The Edge of Running Water

by William Sloane

The Edge of Running Water deals with the adventures of a young psychologist in a remote Maine farm house; with the death of a woman and the disappearance of an inventor. Against a normal enough background, events take on the shape of terror, with a tinge of the unknown - hints of things beyond the borderland of the natural, including the strange researches into survival after death by a half-mad electro-physicist. Set against these, a tender love story adds an unexpected poignancy and charm.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Science Fiction, Mystery, Classics, Weird Fiction, Literature

255 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1939

About the author

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

William^^Sloane

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Moral: dead should remain dead, don't trust mediums, some doors shouldn't be opened, etc.

I wanted to like this one so much more than I actually did. Its compact size and at-times frenetic pacing, the short amount of time portrayed (less than 2 days), its cult status, its marriage of science and psychic phenomena... all things I read about in advance, all things I still appreciate about it. Its title is resonant when considering what the story is leading to, both in the literal sense (a body in the river) and in the figurative (it is a rather poetic encapsulation of the specific danger to the cast). And the Strange Thing at the heart of the mystery was fascinating and scary. I love that it looked like a ██. However,

Suspense, I reminded myself, is a purely subjective matter.

Indeed! Except for the big reveal near the end, this was just not a suspenseful book for me. At times it was a distinct drag to read. Probably because I had to view the story through the eyes of a priggish, narrow-minded, super uptight protagonist who Sloane positions as a rational and I guess "decent" reader surrogate - and I wanted nothing to do with his boring and borderline hysterical perspective. Alas!

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sloane's second, and final, novel is more polished than its predecessor. The "cosmic horror" plot has more of a mystery vibe this time around, and the flip side of the often slow pacing is a gradually building suspense that pays off in a more satisfying conclusion that still leaves plenty to the imagination. Despite populating the story with recognizable caricatures (the befuddled professor, the redneck townies, the love interest, etc.) Sloane invests them with enough humanity to give the reader an interest in their various fates.

[Jim Dooley · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the early 1940's, the fourth and last of Boris Karloff's "Mad Scientist" films for Columbia Pictures was released, THE DEVIL COMMANDS. Although I believe it had the lowest budget, it was always my favorite of the "series" because Karloff was so good in the lead role, and there were some genuinely eerie scenes that have brought me back to the film time and time again.

I had noticed a recurring thread in the criticisms of the movie, and it centered around those who had read the source book, THE EDGE OF RUNNING WATER by William Sloane. Usually, it was a lament that the movie's story wasn't more faithful to the one in the book. That really raised my curiosity, and I scoured the "used book" dealers to find a copy. Having just finished it, I can see why the book's fans would be disappointed ... yet, I still find myself leaning toward a preference of the movie.

The book does have a fair share of unnerving scenes. When the "chilling" moments occur, they are thrilling. I had goosebumps rising at least twice during reading sessions, and that doesn't happen very often!

The theme is one of large appeal, too. An electrophysicist whose beloved wife has died seeks to find a way to scientifically open up a communication channel with her. I know that I've wished I could have a few minutes to talk with my mother again (decades later), and have had the bizarre feeling that if I called her last telephone number, she might answer. I also recall a time that I had a dream that my grandmother was nearby which woke me up out of a sound sleep. For the briefest of moments, I thought I saw a "black opening" at the foot of my bed that immediately "winked out." (Needless to say, there was no more sleep that night!)

The major strength of the book is its use of scientific method to explore the possibility. Yes, it does go on some bizarre excursions. Even so, there was still this small voice in the back of my mind telling me that "It may just be possible." That certainly kept me in rapt anticipation of an exciting climax which was delivered.

There were two drawbacks, though, and I thought they were significant ones. The first was the narration by a psychologist who was a student and now a friend of the scientist. That character frequently provides detailed descriptions that serve to do little more than delay the action. An excellent example is the train trip that opens the book. Granted, it provides exposition, but there are many details that don't advance the story at all. At one point, the narrator even "speaks" to the Reader, saying that he realizes that it seems he may be providing excessive digressions. (Well, yes, it did!)

The second drawback is one that kept taking me right out of the story. The narrator would provide suggestions about certain characters who wouldn't survive by the end of the tale. He didn't say "what" would happen, but the foreknowledge was very annoying. Perhaps it might have been effective if the characters had been so developed that I deeply cared for their well-being, but I doubt that. Consequently, when a scene of peril occurred with one of those characters present, I knew it would mean they wouldn't make it out alive. That definitely reduced my enjoyment.

