Weary, Woeful Wheatley

Reading wise I had to give up Dennis Wheatley's "The Haunting of Toby Jugg". With an interest in the horror genre I feel it is incumbent on me to try out such writers, but there's only so much I can take. A right-wing polemic full on nauseating jingoism and anti-semitism. Bear in mind that this book is set during the Second World War in Britain; the only Jewish character is an amoral Communist spy working for Russia and trying to marry an British Labour party member in order to infiltrate Government. On top of this the story is dull, predictable and, considering it is supposedly a horror novel, distinctly lacking in scares. Indeed the strapping airman at the centre of the story (an heir to a multimillion pound empire no less), a man used to facing death a hundred times over in the air, spends the book in mortal fear of a shadow! The villain of the piece is just short of twirling his moustache. All in all a dreadful piece of claptrap. I stopped halfway through and have now started a novel by Norman Mailer.
Just to show I was trying to give Wheatley a chance, I also watched a little known Hammer film adapted from another of his novels, "The Lost Continent". Borrowing from Hodgson, Haggard, Doyle and a host of other turn of the century fantasists, it is the worst mishmash of seafaring junk I've ever had the misfortune not to throw up over. Avoid!