Within the new noir genre and the detective novel, there is the book London after Midnight by Augusto Cruz, which unravels the most memorable characters in silent films and the collectors of the seventh art in a novel that transits between the paranormal and the police investigation.
However, behind this narrative scaffolding there is also a dialogue between the memories of those who lived the past differently, lonely men holding tightly the moments that marked their childhood and youth as amulets against death and oblivion.
The story focuses on the search for the mythical film that gives the book its title, directed in 1927 by Tod Browning and starring Lon Chaney, “the man with a thousand faces.” Not only is this film considered the first American vampire movie, but also its projection was marked by the fires that consumed several cinemas where it was screened.
The last known copy disappeared in the vault 7 fire of the Metro-GoldwynMayer Studios warehouse in 1967.
The search for the film began with the collector, Forrest Ackerman, a real character known for accumulating a huge collection of accessories from the sets where science fiction films were filmed, without finding traces of it, choosing to hire retired FBI agent Mc Kenzie, last assistant agency director, Edgar Hoover. Here the first part of the story goes through an exhaustive police investigation trying to gather or find those who claim there are copies of the film; As the detective’s work progresses, the supernatural, shadows and violence begin to mix, because everyone who searched for or saw this film ended up dead in one way or another.
In the narrative there are copious data about the fire in the vault where these nitrate tapes were stored, fragments of the history of actresses, actors and the impact of silent films, as well as their subsequent dissolution with the first films with sound.
In addition, the book refers to traditional places in horror literature such as haunted castles, urban legends, giants, as well as allusions to films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Jaws.
One of the contributions that goes unnoticed throughout the story is the handling of the real ghosts within the American machinery: the migrants who inhabit ghost towns in the middle of impassable roads, waiting for an opportunity to join the North American dream, the armed groups that controlling those scenarios where neither the army nor the police exist, in addition to giving a brushstroke to the cities ravaged by violence and poverty and invaded by bars and nightclubs as entertainment for thieves and murderers, in those squares forgotten by the Mexican State.
For lovers of the history of cinema or the police genre, this novel will leave you dazzled.
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