Black light

by Talbot Mundy

Joe Beddington is president of the Jupiter Chemical Company, but a virtual slave of his scheming mother. They travel to India and Joe succumbs to the beauty of Amrita.

A complex web is the pattern spun by the revolving wheel of karma.

Genres: Fiction

211 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

Talbot Mundy (born William Lancaster Gribbon) was an English-born American writer of adventure fiction. Based for most of his life in the United States, he also wrote under the pseudonym of Walter Galt. Best known as the author of King of the Khyber Rifles and the Jimgrim series, much of his work was published in pulp magazines.

Reviews

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Update 8 September 2025: I reread this because the opening chapter would not stop taking up space in memory. That chapter, a parade of nautch girls before an Indian temple, while Joe Beddington and his accomplice Cpl Hawkes view from the shadows cast by shimmering moonlight and ancient trees, that chapter, I say, opens the door to something more revelatory than I first imagined. For what Mundy does in this book is offer a dialog on theosophy. Much influenced by Madame Blavatsky, Mundy was a theosophist and the belief often filtered into his adventure stories. It does more than that in this novel, which is not a typical adventure of place but one of time and vision. The Black Light is the stage for that vision and not ironically the means of illuminating judgment and truth. The yogi of the book merges with Joe's Western idealism to create exactly the sort of fusion theosophists pursued. Meanwhile Joe's mother and the evil conspiring maharajah Poonch-Terai cast auras themselves of blackness and crimson rage and jealousy. And it all turns on Joe's love for a lost Western girl, Amrita, left to be raised in both the temple and the schoolroom of an old New England woman. Again, a fusion of West and East that makes clear the attraction and fate Joe and Amrita will have for one another.
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Earlier review, which is both valid and wrong at the same time in the context of the above revision.

One of the most appealing things about Talbot Mundy's writing is that he was willing to experiment and explore different forms of storytelling. He does so, here, in Black Light. The attempt, alas, is not among his more successful ones. Instead of the epic sweep associated with a quest, an adventure, or exploration, he has opted for the domestic set piece more in common with Maugham than anyone else. And it simply doesn't work, although Mundy injects an enormous dollop of karmic philosophy into the novel in an attempt to lift it above a mere romance in an exotic surrounding.

This story of a triangle involving a boy, his mother, and his would-be love becomes repetitious at its worst and merely preachy at its better moments. At times, it is like reading through a sermon. And with the final reveal in the very last paragraph, there isn't so much satisfaction and closure as simply relief at the completion of the journey.

By no means is this a failure as a novel--unless judged against Mundy's better works. But it seems the author was working out his personal thoughts and worries at the expense of his story. As such, it is a disappointing effort.