Synopsis
A classic 1920s science fiction novella — with a 2015 twist. Ex-boxer Harry Stubbs is on the trail of a mysterious legacy in South London. A polar explorer has died, leaving huge debts and hints of a priceless find. Harry’s informants seem to be talking in riddles, he finds that isn’t the only one on the trail — and what he’s looking for is as lethal as it is valuable, leaving a trail of oddly-mutilated bodies. The key to the enigma lies in an ancient Arabian book, leading to something more alien and more horrifying than Harry could ever imagine. Harry is not be an educated man, but he has an open mind, bulldog persistence and piledriver fists — important assets when you’re boxing the darkest of shadows.
The story of mystery and horror draws on HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos and is inspired by Ernest Shackleton’s incredible real-life Antarctic adventures.
Review
THE ELDER ICE by David Hambling is the first of the Harry Stubbs series, which I have long believed to the best Call of Cthulhu-esque fiction out there. By which I mean something that captures the feeling of the tabletop game versus the cosmic horror of HP Lovecraft. I was a huge fan of the game while a Goth kid in the Nineties and enjoyed the video games like Dark Corners of the Earth as well as Alone in the Dark.
Unfortunately, you can’t find very good Cthulhu Mythos fiction that fits into this mold since so much of it tends to being pure horror over adventure horror. Basically, too much of it is about the protagonists getting eaten versus solving a mystery. The rare exceptions like Brian Lumley’s Titus Crow series or the Arkham Horror books are some things I really treasure but I prefer Harry Stubbs over both.
The premise for The Elder Ice is that Harry Stubbs is working for a 1920s London law firm as a not-quite legbreaker that attempts to shake down people who owe debts on inheritances. As an ex-boxer and WW1 veteran, Harry is certainly intimidating but he’s closer to Rocky Balboa in his morality than your typical gangster. He’s got a kooky assignment, though, in that he is to try to find any money to be had from a recently passed arctic explorer named Sir Ernest Shackleton’s estate.
Sir Ernest Shackleton was an eccentric who believed that there was a secret civilization of prehuman things in the Antarctic and while this is a questionable claim in the real world, certainly is true in the works of HP Lovecraft. Harry quickly finds that Shackleton brought something back that may change the course of the British Empire (of which Harry has no particular fondness).
The Elder Ice isn’t a long book and is a novella but I think it is just the right size for the story they want to tell. A trick of horror fiction is that it’s very easy to lose track of the tension if you expand a book too much and a lot of short stories end too quickly to take advantage of its build-up. Harry is someone who isn’t a scholar or a hero but someone who is gradually brought into the dark possibilities of a world below his own.
The biggest appeal of this book is that David Hambling does a good job of evoking the 1920s in London and the feel of being a working class hero. Harry Stubbs isn’t an occult scholar or intellectual like most of Lovecraft’s protagonists and it means that he gets a somewhat more grounded view of the craziness he encounters. I’d argue the best way to survive a typical Call of Cthulhu scenario is to be as uncurious as possible but Harry threads the needle of not wanting to poke the bear while also being involved in the plot.
In conclusion, The Elder Ice is a fantastic novella and something I think will definitely appeal to fans of the Cthulhu Mythos as well as both mystery and horror fiction. You don’t need to be familiar with the works of HP Lovecraft to appreciate it but doing so will undoubtedly help. I binged the series after I finished this as well so that’s a heart recommendation.
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