Our Lady of Darkness

World Fantasy Award 1978.

What was the evil figure that haunted Franz Westen? Was it his imagination, or something infinitely more frightening, connected somehow with those strange old books he'd been reading?

For there was much in those books to connect with the bizarre twilight world of San Francisco in the 1920s, the world of H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Jack London, Dashiell Hammett and Alistair Crowley.

The more Westen plunged into those misty reaches of the occult, the more he would uncover things which had perhaps better lain undisturbed. For Westen, in trying to unravel the mystery of Our Lady of Darkness, was gambling with his life.