THE EDGE OF RUNNING WATER is distinctive and intriguing enough to merit reading. I would say this is especially true for those folks who are (like me) fans of THE DEVIL COMMANDS. Despite the excessive details and the foreknowledge, the ending is a "doozy" which does provide rewards.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

The real shame here is that William Sloane only ever wrote two books...and now I've read them both. As he did with his first novel, 'To Walk the Night,' Sloane once again deftly combines mystery, sci-fi, and horror into an eloquent and suspenseful tale about an obsessed scientist trying to create a machine to speak with his dead wife. Maybe I can track down the short stories he allegedly wrote...

[Leif · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-paced cosmic horror/mystery. Builds to a pretty "slam-bang" close but getting there was not always that fun. The romance aspect just didn't work for me (it actually seemed a bit creepy at points).

Worth a look for fans of the weird.

I did not enjoy this as much as "To Walk the Night", the other book in the collection that NYRB put out.

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I had happened to watch the filmed adaptation of this (THE DEVIL COMMANDS, 1941, with Boris Karloff), I figured I might as well read the novel, as it's long been on my list (and the filmed version was pretty weak).

A young psychologist travels to a remote riverside Maine town to reconnect and catch-up with his old professor, Dr, Julian Blair, who has become a recluse following the death of his wife. He finds his mentor to be addled but driven by a mysterious project he's been working on, assisted by a quietly domineering spiritualist medium, and the dead wife's younger sister, with whom the psychologist sparks a romance, even as he begins to slowly suspect what MAY be going on upstairs in the locked laboratory...

SHORT VERSION: A not terrible but not great novel, probably unlikely to be found engaging by younger readers with modern tastes, as its more about a slow and steady build-up of suspense that, while it pays off effectively, will seem like a "much of muchness" to those with modern tastes (which are not my tastes).

MORE DETAILED REVIEW: Yes, as I said, this takes a while to "get going" and even "get going" is being charitable. By halfway in, we've slowly been brought up to speed with the main character, his backstory, his reasons for being there, and his opinions and observations about his friends who he hasn't seen in a while, the new people he meets, and small-town Maine life in general. As to the "mystery," well, you're not gonna know until the last few chapters of the book, when it really kicks into high gear. It should be stated that this is essentially a modern Gothic Suspense Novel in tone, where the "threat" is neither personal (an evil Baron or something) nor supernatural (ghosts), but essentially "mad science"— with small pit-stops into Romance, Crime-Mystery and "small town folks who don't cotton to them big-city slickers".

For all that, I liked it. Unlike others, I felt the main character was a reasonable representation of what an educated, middle-class guy from the time would be like, since we spend a lot of time with him as this is written as a memoir "after the fact" (he even notes that, at times, he's probably providing more details than needed). The Karloff adaptation, while utilizing Karloff well, fails because of its brevity (and the addition of a "hulking assistant" to the mix doesn't help) but, it must be said, there's an "addition" to the basic set-up that, while I'm not sure how it could have been worked in, might have added a bit more morbid frission to the book: in the book, wire representatives of seven seance "attendants" are needed to "amplify the circuit" of the "void aperture machine," (the whole-set up, to my delight, was described as looking like a "Futurist seance" - extra points for his comparison of something to Dali later) but in the film these positions are occupied by actual bodies, robbed from graves!. es setting it up in the book may have "given the game away" too early, but still....

And now, why not read "TO WALK THE NIGHT"?

[Alex Sarll]

The outline is the same as any number of horror stories: the narrator's friend was traumatised by the death of his wife, whom the narrator also loved, and has retreated to the countryside, where he now has a strange establishment with peculiar staff, amidst wild natural beauty, near an unfriendly small town. The narrator is summoned to visit him, and learns that something rum is going on – the brilliant, bereaved scientist is now attempting to find a cure for death! Surely this is only a symptom of a mind disordered by grief – but what if it isn't? And what of the lost love's younger sister, for whom it would definitely be inappropriate for either of them to have feelings, but who is growing to look remarkably like her?

In itself, this shouldn't be a problem, but the eye for detail which at best recalls Aickman's eye for the shabby sometimes lapses into the sort of unenlightening catalogue of fixtures and fittings which made child-me so exasperated with descriptive passages in general, and which at this extreme still makes me wonder whether the author was being paid by the word. It means what could easily have been a novella is instead saggy, without the time appreciably building the tension. Yes, the narrator tries to excuse it as providing what, though overlooked at the time, may be crucial detail, and this sounds suitably scientific-minded, but really isn't enough to outweigh the longueurs.

