goldberg Variations, followed by the Hammierklavier Sonata, followed by Chopin's Andante spianato and grande polonaise - then intermission? That's somewhere between 1.5-2 hours of music (possibly longer, with repeats), and it's nutty.

[Williwaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

Serendipity led me to this book. I attended an estate sale last weekend, which was advertised as a source of "tons of books." There were a fair number of books, and most of them concerned music. There was also a fairly large collection of vocal scores and CD's, so I surmised that the decedent had been trained in classical voice.

Most of the books were hardcovers, and focused on the history of music. But there were a few paperbacks, and The Mephisto Waltz stood out among them. I thought: A horror novel? What was this doing here?

I had a feeling that perhaps I'd run across the name "Fred Mustard Stewart" before. The "Mustard" part makes me laugh. If my middle name were Mustard, I'd just provide an bland "M" and keep mum about what it stood for. Not this guy!

Anyway, it turns out that this was a first novel, published in 1969. And it's not bad! Mr. Mustard is quite capable in the areas of dialogue and plot. I wouldn't say he's much of a descriptive stylist, but he was adequate in that department.

This book may have piqued my interest more than usual because I studied classical music seriously for a number of years, and hoped to gain proficiency on the piano. My progress was tepid and unsatisfying. So I've mostly given it up.

It turns out that Mr. Mustard, himself, was formally trained in piano, and turned to writing after he realized that he wasn't going to have the sort of career he'd dreamed of. Myles Clarkson, one of the main characters, has the same experiential profile,and seems to be loosely based upon Mr. Mustard, but he's killed off early in the novel and isn't the most important character.

The most important character is Myles Clarkson's wife, Paula. Paula, as it turns out, becomes a victim of Satanism and almost dies. Well, she does die, in a way. ( . . . warning! spoiler coming! . . . stop now if you want to read the book fresh).

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This novel takes a very interesting turn at the end. Paula, the victim, actually becomes the aggressor and eventual victor! She decides that if she can't beat the Satanists, she'll join 'em. And she wins! I loved that.

An entertaining, short read. If you are looking for some light reading in the "horruh" genre, this is well worth seeking out. If you don't feel up to reading it, then there's always the 1971 film version, starring Alan Alda and Jackie Bissett. I haven't seen it yet, but I did watch the preview on Amazon Prime, and it looked promising.

[Will Errickson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Anemic Rosemary’s Baby-style occult tale. ‘60s NYC setting is cool and the writing perfectly cromulent, had an ok moment here and there but I certainly wouldn’t recommend it. Paperbacks have some good covers tho so if you collect for that reason find a copy!

[Len · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice enough little horror story of Satanism, soul-selling, incest, murder and classical music. To begin with it seems that Duncan Ely may have sold his soul to Satan to become a great and successful pianist and now that he is dying of leukaemia he needs to find a new host in which he can transfer his corrupted soul in order to keep living. In fact it becomes apparent later in the book that his devilish bargain was to have an incestuous relationship with his daughter Roxanne – he was already a brilliant pianist.

Enter Myles Clarkson and his wife Paula. Myles is a journalist and failed pianist and a man with large Rachmaninov hands. He meets Ely to conduct an interview, but Ely sees just the man he needs for his future preservation. On the night of Ely's death, not surprisingly at the stroke of midnight, Roxanne prepares a diabolical ritual for the transference of the soul into Myles' body. This transfusion unfortunately sees the end of Myles but allows Ely, in Myles' body, to take over the relationship with Paula.

Paula quickly realises that something is wrong and, putting two and two together, comes up with thirteen. Ely's first wife, Roxanne's mother, died a brutal death in the jaws of a savage dog. Ely and Roxanne have a savage dog – oh dear. After Paula meets Roxanne's ex-husband she hears of the suspicions of incest and believes that Ely/Myles and Roxanne want her out of the way. There's a lot more detail to it, but at the end Paula uses Ely's diabolism to strike her own deal with the devil and put herself in Roxanne's body.

Which leads to the weakest point in the novel. Was Paula really going to be happy living with Ely in Myles' body? Surely Ely would recognise quite quickly that the Roxanne he was seeing was not the Roxanne he fathered. It didn't take Paula very long to twig that Myles was no longer Myles after Ely died. Or did Paula have some plan in mind, a further deal with Beelzebub perhaps to get Myles back and send Ely to his eternal damnation? To me the story ends in the air, when it should be deep under ground.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bad novel, but the interesting kind of bad. Fun in its flaws. Body-hopping Satanist piano maestro sets his sights on a young Journalist as his vessel, drawing the young wife's suspicions. But will anyone believe her? Will she get her husband back?

