Drums Of The Dark Gods by W. A. Ballinger (Mayflower-Dell, 1966)

Ah, Mayflower-Dell – a publisher who could always be relied upon to take a respectful and even-handed view of their subject matter.

I was planning to post this cover long before the recent catastrophe in Haiti (my brother handed the book to me when we were looking around a second hand bookshop in Wales over xmas, saying “here’s one you’ll like”), but now I figure that I might as well post it anyway, not in the name of bad taste, but because it leads us nicely to the topic at hand.

You may have already heard that some wrong-headed pundits in the United States (the usual assholes, essentially) have been coming out with some flat-out unbelievable bullshit regarding Haiti’s history as a land of demonic b-movie hoodoo, it’s subsequent attraction of divine retribution, complete with direct quotes from the devil(!), and all the rest of it.

There’s not much I can add to Stephen’s excellent post on the subject at Clean Living In Difficult Circumstances, except to suggest that if we are to take these insufferable clowns, and “Drums of the Dark Gods”, at face value, and assume that Haiti actually IS some crazy land where zombies go a-walking in the broad daylight and skeletal hands beat out licentious rhythms on the drums of sin…. well I’m sure the readership of this blog can agree that that would only give us all the more reason to pony up and help those guys out.

For the record, the book seems to be fairly dull, poorly written fare, lacking in voodoo fun but heavy on the kind of clichés and quasi-racist spiel you’d expect. Lots of ‘exotic stenches of evil’ and that sort of thing. Oh well. A prize to anyone who can guess what the opening line is.