It doesn't help, of course, that the grim answers to the mysteries, which may well have been novel and arresting in 1939 (particularly in their marriage of the scientific and supernatural), are considerably easier to guess with a further eight decades' experience of horror stories and urban myths building on the same foundation. Thanks to the constant, heavy-handed foreshadowing, I had a fairly good idea what was going on before I was halfway through the book. And yet, somehow I persevered. There were just enough beautiful passages to serve as a trail of breadcrumbs, chiefly those describing the remote setting - one in particular, of swimming as a storm approaches, deserves to be much more widely known, quoted and excerpted. And once we finally see the invention, and what it does, the slow journey there almost feels worth it. Almost. Because while the outline is not so novel anymore, there are some nicely creepy specifics here.

I saw a recommendation for this somewhere, one convincing enough for me to buy it (cheap, admittedly) - but now can't recall where, or from whom. And when I searched in an effort to remind myself, one of the lead results said much the same. Now, there's a spooky coincidence from which one could build a horror story – the Phantom Recommendation!
(Though let's be honest, it was like as not Stephen King - it is set in Maine, after all, and he does tend to be far too free and enthusiastic with his blurbs. And you can definitely read him as having taken the formula operating here and fine-tuned it into a juggernaut)

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this one was still an overall very enjoyable read, for my tastes, it didn't feel like it hit quite the same highs as Sloane's first novel, To Walk The Night. Both are a cool blend of mystery, sci-fi, and horror on the cosmic end of things. Where the biggest difference in appreciation comes for me is this: the first one, by and large, pulled me along, grabbing a lungful of air when I could, on a story that read much like some of the British greats (except writing a genre bender instead of a ghost story, or what have you), while this one felt, in the best ways, like a B movie "dark and stormy night" kind of ride. I don't love that my review here largely just compares this to his only other novel, but it's kind of inescapable, really, when they're presented together in one lovely paperback. Check them out for some 1930s genre fiction sans a lot of the usual "rough" bits of early 20th century authors (here's looking at you, H.P.).

[Kaitlyn McCarthy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Forever enamored with Sloane's descriptive abilities. Some of his sentences are just pure magic. I think I preferred his earlier novel, but this one was interesting all the same, even if I wanted a little more of the cosmic horror aspect in the end.

[Creolecat]

The Devil Commands (1941)

[Mark Fuller Dillon · Rating 2 out of 5]

In 1986, I read William Sloane's THE CRAFT OF WRITING, a small book that made a big change in how I thought about fiction. My own stories improved substantially afterwards, and for this reason, I owe a debt to William Sloane that I could never repay.

For this reason, I wanted to love THE EDGE OF RUNNING WATER. I wanted to find echoes and reflections of the good advice he had offered in THE CRAFT OF WRITING. I wanted to find a book that I could praise.

What I found, instead, was a tediously padded waste of time that made me want to bash my head against the wall.

This book begins with a hint of cosmic horror:

"A year ago it would have seemed to me ridiculous to assume that there are some facts it is better not to know, and even today I do not believe in the bliss of ignorance or the folly of knowledge. But this one thing is best left untouched. It rips the fabric of human existence from throat to hem and leaves us naked to a wind as cold as the space between the stars."

Yet the book also hints right away that it will find no reason to tell its tale with urgency or energy. The protagonist arrives by train. He takes a long taxi trip to a distant house. He talks at length with one person. He talks at length with a second person. He talks at length with a third. Then he takes a swim. Then he has lunch. Then he talks at length again, and again, and again.

Every now and then, Sloane reveals a skill with prose:

"I watched the flash and lift of her arm as it came out of the water, and the arc of ripples that pushed along in front of her bathing cap. The sun caught the wet rubber and made a point of fire on it. I found myself matching my strokes to hers, so that we were swimming beside each other in the same rhythm, sliding through the water like parts of a single entity. The patch of fire on her cap held my eyes until I was half hypnotized without knowing it, and only the grating of my fingers on the beach sand snapped the spell.

"We stood up then and looked at each other. Drops of water fell from her body like fragments of light, and for an instant it seemed to me that there had been nothing whatever prior to this moment, that we had swum up out of some infinite reservoir of being until we stranded on the shore of the world. It is impossible to describe such an experience in the vocabulary of psychology, or any other, for that matter. It simply was. We stood there looking at each other, half smiling, not conscious of things but of everything fused into one universal sensation which vibrated in me to the tune of our swimming."

But for the most part, he relies on endless passages of dialogue, on delaying tactics of introspection. The protagonist never does anything until he has thought and thought and thought about the appropriate actions.

"It should have occurred to me that, even in despair, Julian would be a hard man to fool and that Mrs. Walters must have shown him evidence of something more important than occasional flashes of telepathy. If I had thought about that for a while, tried to imagine what she had been able to do which would interest him, I might have caught a glimpse of what was likely to happen. Instead, the problem presented itself to me in a completely irrelevant light -- the question of what I ought to do about Julian.