Stewart's writing is saturated with consumer culture; he has a predilection for brands which seeps into his description in often funny ways. Do you need to know what kind of perfume a character prefers, or their appliances, or clothes? Maybe not, but you will. The awkward prose reaches an apex with an unintentionally hiliarious sex scene--who knew Noxsema could be so arousing?

As the plot develops, Stewart's heroine becomes more and more unhinged, but due to some interesting writing choices she becomes less and less convincing as a character--there's a major disruptive life event late in the novel that she recovers from in a matter of a few days--and the novel culminates in a truly wild if nonsensical, short sighted "twist". I ended up wondering if Paula actually cared about her family at all? It's a bit hard to grasp character motivations and it seems like Stewart just needed to end the thing in a hurry.

But if you want to read something ridiculous, this might be a good waste of a few hours, depending on your tolerance for wooden prose and comically illogical character development. That's not even touching on the incest or Robin, the killer labrador retriever...

[Andrealligcoses]

Decidí continuar leyéndolo a pesar de que el estilo de escritura no me gustase porque pensaba que la historia tenía mucho potencial. Desde casi el principio es fácil deducir que está pasando, y pensaba que era un recurso del escritor para hacernos creer que lo tenemos todo bajo control para luego dar un giro de 180º y sorprendernos, pero no. Todo es exactamente lo que parece. Por lo menos es fácil de leer y que la trama avanza rápido.

[Fishface · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a good read that I plowed straight through in a few hours. I will definitely be reading this one again. Great late-Sixties period piece, wonderfully written, terrific suspense and -- untiol you get to the end -- almost exactly the same feel to it as ROSEMARY'S BABY.

[Gabe Haley · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 (why won’t Goodreads let me rate stuff w/ half stars??) I liked this a lot but it left something to be desired. All the buildup and tension early in the book was really immersive. I just wanted a bit more background into Duncan and Roxanne, there seemed to still be some loose ends with them

[Mary Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel taught me early on that I loved a fast plot, a lot of twists, and characters that are pure evil.

[Helen Azar · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the great style of Ira Levin (one of my favorite psychological thriller authors), this book is fast paced and suspenseful. A treat for any conossieur of the genre.

[Mike Thorn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is deftly plotted, and that's not nothing, but it's impossible to avoid comparison with Ira Levin's vastly superior Rosemary's Baby, published two years prior. Like Levin's book, Stewart's sees a suspicious elderly person descending on a young New York couple, setting in motion a series of circumstances suggesting the husband has made a secret Faustian bargain. Both books toy with ambiguity, oscillating between genuine Satanic influence and their woman protagonists' misguided paranoia.

In his introduction to a reissue of The Stepford Wives (another Levin-authored genre masterpiece), Peter Straub insightfully identifies the brand of expertise too often ignored in well-written "commercial fiction." He writes, "Levin's prose is clean, precise, and unfussy specifically in order to be as transparent as possible: he wishes to place no verbal static between the words on the page and the events they depict. One great difference between good writing that readers overlook and bad writing that they fail to notice has to do with the number of rewrites and revisions usually required by the former. It isn't at all easy to write clear, declarative prose—transparency evolves from ruthless cutting and trimming, and is hard work—while lumpy, tangle-footed writing flows from the pen as if inspired by the Muse." Of course, Levin's work doesn't thrive on concision alone: he's an ingeniously acerbic social commentator, his diction is elegant and deliberate, and he achieves immersive verisimilitude by way of convincing dialogue and character-writing.

Stewart falls a bit short in these respects. While The Mephisto Waltz is brisk and uncluttered on a narrative level, the actual writing is often stiff: Stewart leans too frequently on clichés, and the interior and exterior dialogue is stilted and mannered. It's certainly not a badly written novel. While Stewart's no expert prose stylist, he ably gets the job done; but putting his work in conversation with Ira Levin's, it's easier to recognize the skill required to achieve the kind of deliberate "invisibility" Straub identifies in the latter's work.

[Diana Fearn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve seen the movie years ago, and just the other day, but it pales in comparison to the book! The Mephisto Waltz is a fairly quick read, but it was full of details, right to the very end. Mr. Stewart’s writing is through, yet easy to read. Although the movie was unnerving it doesn’t capture the story in its entirety. I don’t want to give away the plot, but what I will say is read this book!

