Review: The Man from the Diogenes Club

A little while ago, I reviewed “Angels of Music”, also by Kim Newman, now I want to follow it up with yet another book not obviously connected to Newman’s well-known “Anno Dracula” series. “The Man from the Diogenes Club” is, naturally, not about a guy who spends all his time at a club for, as Sherlock Holmes told us, ‘the unclubables.’ In this series, as in “Angels of Music” and, presumably, also in “Anno Dracula”, the Diogenes Club is more than just a place where men can go to escape their wives.

Most of “The Man from the Diogenes Club” takes part in the 1970s (all except for the last two stories, the first of which has a frame in the 80s and is set in the 60s, while the last of the book is set in 2004) and captures the era quite well (although I was grateful for the glossary in the back listing the specific British and/or 1970s expressions).

While former ‘Most Valued Members’ of the club are mentioned, main character of the stories collected in the book is Richard Jeperson, ‘Most Valued Member’ aka ‘main agent’ of the club at that time. Most people working for the Diogenes are Talents - people with specific metal or physical skills. Jeperson is an empath and a very strong one at that who can sense other people’s emotions and past emotions stuffed into a place. He’s also a man with a big hole in his past: freed in 1945 from a concentration camp as a small boy, he has no memories of before that day. He was raised by a member of the Diogenes and joined the club as a young man (his first big adventure is recounted in “The Man who got off the Ghost Train”, the story with the framing device I mentioned above). By the time we as the audience join him for the first time, he is established and we are introduced to him and the club by another character: Fred Regent, a young policeman who was almost killed by something not of this world.

“The Man from the Diogenes Club” doesn’t even pretend to be anything else but a collection of well-told pulp stories. The adventures Richard and his colleagues go through are weird to say the least (ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties absolutely exist in this reality). That, however, is what makes the book so enjoyable. The 1970s backdrop with its wild colour schemes and clothing styles (Richard is an absolute fashion addict and Newman takes the time to tell us what he’s wearing at any given time, too) fits very well with the wild variety of supernatural occurrences the reader is introduced to.

No story is like the one before it, there’s no clear scheme or formula used, which makes the stories all the better. While it’s relatively sure that Richard will survive the stories, given he’s the ‘Man from the Diogenes Club’ himself, it’s not always certain. The last story brings Richard very, very close to death (albeit as an old man - it’s set in 2004, after all, and Richard was around ten in 1945).

There are stories about ghosts, there are stories about psychological training (brainwashing, to a degree), there are stories about monsters. There are stories where the moon is inhabitable as long as nobody lands on it (because then all stories about the moon will be invalidated by hard facts). The book delivers a lot of interesting reading material and it’s fun to spend a couple of hours with it, reading through the stories, enjoying the weirdness and utter 1970s-ness.

“The Man from the Diogenes Club” would fit well with 1970s TV series like “The Saint” or “The Avengers” (Mr. Steed and Mrs. Peele, not the people from Marvel). As a matter of fact, should the stories ever be adapted, I would really hope for them to be adapted in this style. They would work out fabulously.

Is there anything about the book I didn’t like? Well, not really. Sometimes, the stories seem a little disjointed, but that’s not much of a surprise, given that most of them, according to the notes at the beginning of the book, are reprints which have been printed in magazines and suchlike first. The book wasn’t planned as a book, it’s an anthology of stories written before and published in various different media. That shows every now and then, but the style of the stories is coherent and none of them denies something which happened in another, so they can be read in this format, as an anthology of stories belonging together due to their main character. They are surely less well connected than the five stories in “Angels of Music”, but certainly just as well as the stories in “Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles”, one of my other favourites by Kim Newman, read and reread over and over again.

Some days, you want a long novel with a lot of plot twists, on other days, you just want to spend an hour or so with a good story and enjoy that it’s more or less self-contained. That’s why I also like some of the Johannes Cabal short stories so much - and wish there was a way to get “The Ereskigal Working” as an e-book in addition to the audio book.