"The answer was certainly not obvious. I mulled it over in my mind for a good while, but in the end came back to the only real idea I had, which was to wait a while, see more plainly what was going on, and try to persuade Julian to let me examine his work. Once I reached that point I counted on being able to see the flaw in it -- the reason why it wouldn't do what he claimed. I never doubted that such a flaw existed. Perhaps I might be able to break him of this delusion at once, but if not, the entering wedge would have been driven. He had suggested that he'd achieved some partial success. (How partial they both were, I thought -- Julian with his invention, Mrs. Walters with her contact in the 'other' world.) Very well, then. I would persuade Julian to demonstrate to me how far he had got. He would have to talk to me as one scientist to another. That in itself would help. He would be reminded of his own innate standards and see that he was being false to them.

"The plan was naïve, of course. I see that now. But it might have worked. Even now I can't say positively that it wouldn't have done what I hoped. But there was never an opportunity to test it. And when Julian unwittingly gave us a demonstration what he had accomplished, I did not know it for what it was."

Not since my last broken attempt to read something by Stephen King have I suffered through a book so tediously determined to pad things out, to repeat information needlessly, to delay gratification, to dispel urgency, and to break any mood of tension with pointless digressions. As the book neared its climax, I hoped that its pacing and focus would improve, but no such luck.

Endless introspection!

"In the end I had to give up the effort to discover what I thought was wrong. There were too many possibilities and nothing probable. The accident, when I thought about it, did not seem to explain the feeling wholly, though I admitted to myself that when I had seen Mrs. Marcy lying in that unnatural way at the foot of the stairs I had thought for one instant, 'Now it's happened.' But that was obviously meaningless. As it turned out, nothing had happened. And equally, if the accident had been important in some way, I could not see why or to whom -- except Mrs. Marcy -- it was important. What the 'it' was that had happened I did not understand, though I assigned it to the feeling of imminence which had come over me earlier in the afternoon. That, in turn, was unquestionably caused by the approach of the thunderstorm. Still, the lightning and thunder, and most of the rain, had long ago swept away to the northeast and it seemed to me that the air was as charged with suspense as ever. Suspense, I reminded myself, is a purely subjective matter. There was no way of telling whether the way I felt had any external foundation or not."

Endless irrelevance!

"The rain was still falling, but not in gusts and torrents. It looked as though it might stop in half an hour or so, but it was still coming down fast enough to make me sprint for the battered Ford sedan in which Anne was sitting. Maine mud and dust were plastered all over it, but the motor sounded smooth under the hood. Even before my door was closed Anne was wrenching the car around and stepping it up from gear to gear. As we straightened out into the road the machine slewed sickeningly and I perceived that this was going to be quite a ride. The storm had soaked the loose top dirt of the track and turned it into a slimy lubricant between our wheels and the underlying hardpan. We skidded at every rut.

"'How about chains?'

"Anne didn't take her eyes off the road, but she grinned. 'Haven’t any, Dick. Don't worry.' We struck a pothole. When the car was back on an even keel she said, 'Do you think we ought to stop off at Marcy's anyhow? It'll be a mile, and ten minutes out of our way if the phone isn’t working.'

"'No,' I answered. 'I guess Mrs. Walters is right about that. We won't save much time even if the phone is working and it seems to me like a poor gamble.'

"'Probably.' She avoided a crater full of brown water and wrestled the car back across the slimy surface of the road. 'Seth Marcy's nobody's pet, anyhow. I've only seen him a couple or times, but he's the kind of man who doesn't open his mouth unless he has something unpleasant to say. I feel sorry for Elora.'

"'We'll forget him, then, till we get a doctor. After that we can go to his house and tell him.'

"We went on, not exactly racing but making incredible speed for the condition of the road. Anne handled the car with a magnificent blend of daring and judgment; I thought we weren't going to make the bridge at the turn by the creek, but we got across it by a hair, and when we hit the road along the far bank of the bay the going was better. Even with the chances Anne took, I did not feel nervous about her driving. There was competence in the way her hands were resting on the wheel, in the way she sat behind it, alert but not tense. It was, indeed, strangely pleasant, that ride. We were in a private world of our own, with rain on our roof and streaking down the windows, shutting us in together. I liked it. For a mile or so I forgot our errand, forgot the bleak house behind us, and thought of nothing except that this fortuitous intimacy was different from anything that had ever happened to me before.