[John Schmitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well structured suspense and mystery- interesting confluence of the mystical, supernatural and merely psychological phenomena that keeps you shocked and guessing to the end. Not for the faint-hearted.

[Richard Dominguez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although there are more than a few things that didn't seem right to me this was an enjoyable story and for fans of the supernatural it wont be a disappointment.
Not the best in the genre but certainly not the worse

[Luis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leí esta novela principalmente porque es la base de la película The Mephisto Waltz (1971), una de las mejores películas de terror de los 70's y afortunadamente el libro original no decepciona. Con una historia que recuerda un poco a La semilla del diablo, no tanto en la trama sino en la atmósfera y temas de lo oculto.
En la historia, un escritor entrevista a un famoso pianista que al principio lo recibe como una molestia pero al ver las manos del escritor, que según dice son manos de pianista que no se ven más que una vez en cada generación, lo recibe con mucha cordialidad e invita al escritor y su esposa a formar parte de su círculo social de alta sociedad.
El pianista, junto con su bella hija, son algo excéntricos, pero la pareja se lo atribuye a la fama y dinero que poseen. Cuando el pianista y su hija empiezan a involucrarse más y más en sus vidas es cuando el verdadero horror comienza.
No puedo darle cinco estrellas porque eso sería poner la novela al mismo nivel que La semilla del diablo o El exorcista, pero aún así es una muy buena novela de su género. Recomendad si la pueden encontrar pues está fuera de circulación desde hace décadas.

[Kevin Eigelbach · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd give three and a half stars, if I could. This is an enjoyable little potboiler that I picked up for a quarter at a yard sale. Paula's husband, Myles, is a writer who previously washed out as a concert pianist. He lands an interview with Duncan, a world-famous but elderly pianist, who takes a fancy to his hands. When Duncan dies, Paula becomes convinced that Duncan and his daughter, Roxanne, have used some kind of Satanist mumbo-jumbo to transplant Duncan's personality into Myles. We learn fairly early on that this is true, but Paula refuses to believe it initially. I wondered why the author gave the game away so early, but there is a nice twist at the end that makes it clear. Pretty well written, some nice descriptions. Not a literary masterpiece by any means, but a good read. And that's what we want to promote on this site, right?

[Bill Bontrager · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not great horror, but it's pretty good. Ira Levin set the bar, and Fred Mustard Stewart seems to be cashing in. I mean, he did get a movie deal out of the book, and despite mediocre reviews, the picture has become a bit of a classic.

This is a short novel, in the tradition of "Rosemary's Baby," but a much different story. I love Stewart's cultural references. It's all so sixties, man. I had to look up "Op Art," dawning on me that this sort of abstraction was popular during that time.

I like the book overall, although head-scratching moments dealing with the loss of a child. I think it's worth reading (if you can find it). It's a quick read, running at around 60k words.

(8.3)

[Rin Hoshigumo · Rating 4 out of 5]

That was an unexpectedly satisfying read! In some places, I found it a bit hammy & hackneyed. However, I still enjoyed the twist. I have a feeling if “Myles” ever discovers the truth about “Roxanne”, he’ll be in the same position Paula was in. If you want to cling to the things of this world, they’ll trap you, so ultimately, it’s the god of this world who wins, and maybe you’ll never realize you were never a player and only a pawn.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you say "Satanic Panic" people automatically say 80s. But there was a previous wave in literature in Hollywood and Books starting with 1967's Rosemary's Baby and finally beginning to peter out with Amityville Horror book and film. This is a pretty solid example with a cute twist to end on.

[Greer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm so in love with Satanic books from the 1970's. Crazy freaking stories and god awful account of witchcraft, but oh so fun to read. Much like "Rosemary's Baby", there is a trade with the Devil with a nice little twist at the end. Love it!!!

[Scott Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve know about this book for years and finally got round to reading it.

I can see comparisons with Rosemary’s Baby which I also enjoyed. This book has a similar feel with a different take which I did enjoy

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read in the 70s

[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

pretty creepy

[Jewell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book as a young teen. Enjoyed it as an adult.

[kellie · Rating 5 out of 5]

despite being rather predictable, it’s a fun, disturbing read. if you enjoy feeling uncomfortable and squirmy this one is for you

[Shirley Yant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! Very good book, also saw movie. Spooky and well done.

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Creepy. Thinking about this story still keeps me up at night.

[Patricia Eichenlaub · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird book!

[Robert Giesenhagen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this a few years ago and my biggest memory is that the main characters, husband and wife both seemed like complete morons.