It seems a little weird that the author chose the Diogenes Club, a club mentioned for the first time within the Sherlock Holmes canon and founded or co-founded by Holmes’ brother Mycroft, as the place from which the British government has all the supernatural things investigated. Yet, just because Sherlock Holmes didn’t believe in the supernatural doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist (after all, he also didn’t care about the build of our solar system). Perhaps, Mycroft knew better.

Yet, the Diogenes Club of the stories is not that Diogenes Club any longer - it has a woman on top, which was far from usual in the 1970s, especially given the woman has been a member for a long time. It employs women very much equally to men - because it employs all agents according to their talents. The women we meet in the stories are not helpless damsels waiting to be rescued, they can very well rescue themselves and, sometimes, the main character alongside them. Even though I’m not quite sure whether “The Man from the Diogenes Club” would pass the Bechdel-Wallace test, it definitely doesn’t just give us the pretty lamp (aka the female love interest with no ambitions or agency).

“The Man from the Diogenes Club” is a great book and a lot of fun to read. You don’t even need to know any of Newman’s other books to enjoy it, I’m sure. While characters know from other books are mentioned, they’re not mentioned in a way which makes it necessary to have read about them before. If you like pulpy stories and good adventure yarn, “The Man from the Diogenes Club” will provide you with a few fun hours and, due to its anthology nature, you can read the stories whenever you want.

An Amoral Protagonist

Normally, a protagonist is meant to be likeable and someone the reader can identify with. Sometimes, however, you want or need to write someone less likeable. While fully evil is hard to pull off, having an amoral character as a protagonist can work, providing you spend enough time in the characters mind, so their motivation and thoughts are clear.

One good example for an amoral character is Johannes Cabal from several short stories and five novels written by Jonathan L. Howard. Johannes is a necromancer of some little infamy and all his deeds are just aimed at one goal: reviving his fiancé in body, mind, and spirit. Not as a revenant or zombie, but the way she was before she drowned. This is impossible for most necromancers, so Johannes gathers information and does experiments to get closer to that goal, step by step. It matters little to him what others think of his deeds or what damage or harm his deeds cause in others (well, it matters more to him from the second novel onwards - since he regains his soul at the end of the first novel and all short stories are set before that time). He is a criminal, he is cold-blooded, and he doesn’t care for it at all.

Yet, Jonathan L. Howard manages to make Johannes if not outright likeable then at least interesting. The reader spends a lot of time in Johannes’ head, understanding his motivations. The author makes it clear that Johannes is not a nice guy and that what he does - despite serving his goals - is not okay. Yet it’s also clear that Johannes isn’t burdened overly much by that. Once he has his conscience back (second novel onwards), he might feel a twinge at certain actions and sometimes be compelled to act differently, but his general look at the world, at other humans, and at his deeds doesn’t change.

Another thing which makes Johannes interesting, if nothing else, is that he’s often thrown into situations which are humiliating as well as dangerous (such as hanging out of an airship only wearing a dressing gown and slippers). He’s not allowed to really dominate the story, he’s always thrown around by it, kept off balance, rarely allowed to plot until late into the narrative. Johannes is good at plotting and at surviving, but prefers the former to the latter.

Johannes has saved the world twice (once before and once after he regained his soul), but always just as part of saving himself. He’s done good, if only because it served his own plans. He’s not evil, he’s simply amoral. He doesn’t care about religion, law, or general morals, he has his own limits and those are malleable most of the time.

What can you and I as writers learn from that? First of all, an amoral character can be successful. Not all protagonists have to be likeable. You have to give the reader an understanding of the character and their motivation, though. With a good protagonist, someone with morals and dedication to a good cause, you don’t really need that close-up. We all understand that person, if not because of our own character, then because we’ve seen them often. We know what a hero is like, how they feel, how they act. The amoral protagonist (surely not a hero) is not that well-known to us, so we need a look into their mind and soul.