"After twenty minutes or perhaps a little longer, the unlovely center of Barsham Harbor was flashing past our windows. I have often wished since that I had looked at my watch more frequently that day, but it was still in the side pocket of my coat, where I had put it when we went swimming, and I remembered it only as we pulled into town. It was ten minutes after four then and the light was already beginning to fade, thanks to the clouds and the rain.

"Our luck seemed to be out from the moment we hit the town. There were, it appeared, three doctors in Barsham Harbor. Dr. Peters was out on a call. Dr. Solomon, whom we tried next, had gone to Bath and was not expected back for several hours. The third and last was Dr. Rambouillet. His house was beyond the Catholic church on the other side of the railroad tracks and his small shingle looked inauspiciously new. But he was at home.

"'Dr. Peters is the Marcy family doctor,' he said to us when we told him our errand. 'I think you'd better get him. The people here...' he shrugged with the Latinity of the French Canadian.

"'He's out on a call,' I said. 'This is an emergency.'

"With no more demur he picked up his bag and got into the car. 'All right, but don't say I didn't warn you.' The teeth under his narrow black mustache were startling when he smiled. He couldn't have been over twenty-eight. 'I'll do what I can,' he declared, 'and then turn the case over to Dr. Peters. You see,' and he smiled again disarmingly, 'the people of Barsham Harbor either do want a French Canadian doctor or they don't. We keep to our own sides of the fence. Or perhaps I ought to say, of the tracks. You understand?'

"'Yes,' I said, 'and sympathize... What was your school, Doctor?'

"'McGill. And the ink is quite dry on the diploma.'

"I laughed. Anne was too busy driving to pay much attention to what we were saying. The day was drawing in and she switched on the lights when we turned right at the bridge. I watched the road slither and dance under our wheels. The thought went through my head that it was impossible I had got off the State of Maine express only that morning. This day had been going on for half a lifetime already. I was tired and sleepy. The thing to do would be to get to bed as soon after supper as was decently possible."

I quote at length to give you some idea of just how painfully dull this book turned out to be.

As for the concept behind the story: so what? Who cares? The idea had potential, but Sloane was too determined to keep it out of sight and at arm's length, too hell-bent on padding his idea with pounds of irrelevancy, until I wanted nothing more than for the book to die.

Only one thing forced me to read to the end: my debt to William Sloane for THE CRAFT OF WRITING. Anyone else would have driven me out of this book within twenty pages.

Oddly enough, in 1941, THE EDGE OF RUNNING WATER was filmed. Like the book that inspired it, THE DEVIL COMMANDS is dull, with an abrupt and unremarkable ending, but unlike the book, it shows hints of competence. The acting is not bad. The cinematography and lighting are often atmospheric, with darkness and shadows that could easily compare with Hollywood "noir" films from later that decade.

Yet on the whole, the film is remembered for two good reasons: for the performance of Boris Karloff, who moves convincingly from likeable scientific genius to sullen, broken widower, and for the machine that he builds in a secret laboratory.

This machine appears in the book, but the film adds a few macabre details that take it far beyond Sloane's conception. It becomes bizarre enough, and unsettling enough, to stick in the mind long after the film has ended. I will most likely never watch the film again from start to finish, but I will certainly go back to that eerie machine.

Can I recommend the book? No. Can I recommend the film? With certain reservations, yes. At the very least, the film will chew up less of your time, and cause less cranial damage to your walls.

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a somewhat obscure book. I read it on a recommendation and I’m glad I did. It’s a fascinating old story that sounds very new. The copyright is listed as “1939, 1955, 1966” but not whether those were just renewals or rewrites.

It’s a ghost story with science fiction elements, or science fiction with horror elements. What Dr. Blair actually discovered is left unexplained—as is why Professor Sayles is convinced that this line of research must be ended. It is probably related to the strange, unintelligible noises coming from the machine that Blair built.

Sloane’s novel sounds a lot like Stephen King; I suspect King was influenced by him. It may also be simply that both Sloane and King write more about the characters than about whatever it is that man was not meant to know. King attributes a disregard for genre to Sloane’s writing, but that isn’t quite right. It incorporates genre; there is even a detective story going on, but only with two two side characters who we never see! Despite that, there are clues left here as if it were a detective story for the readers to figure out.

And of course, it’s really neither a ghost story nor a science fiction story nor a detective story. It’s a “how I met your mother story” story, albeit without the conceit of telling it to a child. In fact, the given reason for telling the story appears on its face to be nonsensical. The basic idea makes sense: great scientific advances rarely happen alone. There are usually multiple people working on the same problem, often with no knowledge of the other. And so Professor Sayles wants to warn that unknown other person away from this dangerous research.

