This is a series about … well, series. I do so love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies. I’ve already got a list of series I’ve recently read, re-read, watched, or re-watched that I plan to blog about. I might even, down the line, open myself up to letting other people suggest titles I should read/watch and then comment on.
Cover art by Jeffrey Ray Hayes
While I’m not as well-read in the field as I’d like to be, I really do love the “occult detective” genre. There’s a long history to it, from the Victorian (Thomas Carnacki and Aylmer Vance) to the pulp (Jules deGrandin and John Thunstone) to the modern (Simon Feximal and John Constantine), and it has seeped from the written to the filmed (Carl Kolchak among others). Jim Beard’s Sgt. Roman Janus is an intriguing addition to the genre.
Janus has now appeared in three books: Sgt. Janus, Spirit-Breaker; Sgt. Janus Returns, and Sgt. Janus on the Dark Track. Flinch! Books has recently reissued the first two books as a precursor to their release of the third (and hopefully not final) book in the series. All three have beautifully painted new covers by Jeffrey Ray Hayes that capture the otherworldly nature of the characters.
As a character, Sgt. Janus fits the mold of the occult detectives who have preceded him into print: his personal background is shrouded in mystery (at least at the start), he’s a bit aloof, he doesn’t often explain fully what’s going on (and assumes, I think, that most people believe he’s up to shenanigans and the supernatural can’t possibly be real), and he does what he has to do regardless of personal cost.
What really makes the series stand out from the rest of the field is the way Beard tells Janus’ stories. He plays with genre conventions and delivers stories that feel daring and original within a pretty well-traveled realm.
One of the tropes of “consulting detective” fiction (both occult and not), dating back to the inestimable Sherlock Holmes, is the presence of a narrator who is also usually the detective’s aide-de-camp. Most detectives have their Watson, Parker, Caldwell, etc.. In Sgt. Janus, Spirit-Breaker, Beard replaces one reliable narrator with eight sometimes unreliable narrators. Each tale in the book is told by the client for whom Janus was working, part of his fee being that the client must send him a written description of how the case came to Janus’ attention and how it unfolded. This gives far more diversity to the way the stories are related – some of the clients are happy to be doing it and believe in Janus’ abilities, while some are disgruntled and imbue their stories with a healthy skepticism. This also allows Sgt. Janus himself to remain a mystery, his personal background and that of his female assistant and the house they occupy all only hinted at in the little tidbits he drops to his clients when they ask. And while each case stands alone, they also very clearly build on each other. The reader makes larger connections the characters themselves don’t, and the final story makes those connections as explicit as possible in revealing what it’s all been building towards.
The second book, Sgt. Janus Returns, follows the more traditional trope for narrators, introducing us to Joshua Hargreaves, a disaffected young man who meets an amnesiac woman who exhibits many of Sgt. Janus’ personality traits and abilities. Hargreaves becomes her aide-de-camp and chronicler while she tries to figure out who she is and why she feels connected to the house the missing Sgt. Janus used to occupy. Similar to the first volume, the stories herein are still episodic and still build towards a climax that reveals all – and in fact reveal a great deal more than the climactic story of the first book. Beard takes a huge chance by replacing his main character in the second book of the series – and it works. Perhaps it was because I read the books back-to-back-to-back, but I was invested in discovering “Lady Janus’s” secrets and how she was connected to Sgt. Janus from the very first page. I was also interested in Joshua Hargreaves’ development as a character – and he does have his own arc throughout the stories – as well as that of two new characters, Valerie Havelock-Mayer and Wendy Jackson.
The third book, Sgt. Janus on the Dark Track, breaks again with traditional by giving us a full novel instead of a series of connected short stories. It’s not really a spoiler to say Sgt. Roman Janus is back (although I won’t reveal how) on the case. It’s no secret that I love epistolary novels, and Beard proves to be a master of the form. The events of Sgt. Janus’ ride on a very dark train are told through the journal entries, telegrams, letters, and newspaper clippings of several different characters (although notably once again, never in the words of Janus himself) including Valerie Havelock-Mayer and Joshua Hargreaves and another interesting new character, Gabriel Butters. Dark Track is the most blatantly Gothic of the three books so far, replete with young virginal damsel in distress and unknowable supernatural entity and locations of great supernatural power, and again it all works.
Three books with three different narratorial approaches should be highly annoying to a series reader. We like consistency in the way a series’ individual entries are told. But Beard’s experimentation and willingness to take risks keeps the series fresh and keeps the reader on their toes. I really hope there are more Sgt. Janus volumes forthcoming, and cannot wait to see what new ways Beard finds to tell the tales.