Give your amoral protagonist a good reason for their deeds, an understandable motivation. The biggest reveal in “Johannes Cabal - The Necromancer”, the first novel of the series, is not whether or not Johannes gets his soul back, despite being one contract short. It’s done well, Johannes repaying Satan, beating him at the contract game, but not the biggest reveal of the story. No, the biggest reveal comes in the very last scene of the very last chapter as Johannes returns home, argues with Satan once more, goes down into the basement, past a secret door, levels a huge stone block out of the floor with the help of a pulley, lies down on top of a glass coffin with a woman’s body, preserved through chemicals, and curls up on it to sleep, the woman’s name (which is learned by the audience much later) on his lips. This is his motivation, this is why he kills, steals, cheats, and commits other crimes as well. This is the moment he really becomes human to the audience - not through the return of his soul, but through the disclosure of his motivation.

Being amoral doesn’t mean that the character doesn’t have any limits, either. It means the character doesn’t apply any morals to find or define those limits. Possibility of a plan is a limit. Possibility of being caught and punished can be a limit (if it’s likely to happen). The mores of society are not limits in this case, though. Far from it.

With this, it’s quite obvious that the amoral protagonist isn’t meant for light and fluffy stories. Without a certain darkness in the story, the amoral protagonist won’t work. If there’s no way a character can act against common morals or rules of society, there’s no way to make them amoral. They would be ‘amoral in name only,’ if that. Someone bragging about how evil they are, but never doing anything to prove it.

Grim and dark stories are ideal for amoral protagonists, on the other hand. In a noir setting, for instance, nobody is a paragon of virtue. The main difference between the anti-hero and the villain of the piece is usually the motivation for their deeds (and, sometimes, their body count). The anti-hero has an understandable motivation we can accept, the villain has a motivation that is just wrong. If not their motivations, then at least the way on which they try to reach their goal.

Putting up an amoral protagonist against ‘deserving’ enemies is a good way to excuse their behaviour. Killing the innocent is usually frowned upon, if not by the protagonist themselves. Killing people out to kill you is not exactly humane, but certainly understandable and, to a degree, acceptable. Now, helping the innocent, even if it just serves the amoral protagonist’s goals, is fully acceptable, too. Like saving the world because the ritual used to raise the dead (which will overrun the world) was used to take revenge on you. Or dealing with a lich because it endangers you in person and the end of the world would also spell the end of your plans.

An amoral protagonist needs a surrounding which suits their amorality, so nothing fluffy and light in tone. They should not act against the innocent, but against ‘deserving’ enemies. They should also have an understandable motivation and, perhaps, have it hard to get to their goal. All of that can help with making them a little likeable or at least interesting enough for the audience.

Creating Magic

Most of my stories don’t have any magic, sparing me the pain of having to create a magic system, no matter whether it be rational or not, high magic or not. Yet, I’m regularly on Mythcreants, where spec-fic of any kind is a big topic, so I have read articles on magic systems over time and it has definitely helped me recently.

Along came “Alex Dorsey” and with it the first supernatural content. I’ve had a ghost in “A Plague of Rogues” and seemingly supernatural creatures in some “John Stanton” stories, but all of those were fake. “Alex Dorsey” had vampires, zombies, and revenants - and a vampire rat. It also had some alchemy, so I needed to cobble together a basic principle by which all of that worked together. I came up with the idea that zombies and revenants have a natural expiration date - when the brain is too damaged, they drop and never get up again.

Vampires are another can of worms, naturally. I had to come up with basics, such as how their powers grew, what they could and couldn’t do, and what to use against them. The last was the easiest - there’s a lot around in mythology and adapting some classics like sunlight and the stake only to add something rarer like whitethorn wasn’t that hard. With the rest, I have to admit, I played fast and loose. No real rules there, I just picked a few things which Jeremy could do, despite being too young for them, and came up with that blue fire which burns brighter and longer, the older a vampire is and that was, very much, it. After all, the novel was a one-shot, so I would never need the system again.

Not so with “Theoretical Necromancy”. The first volume will be out in August, it’s finished already (all books for this year are, I have finished the first volume of “The Eye” last month). Gabrielle Munson, the theoretical necromancer, can do magic - raise the dead - and she’s an alchemist, so I also have had to come up with a few potions.