And according to Dr. Blair, many scientists in the past, including Thomas Edison, have attempted to solve this problem.

However, if this were a true story, all of those previous researchers suffered a fatal misconception that led them down the wrong path. Sayles provides the critical information that Edison and the others lacked; with that information, a dedicated researcher is more likely to follow Julian Blair’s successful path, not less likely.

This is a tense story; it helps that it’s of an era in which communication was practically non-existent. Most houses didn’t even have phones. Contacting someone, such as a doctor, meant driving to the doctor and bringing them back.

We stood up then and looked at each other. Drops of water fell from her body like fragments of light, and for an instant it seemed to me that there had been nothing whatever prior to this moment, that we had swim up out of some infinite reservoir of being until we stranded on the shore of the world.

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

William Sloane wrote only two novels, but they were both doozies. The first, "To Walk the Night" (1937), is a combination sci-fi/horror/fantasy/mystery tale concerning a mysterious, otherworldly woman. Two years later, Mr. Sloane came out with "The Edge of Running Water," and this one, I feel, is even better. It concerns an electrophysicist, Dr. Julian Blair, who is attempting to construct an apparatus that will enable him to communicate with his dead wife. The book takes place on a promontory on the Kennebec River in a lonely part of Maine (hence, I suppose, the title). Like the first book, this one is beautifully written, with a few sharply drawn characters, great pacing and suspense, and a tremendous windup. Given the fantastic nature of the central premise, it may come as a surprise how realistic and believable the presentation is. The story is told by Richard Sayles, an ex-student of Dr. Blair's, who has come to visit the professor and assist him in his work. The gradually unfolding horror is seen through his eyes, and he makes for a very creditable eyewitness of the amazing events.

I really can't say enough about this terrific novel. It seems to have everything: an intriguing murder mystery; a great and well-described setting; appealing and interesting characters; suspenseful action; and a unique premise. In the book's terrific conclusion, all the characters get exactly what they deserve. It is an extremely satisfying denouement. Sloane, as I mentioned, writes wonderfully. What a pity that he only produced these two great books. There are so many passages that one will want to read over. For example, this one, in which Dr. Sayles reflects on his love for Blair's deceased wife: "A love that is true to living persons and existing realities is steadfast and fine. But I saw then, for the first time, that a love which has fastened upon the dead and true to nothing but a past that was finished, is not a good nor true emotion. If it went on too long, it could become an incubus, throttling a man from the real life of the present, which is the life that we were fashioned to meet and experience." This book, despite the horror theme and eerie developments, is nonetheless a quite literate experience. It was, incidentally, made into a Boris Karloff movie in 1941 called "The Devil Commands." I have not seen the film, but, despite its good reputation, I don't see how it could hope to compare to this fine novel. I would advise all readers to seek it out as a unique experience.

[Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an avid reader of the New York Review of Books, I keep an interest in, and am notified about, the books released by their publications arm New York Review Books. I recently came across a blurb for their recently published omnibus of William Sloane's novels, which intrigued me enough to scout out one of his works, which I fortunately found as a freely borrowable ebook on openlibrary.org.

Fortunate being an appropriate word, as this book rises above the ruck of the run-of-the-mill SciFi and Horror written in the '30s. In fact this book crosses a few genres: SciFi, Horror, Mystery, Detective Novel and even a bit of Romance thrown in to spice up the mix.

The nuts and bolts of the story: Psychology Professor Richard receives a letter from a former mentor and electrophysicist friend of his Julian, to come to his country retreat to help him on a problem he has been working on for some time. Julian dropped out of Richard's life after the death of Julian's wife Helen, a woman Richard also loved.

Richard arrives in small-town Maine to find Julian shacked up in a remote house working on a mysterious apparatus, with an even more mysterious assistant, Mrs. Walters. Helen's younger sister Anne is also in the house, having just arrived back from Europe. Richard soon sees that all is not well, with Julian clearly ill. At first Julian will tell Richard nothing about his experiment, which is carefully locked away in one room of the house. The novel revolves around Richard's piece- by-piece unveiling of Julian's purpose, which then becomes tied up in the death of his housekeeper Mrs. Marcey, who apparently dies in a fall at the house.

The true horror of Julian's mania, and his genius in unveiling a new power to science come together in a final scene, which I won't reveal here.

Where Sloane has succeeded beyond the hack writers, is in his effective and efficient character building, and in the way builds the horror of what might be happening without revealing too much until the end of the book. Mrs. Walters remains an ambiguous character until very far into the book, and even after the last page it is unclear if Julian had succeeded in what he had set out to accomplish.

