I've enjoyed what I've little I've read thus far from Crystal Lake Publishing, a prolific small press, but it's going to be hard for them to top this one, which is so far up my alley I can feel it.

Easily the worst thing about 'Collector's Item' is that it ends, but that's because it's the first third of a novel called 'Draw You In' that's being broken up into three separate books, each published on the tail of its predecessor, rather than a single annoyingly heavy eight-hundred-page behemoth. I avoided the word "trilogy" deliberately there, because it's emphatically not that. This is one book broken up into three books, surely for size reasons, but it isn't written as three standalone stories with one story arc, so it ends and we need to pick up book two to keep going. As much as I ached to do that, I do appreciate not having to hold a doorstop of a book for three times as long as each of its conveniently smaller parts.

Everything about this one speaks to me, so I'm going to have to be careful to avoid hyperbole. Just be aware that Jasper Bark doesn't know me from Adam but it feels like he wrote it specifically for me. As such, there are many opportunities for him to get this horribly wrong, in which case I'd see his mistakes and the book would suffer accordingly for it. That he thankfully doesn't do that is the biggest compliment I can give. Everything about this weird horror story feels real and grounded, even if its flights of fancy blur it into multiple genres, most obviously fantasy, thriller, speculative fiction and both contemporary and historical general fiction. That's quite the feat.

There are three primary characters to which we're introduced gradually and a fourth who we don't meet, at least in this first book and very possibly won't in the other two, but serves not only as an enticing MacGuffin but as a sword hanging over everybody's head or a giant spider weaving a dark and very complex web. That sort of imagery feels entirely appropriate here because he's an artist, an obscure but talented comic book creator whose work has become something more than ink on a page. He's R. L. Carver, who drew pre-code horror comics way back in the fifties, long before Linda Corrigan re-encounters his name at her table at New York Comic Con.

The setup is absolutely glorious. Linda is a veteran creator, who's had her time in the spotlight but has dropped down to the indies and is now manning her own table in Artist Alley. A former editor of hers, Paul Kleinman, a legend of the industry, sees her there and stops to chat. He shows her an old sketchpad which she recognises as Carver's work and she uses Carver's own pen, an old school fountain pen (which I know is called a dip pen in the U.S.), to draw Kleinman. He's still a big name, so he promises to get her onto the guestlist for an exclusive party that night, and off he goes.

So far, so good. The problem is that, when she shows up for that party, not only is her name not on the list but nobody there, including mutual friends, even recognises Kleinman's name. It's like he never existed and whatever Linda does to prove that he did fails miserably, right down to visiting his mother, who now claims to have never had kids. It's a good thing that Bark grounds Linda well because we have to question her sanity, just as she starts to do. So is she mad? Well, Special Agent Alan MacPherson doesn't think so when he shows up eight chapters in and we soon learn that the weird situation that she finds herself in has happened to him too. Twice. And both times were tied to R. L. Carver.

In fact, Linda is only the second person he's ever found who even recognises the man's name, the other being a knowledgeable comic book historian called Richard Ford who's also a conspiracy nut who runs the altinform.org website, where he recounts "alternate historical narratives". He's the third of our major characters and the three become a team, Linda and Richard effectively junior agents working for MacPherson. And so the story begins, with the three of them embarking on a vaguely episodic journey to figure out who Carver was, what he did and why he's apparently still massively important to someone with enough power to effectively change history.

As original as this sounds—and it is highly original—there's one obvious comparison in the British TV show 'Utopia', which ran for two seasons in 2013 and 2014, with the inevitable American remake failing dismally because it came out during the COVID-19 pandemic, highly unfortunately given its focus on a fictional pandemic. That had to do with comic book fans who believe a cult graphic novel accurately predicted important world events and want to get hold of its unpublished sequel which may have just shifted tantalisingly from rumour to reality.

The other obvious comparison is to the crossroads legend, because Carver is a black kid who starts out producing crap but becomes very good indeed overnight, as if he's sold his soul for vast talent. The delicious catch, worthy of one of the pre-code horror comics he works on, is that he becomes entirely too good, turning out work of such quality that evokes such visceral responses from test readers that it simply can't be published. And thus his magnum opus, 'Tales That Draw You In', is a thing of legend, just like the sequel to 'The Utopia Experiments' in 'Utopia'. Except that Linda has now seen some of it in the sketchpad that Kleinman, who apparently no longer exists, showed her.

It's fair to say that I devoured this book with relish. Bark may have set up a fascinating epic, but he also endowed it with depth and history. The horror aspects are obvious, being rooted in pre-code horror comics but also being introduced through a prologue featuring a serial abuser and killer whose I'm presuming has relevance in a couple of details yet to be fully explored. The speculative fiction aspects are obvious too, especially once Ford starts to throw out his suggestions about the reasons behind it all. The idea of an artist being too good to be published is weird fantasy as much as it is horror. The investigation is pure thriller, an unreliable FBI agent leading civilians into such places as nursing homes and militia compounds to build knowledge of R. L. Carver.

And, while it's told as a contemporary story, the MacGuffin only seems to exist in the past with his background explored almost as comic book history. I'm far from the comic book nerd that Richard Ford is but I know enough to recognise names and companies referenced here, as well as the era that Bark is talking about. I've read Fredric Wertham's 'Seduction of the Innocent', which ended that era, even if I haven't mustered up the funds to splash out on the recent reprint collections of material from EC Comics and other publishers. I also remember similar moral panics, having gone through the video nasty and Satanic Panic eras in the UK. Bark even includes at least one creator who's still alive and working, in Walt Simonson, who Linda knows personally and talks to in a very memorable scene.

There's surely more to come about Linda's past in the next two books. I'm looking forward to how that ties into the broader story. She's easily the deepest of the three primary characters, but it's fair to say that the other two have their depths too. MacPherson is being sidelined because of his two Carver-inspired episodes, so is even more driven to find the truth behind it all. Ford is used to being ridiculed, as a conspiracy nut, but the most fascinating thing about conspiracy theories has to be the knowledge that, as truly insane and dangerous as most of them are, some of them must be true. Also, Carver isn't just another conspiracy theory for Ford; it has personal connections to his father, who's the mystery he's most keen to solve. More to come on all of this, I'm sure.

And so this ends, meaning that I need to acquire the second and third books to wrap up this story. Sadly I don't have them to hand. I should add that the grounding in pre-code horror comics has an echo in the use of comic book art at the beginning and end of this novel, with one of Carver's own characters, the Keeper of the Tome (I presume) providing the bookends. There are also a pair of interludes that arrive two hundred pages in and are told very much in pre-code horror style but in prose rather than panels of art. Bark clearly understands what he's talking about and he's able to conjure up a new story out of this historical backdrop that kept me engrossed throughout. I can't truly rank or rate a novel after only reading a third of it, but this is likely to be the most fun I'll be having with fiction this year. ~~ Hal C F Astell