I have mostly winged it, I admit that, but with the migration to Campfire Pro, I have codified my necromancy and alchemy a bit. I plan on more stories with Gabrielle (the plans for the first of the second volume are already drawn up) and that means I need to get it all down to paper, I need to work out a magic system. Necromancy is an integral part of Gabrielle’s being, of her past and of how her present is shaped. It’s not just something mentioned in passing.

How did I work out the basics of the magic in her stories, then?

First of all, I had to get my mind around the limits of her powers. Magic is always shaped by limits more than by what is possible, at least in my understanding.

Magic without limits is useless for stories, because then the main character (or whoever uses magic in the story) could just snap their finger and all problems would be solved. No, magic needs limits. In my case, I decided while writing “Stray” (the first novella) that the limit would be the energy used to do the deeds. Gabrielle needs to invest her own life energy which keeps her body working into the necromantic rituals she does. If she uses too much at once, she’s very weak (that happens in “Stray”) and she could even die.

Rituals were limits imposed on Gabrielle for other storytelling reasons. A ritual needs time, it doesn’t work in a moment or two, which means Gabrielle can be (and is, again in “Stray”) caught while doing magic. That isn’t good. In addition, the rituals need ingredients, reagents. That means another limit - those reagents aren’t always easy to get, although Gabrielle has less troubles with some than most of her colleagues (on account of not having a deal with Hell).

It’s not all about limits, of course, but they are the starting point. They define the rest of the magic. Once you know what your mage can’t do, you can also see what they can do. You can see how the magic can help them in the story, but might also hinder them. Where the limits mean that they have to find something else to do. That’s important, because a story where the main character simply waves their hands and everything is fine is boring. Conflicts and challenges are what makes a good story and they can very well come from the magic.

Another way the magic can shape the story is in how it is seen by people. I’m not a fan of the ‘oppressed mage’ trope - it seems highly unlikely that regular humans could oppress mages in any setting -, but necromancy is the kind of magic which would be forbidden in most settings. People simply don’t like it when you raise Uncle Herbert and Aunt Catherine and have them shamble through the town in search of brains.

Gabrielle, for instance, has a death sentence hanging over her head - for crimes against God, Nature, and Humanity. The type of execution would vary, but each country in which she was so far (only Italy and England, but Croatia is on the list for volume 2) has a death sentence for necromancers. In this case, I think it works. Gabrielle can’t use her powers willy-nilly. She needs a ritual to call them up (see how limits help?) and that would be stopped by everyone who wanted to catch her. As a matter of fact, I brought in the Inquisition (which still exist in this setting) in the very first story not so much as an enemy but as a nuisance.

People despise necromancers and Gabrielle has to hide what she is. It’s a little easier for her, because she can enter consecrated ground (churches, churchyards, etc.) and handle holy water without danger (it’s like acid for everyone with a satanic deal). That is simply because of the way she got her powers. She’s never asked for them, she never made a deal for them, but they’re there.

For me, the way society handles magic is also important, even though it may not be part of the system as a such.

I’ve always been fascinated by magic and read my way forward, backward, and sideward through quite some books on magic over time. Books about mythological mages and how they did magic, books about witchcraft and the accusations against witches, books about alchemy - a lot of stuff. Yet, it helps. A little bit of Google can take you a long way, provided you know what to look for. With my memory of what I’ve read before, I can find new information online more easily - I can cut out the first ‘what could be useful’ part because I know what to use.

That’s another part of creating magic - having a basic idea what you want to do with it. How it could be working, according to the past, whether in mythology or otherwise.

So, for me, the magic is all about the limits, because they make things interesting. I start from there and then I look at the rest. The limits get the mage in trouble and force them to find a way out again. The limits make the world interesting. Give something limits and it gets a lot more challenging.

Migrating to Campfire Pro

For a long time, I have kept my extensive notes on my series on One Note. I needed the notes and I needed a way to sort them, so I came up with a few forms of sorts and put it all on One Note, because I had it and it could deal with what I needed. A long while ago, I bought Campfire Pro, mostly on a whim, and thought I might switch, but I didn’t. I wasn’t doing any timelines or chapter notes at that time and Campfire didn’t have quite as many useful features as it does today. In the middle of April, I checked Campfire again and found it to be pretty much what I needed.