The readability and page-turning nature of this book is evinced in the fact that I knocked if off in a little over three hours. This isn't great literature, but for the type of book it is, it rises above the ruck.

Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/

[Jon Mehlhaus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ehhh - that's my takeaway from this novel - just a simple shrug of the shoulders. Whereas Sloane's first 'cosmic horror' novel, 'To Walk the Night' delighted me with its slow burn pacing and unreliable narration, 'The Edge of Running Water' felt simpler and less thoughtful. It tells the story of a college psychology professor visiting his old colleague, an eccentric electrophysicist, in rural Maine. The recluse Julian Blair is grieving his recently deceased wife as only an eccentric academic knows how, by throwing himself fully into a pet project. Building a machine that he believes will allow him to talk with his dearly departed, Blair enlists the help of a medium, Miss Walthers. This combination of high academic rigor in the world of pseudoscience should have been more interesting to me than it was. The conceit seems fantastic enough, but the discovery of the true properties of Blair's machine and its implications were telegraphed from the beginning. It doesn't help that the book traffics heavily in elitist distrust of the rural mob. Almost every native Mainer character is depicted as superstitious and backwards. It heightens the fact the narrator has stepped into another world, but it reads as more cliched than what I imagined Sloane intended. As a whole, the book lacked in atmosphere, setting, and plot, none of which could carry what should have been a fascinating exploration of the edges of life and death, the known and unknown.

[Kristi Blute · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I found it in our room at the Queen Mary and ordered it online to finish. Old time creepy with a lot of suspense. Written in 1939.

[Printable Tire]

I read the first story in The Rim of Morning: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror years and years and years ago, and being a completist I always wanted to return and read the second tale. Incidentally, I was surprised to find recently I'd only given To Walk the Night 3 stars, as it's one of only a handful of novels whose eerie atmosphere, if not particular plot points, has stuck with me.

I'll probably feel the same way about the Edge of Running Water in a few years. I certainly ran through it, and if particular sexist antiquated, 1950s Sci-fi-movie staples that appear have lost their charm (I kept on having to remind myself the novel was written much earlier, in the 30's!) the glimpse in the laboratory is still worth the price of admission. Coulda done without the rather obvious murder-mystery/courtroom subplot, though.

Makes me not want to go to Maine!

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Devastated William Sloane only wrote two books, because they are both incredible. Cozy 1930s cosmic horror that plays out in a much more humanistic way than his contemporaries like Lovecraft. There's something endlessly readable about these books.

Where To Walk the Night was cosmic, The Edge of Running Water is a more traditional mad scientist story (easily one of the top 5, probably a codifier of the genre I bet) with a focus on the afterlife. And despite being light on action, it's so enthralling and exciting. Basically only 4 characters for 99% of the novel, but Sloane weaves their relationships and machinations together perfectly.

Also, I know that they turned this one into a movie back in the 1940s but I'm going to give my dreamcast anyway because this book was basically one of the rare feature length films in my head:

Farley Granger as Prof Dick Sayles
Vincent Price as Prof Julian, duh.
Samantha Sloyan as Mrs. Walters
I never got a good read on Anne; maybe 90s Moira Kelly or someone.

Film it in a whitewashed Cape Cod on a densely wooded cape; call me, Netflix!

[Jared McGeough · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stephen King insists that Sloane is, in essence, a horror writer, but I'm not entirely sure. The Edge of Running Water is a fascinating mash-up of genre conventions, including the police procedural, 19th century locked-room mystery, "cosmic" horror, science fiction, all overlaid with interpersonal character dynamics that belie a sense of adult melancholy one rarely finds in conventional horror fiction, and certainly not in Sloane's more histrionic, better recognized contemporaries (Lovecraft, Ashton Smith, et al). Probably the novel's greatest strength lies in its expert pacing; throughout, Sloane continually teases a hidden machine in a locked room whose ultimate payoff works extremely well. Sloane's spare, stripped down, sometimes even playful, style adds to the creeping sense of dread, unregenerate sadness, and cautious hope that permeates the novel's characters. It's a pity Sloane didn't write more fiction.

[Ethan Hulbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a pretty dang good book.

The buildup was a bit slow for me, it could've been 25% shorter, and it wasn't quite perfect... could've used Anne more connected to the plot and the hero was a bit slow and uptight at times. I'd probably give this book a 4.5/5 but rounded up for goodreads.

I mostly liked the whole concept of the approximation of the seance... the idea that it could be just a wormhole to space, yes, or it could be a gateway to the world of the dead, yes, but it ALSO could be something much weirder... the idea that because the experiment is using fake replicas of humans that aren't really alive and conscious and connected to the fabric of the universe like real humans... because they're fake, they open up a portal to some sort of hollow approximation of the afterlife, something twisted and empty... that idea really pushed it over the edge for me. Pretty neat.

