Edward Lucas White & "Alfândega 49A" (1927)

#HBD Edward Lucas White (1866-1934) 🎂

Readers unfamiliar with "Alfandega 49A" may prefer to read these notes only after reading the story.

I usually skipped the Edward Lucas White story in horror anthologies. Invariably the story was "Lukundoo" (1925), a weak tale editors still continue to boost. 

In 2017 Mark Fuller Dillon shared a reading list of horror short stories, which can be seen here. White's story "The Snout" (1909) was on the list. A strange story par excellence, it is not quickly forgotten by its readers, and deserves wider fame.

I read "The Snout" in the Ash-Tree Press collection Floki's Blade and Other Dream Fictions (2013), which also gave me the chance to discover a story that has become a personal favorite: "Alfandega 49A" (1927).

"Alfandega 49A" does not achieve the heights of "The Snout," but it is compelling. White expertly builds a formidable atmosphere of dread. What begins as a singularly easeful vacation story, depicting a place and people who immediately charm us, builds to a shattering finale.

Bleiler's Guide sums-up the story: "Murders apparently caused by power of will." I would say the story deals rather with the power of place: a great good place--The Alders--and an everyday bad place: a city office in Rio de Janeiro. Like the house named Pailton in Wakefield's "The Frontier Guards" (1929), 49A is a "killer," and I doubt will-power contributes.

"Alfandega 49A" is a story worth reading.

More than once.

Jay

11 May 2023