Let there be no doubt that D. M. is the master of occult,

shadowy fiction, draped in velvet, drenched in smoky moonlight, whose refulgent landscapes are colonized by sinister, eldritch characters, each enacting esoteric motives in a sibilant daze. He is paramour of ravished beauties, languorous mansions, and impending nightmares. He is a literary mage in whose hands even the mundane details shrill with alchemical menace. Enter into his labyrinths to ponder the dire elegance of a prurient maid enmeshed in the nefarious clutches of a psychological trap, composed as much of architecture as symbolism.