If you placed Indiana Jones and H.P. Lovecraft in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider and turned it on, the new element created would look something like author Christopher Michael’s new book series—Danforth: Eldritch Tales of WWII.
The name Danforth should be familiar to anyone who’s ever read At the Mountains of Madness, arguably Lovecraft’s most famous work after “The Call of Cthulhu.” For those not acquainted with the material, Danforth was a Miskatonic University grad student who embarked on Professor William Dyer’s ill-fated Pabodie Expedition to Antarctica in the early 1930s.
He survives the Elder Things, shoggoth and giant, blind penguins only to gaze upon…something that drives him out of his mind.
After that, he became an operative for America’s nascent intelligence service and worked to prevent Nazis from obtaining dangerous supernatural artifacts. At least that’s what happens in Michael’s first novel, Tomb of the Black Pharaoh (now on sale from Crystal Lake Publishing).
New Book Series Blends Indiana Jones With H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos
“The idea of Danforth only somewhat recovering from At the Mountains of Madness and seeking the forbidden like a drug habit,” said the author, “was something I felt like I needed to pursue.”
Fittingly enough, the idea began as a way for Michael to grapple with his own damaged psyche.
“I started getting back into writing,” he shared, “as a means of dealing with some of my PTSD and depression issues from my time with the military and law enforcement.”
And so, Danforth heads for Egypt, circa 1941, where an SS archaeological expedition sanctioned by walking scum puddle Heinrich Himmler is underway to unearth an object with the power to reveal every Allied secret and turn the tide of war.
“Everything in the books is meticulously researched to stick as close to WWII history as possible,” said Michael. “And with history came the setting. The real first focus of the Allies after the United States’ entry into WWII was the North Africa campaign. With Danforth being part of the precursor to the OSS, I knew how much potential Egypt had for storytelling.”
“I just love the era of WWII and prior, an era where there was so much mystery and things in the world to be discovered,” he added. “That idea was driven away with the Cold War and the building up of the nuclear age, the surveillance state, spy networks, technology, etc. It doesn’t always have the same feel as the previous era of mystery and exploration, and that was what really appealed to me.”
Like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Tomb of the Black Pharaoh plays on the Nazis’ real-world “obsession with the occult and mysticism,” noted Michael. “The idea that the leadership of the Nazi Party, arguably one of the most evil groups in world history, was also engaging in occult practices and seeking out ancient artifacts is intoxicating to the imagination.”
“They were modern history’s villains, and for good reason,” he continued. “They laid out the groundwork for these stories with their real-life actions, which only needed to have the Cthulhu Mythos inserted into the equation.”
Michael has a total of five books in mind, with the second chapter—The Horror in the Lamplights—debuting Oct. 30. In his sophomore adventure, Danforth is dropped behind enemy lines to thwart Nazis (of course) and the remnants of an exiled Romanian order.
As the novels progress, Michael will try and wrap his tentacles around the unexplained mystery of what Danforth saw before going mad. In Michael’s opinion, the character’s actions in Mountains of Madness unknowingly made his mind susceptible to indescribable horrors beyond human comprehension, akin to Crawford Tillinghast in “From Beyond.”
“Between the reading in the lost city, the shoggoth experience, the even higher mountains in the distance, and him being one of the few people to have read the Necronomicon in full,” mused the author, “I think he saw something that gave him a direct line into the forbidden. This plays out in a story arc that I’m developing.”
But that’s just the tip of the cosmic horror iceberg.
In addition to a collection of spinoff books, some of them covering Danforth’s time between Antarctica and his military commission, he’s also got “a kids’ mystery set in the 1920s. Think The Goonies, The Little Rascals, or The Hardy Boys meets eldritch terrors.”
