The Desolate Presence, and Other Uncanny Stories

A holiday-maker walking on the rain-swept dunes, a motorist halting to give a lift to a stranded girl, a fogbound traveller putting up for the night at a wayside inn. The settings are common-place, but almost without our noticing it a bizarre change takes place in each. Thomas Owen was born in Louvain in 1910. Author of several notable detective novels, lawyer, journalist, art critic, and member of the Belgian Academie Royale de Langue et de Litterature Francaises, he has written six collections of macabre short stories since the war. In these he has fashioned a disturbing and uniquely personal universe in which the supernatural subtly intrudes upon the real world. This collection contains: Two of a Kind Modelled in Pure Wax The Sparrowhawk 15. 12. 38 The Blue Coat A Dead Butterfly's Wing The Desolate Presence My Cousin The Castellan The Girl in the Rain The Hunter The Passenger The Sow The Black Ball A Real Chinese Puzzle The Death of Alexis Balakine Her Dear Departed Husband The Passing of Dr Babylon A Night in the Chateau Portrait of an Unknown Man The Park The Equivocal Informant