[Alex Bledsoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished this, the second and last novel by William Sloane. Like his first, TO WALK THE NIGHT, it's reminiscent of Lovecraft, especially "From Beyond." But also like the first, and unlike Lovecraft, Sloane creates vivid characters and dialogue. There's more conventional suspense in this one, and a tremendous payoff to the McGuffin in the locked room, but this one seems less, somehow, than the previous. Still, in his introduction Stephen King feels the opposite, so it may be a matter of taste. Either way, these are great novels and deserve your time (and are available in together in one volume called THE RIM OF MORNING).

[Rex Fausett · Rating 3 out of 5]

We have to remember that this was published in 1937 and comparison with Stephen King or any contemporary horror writer is pointless. I first read this in the early sixties and it was rather more alarming than it is now. As noted by others, the action takes place over two days and the narrative is quite drawn out. I still don't know what the running water had to do with it. Geographic, yes, plot no. I assumed that the body of the former Mrs Blair would be upstairs but I was wrong about that, although if I was going to rewrite it, it would be. Never mind, To Walk The Night is waiting for me on my bedside table.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always enjoy reading a book from "long ago". The edition that I got from my library was printed in 1955, with a first printing in the 30s. Anyhow, I enjoyed every page of this horror/mystery/ghost story. The setting is a creepy house at the end of a road in rural Maine. What do you get if you put an eccentric electrophysicist, a cranky medium and a university professor in the same creepy house? You get mayhem, I tell you. But, seriously, this is a well-crafted mystery that keeps you guessing until the very last page. And there is some very genuine spookiness in it.

[Ron Kerrigan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sloane's second novel is a winner, although pretty obscure. The writing style is easy to take (my only gripe is telling us ahead of time that some unpleasant things are going to happen). The characters are well drawn, especially one of the central characters, Mrs. Walters, who the reader will want to be a villain, but somehow cannot feel complete contempt for her. Recommended for mystery lovers (not really a horror novel) and people who are looking for a well-written whopper to keep them company for a few hours.

[Shawn C. Baker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as To Walk The Night, but still an excellent piece of literature. Completely transcends genre tropes (partially because they didn't quite exist to the extent they have over the last four or five decades I suppose). There is an economic pragmatism to Mr. Sloane's work that I enjoy in the same fashion I enjoy Fitzgerald and Hemingway.
Highly recommended for fans of Cosmic Horror or Weird Fiction. Especially if you're looking for something 'new' in that arena.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not quite as interesting as Sloan's first novel, this book features a similar mixture of styles and genres in an unpredictable way. Doesn't go in the direction I thought, which was nice, but feels a bit rushed at points. Even worse, the romantic angle is a bit creepy: the narrator falls in love with a woman that he helped raise when she was 11 but is now 21: he's in his mid-30s. Woody Allen was probably a big fan, I suppose. *cheap gag*

[Henri Moreaux · Rating 3 out of 5]

Classic late 1930s mystery - science fiction novel, involving a mourning electro-physicist who attempts to use his scientific knowledge to construct an apparatus to speak with his dead wife, and those on the other side generally.

There's a few tropes such as the simple country townsfolk, the creepy medium, the seemingly mad scientist, but overall it's a well put together tale on what was at that point, in 1939, seemingly the cutting edge of electro-science to the lay person.

Worth a read for those interested in early novels and science fiction, although this is more science than your traditional early science fiction novels involving space, it could even be classified as horror depending on your genre views.

[Nathan Shumate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Take Lovecraft, halve the eldritch horror, and add a bunch more character (including a non-annoying love story). Good stuff.

(Warning: The original title, "The Edge of Running Water," tells you nothing about the story. The paperback title, "The Unquiet Corpse," tells you stuff that ain't so -- I don't think I've seen such an egregiously inaccurate title since the Bela Lugosi film "The Invisible Ghost.")

[j · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, not much of an overlooked gem. I hate to say something has been rightfully forgotten, and Sloane has a few moments of inspiration here and there, but this is overlong and psychologically basic compared to something like Poe -- and it doesn't stack up too well to most of Sloane's more noteworthy contemporaries.

[Raime · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another stretched out short story from Sloane. In parts this is a better narrative than Walk the Night, but the ending here is less rewarding.


"You can love when you are cold, hungry, sad, swiftly frightened, even when you are otherwise bored, as honeymoons go to show, but not when you are afraid. And I was afraid."