Hey, that last post of mine got back on thread with mention of the Wicker Man novels. A search on Abe Books reveals the copy of Ritual presently on Amazon.com is a bit of a snip. Odd how it hasn't seen a reprint if it's so highly prized.

Brief thread-drift: be sure watch Apocalypse Now next Friday, 9pm on Film4, WAV - which has a literary precedent in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Interesting that a film version I once saw of HoD (with Patrick Stewart?) seemed to owe more to Apocalypse Now than Conrad's classic novel.

Back on thread: I'm now going to take this opportunity to mention my personal Wicker Man tribute in which I sing two versions of Gently Johnny (to the Traditional Melody) as bookends to the free-style canting of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself #32 from Leaves of Grass - as chillingly (and imperfectly) intoned by Lord Summerisle as young Ash Buchanan is getting his jollies with Willow. You can hear this as Track #4 on my Myspace Page. The second set of Gently Johnny is C#'s expurgated text which I find infinitely more erotic than the more explicit set, the chorus taking on quite vivid sexual symbolism which is rather eclipsed in the other set.