Here is a masterful account of a writer’s internal and external selves, revealing the degree to which any creative author’s life must necessarily be a fiction.

Baker as a biographer, frankly, is some kind of God-damned life-archæologist, approaching the famed occult novelist as a real, seriocomic man who was far more than the sum of his parts. It is diffi­cult to imagine a more sensitive and knowledgeable investigation.

Black magic stories? That was the least of it; the reader is left far more astonished by the magic Wheatley wove around his own life, as revealed by Baker.

Superb, concise, insightful and sublime.