Customer Reviews
SPRITUAL THRILLER - By: Klingsor Tristan, 31 Mar 2006 
With all the fuss & furore surrounding Lord of the Rings & The Chronicles of Narnia, Charles Williams remains the poor relation among the Inklings, that group of Oxford intellectuals who regularly met over a pint at the pub to discuss their latest writings. Where Tolkien & Lewis both invented entire fantasy universesin which to set their epics, Williams works on a smaller scale, setting his books firmlyin between-the-wars Middle England. For all that, he concerns himself just as much with the great archetypal myths as either of the other two: it's just that he puts themin an everyday context. Spiritual Thrillers, he liked to call them.
Warin Heaven starts out as an Agatha Christie-type Murder Mystery among book publishers but rapidly turns out to be concerned with much bigger & darker forces - nothing less than the pursuit of the Grail,in fact (or, rather the Graal as Williams prefers to call it). This novel is,in many ways, a cousin of the roughly contemporaneous Dennis Wheatley Black Magic books. It has to be said that Williams is not quite as good at winding up the thrills & the tension as that master of plots & cliffhangers. Nevertheless, he takes us on an exciting enough ride through country-house gardens, rural churches, dubious London herbal retailers & peoples his tale with a varied collection of publishers, minor ecclesiastics, scheming villains & darkly evil Levantines. Only the appearance of the prester John, the slightly wimpish deus ex machina towards the end, rather lets the side down.
This is probably the best of the Charles Williams novels & makes for a good read. Many of the set-pieces come off particularly well. His ambitions are humbler than his Inkling contemporaries, but his books are none the worse for that - indeed, they lack a lot of the pretentiousness that often invades the others. And, if you enjoy Warin Heaven, there is quite a collection of Williams' Spritual Thrillers to explore.
Mystery, Adventure, and the Holy Grail - By: , 20 Oct 2000 This was the first book by Charles Williams I read, and, to date, it is my favorite book of his. The opening scene grabs you, and, after a bit of tediumin establishing characters, the story moves at a steady pace from murder mystery to supernatural thriller. Anyone interestedin Grail Lore will enjoy this book.
