(urth) lake Brompton and the Brompton monster in SH

[Marc Aramini]

On lake Brompton (in Canada) Bax fights the werewolves, picks up Kiki and ghostly Mary King, and sees a spectral white horse as well, giving like three or four different versions of events to his various pen pals. There is a Lake Brompton monster of folklore which was said to be at least six feet long, with an “evil looking head” and a “mustache” ... hmmmmm 

I have never said this before, but this seems like a Wolfe joke.

Lupine loses her wolf skin at the climax and the text suggests she will pick up another. Doris supposedly leaves town and returns, and she sees the crying ghost of her husband who leaves something wet with his initials in it. Unfortunately, the existence of lupine is anything but clear. However, she does stink up the car in disguise as Doris, so that fits one of Madame Orizia’s criteria for truth (as does, frustratingly, the scent in the trunk and the scent at the death of Martha Murrey’s neighbor, star Paxton). The link between lupine and Doris is also threefold: she seems to appear as  Doris before Bax picks up Doris on the side of the road, she gives Bax Doris’s keys, and she dismisses Doris’s husband’s ghost with a word - all interesting links, conjoined with the imprecations of Doris’s untrustworthiness from Sheldon and Millie.

These details are kind of hard to draw firm conclusions about - a definite trend in Wolfe’s post 2008 fiction. 






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