In the meantime, the program has been optimized to be exactly what I need: a place to organize and store my story bibles, my collection of notes about characters, timelines, etc. for the various series I’m writing (this year, two more series will have their first volume out: “Theoretical Necromancy” and “The Eye”). Yet, changing from one system to the other always comes with a lot of work. Migrating a large amount of information is never fun.

Migrating is necessary, though. I have a lot of notes, especially on the Knight Agency, because it was my first series and seven books are out already. That’s a lot of information to keep ahead of when I write more. A lot of things to keep in mind. A lot of references I need to check on when I write certain topics. Then there’s all those characters who only turn up in one story - they’re not getting their own character pages, but I have to put them down somewhere, should I need them again later for something. I need to jot down the key parts of stories, things which carry over like two people meeting, two people having a falling-out, someone learning a secret, etc. Everything that can become important again at some point.

Then there’s the extended features with the Worldbuilding Pack DLC I bought. Admittedly, I’ve so far only needed the magic module for “Theoretical Necromancy” and something which might or might not become a one-shot. The systems module, on the other hand, has come in handy more than once, since it allows for me to put down everything about an organisation (such as the Knight Agency or the Black Knight Agency or the Bureau) and have it easy to look up details. The magic module isn’t bad, either - I did enjoy setting up my necromancy stuff there already.

In the regular set, what I mostly need are the characters, timeline, world, and encyclopaedia modules.

The characters module is a gem, really. Not only was I able to make templates for my different series, so I can quickly set up all panels according to what I need, I can also put down links which are two-sided - if I change relationships status for one person, the status for the other person changes as well. I can do that with everything, not only characters - items, encyclopaedia entries, timeline events, the whole module stack. I have everything at one glance and can easily make changes, nevertheless.

The timeline module was of little interest to me as long as I didn’t plan ahead, but I do that now and it’s proven very useful. I can break down my chapters into scenes I want to have in there, make every scene an event and put them up as I need them. I can simply change the rim colour of the event panel once it’s written, too. If I were working with more complicated notes, I could put down events according to plot threads and use more different connectors to make things easier to see through. I can attach characters, locations, and other things to an event and character-attachment to events can be used through a module I’m not using much right now: character arcs. With this one, I can track traits and other things throughout the whole story, in every event a character is in.

The world module allows for the creation of maps and locations on those maps which can then be filled out in detail. Even child maps within other maps are possible. I’ve never done much of it, but especially stories like John Stanton, where I need some ‘old’ maps to work with are ideal for use of that module.

Finally, there’s the encyclopaedia module. In it, I can put down entries as I need them - I’ve mostly been using it for stories already written, putting in the summary, important events, and the non-recurring characters. Like this, I have a quick reference when I need it. I can also use it for other things, of course - the entries are very versatile.

The whole system is versatile, as it were. Several of the modules, all where it makes sense, have templates you can create by setting up the panels as you need them. You can put them up as you see fit, label them all, perhaps put down a few basic entries on the panels, and then save them as a template to use whenever necessary. A grid can be set and other settings can also be changed and optimized for the work-flow.

There’s also a tool to make themes. Themes in this case are made up of up to two images, different colour setting for the rim of panels and the text, settings for the text size and the font used. I managed to make my own ‘pulp’ theme within fifteen minutes - including checking out what which option did and finding graphics for the panel background (old, pulpy-looking paper) and the window background (part of an art book cover with sci-fi pulp art).

Yes, I know themes are something less necessary than templates, but it’s motivating to have a window design you find pleasant while you’re transferring large amounts of data. Besides - I also use parts of the background graphics to make sure my timeline is regularly spaced.

Migrating to Campfire Pro was no fun, but it was necessary. I see myself using this program for years to come, perhaps even refine my planning more with it, too. If you are looking for a place to store your story bibles, you may want to give the program a look - there’s a demo version on the developer’s website.