Robert McCammon’s novel Speaks the Nightbird holds a strange place in my heart. On the one hand, I look back on it as being the darkest book I’ve ever read, but this is largely because I read it in my darkest hour. Besides, sometimes the book seems to me one of the brightest, most hopeful books I’ve had the pleasure of spending time with. Every ounce of my enthusiasm for the highly anticipated novel was paid back with the story that unfolded itself to me in that horrible, horrible autumn. Yet the darker associations are still there.

Because of all this, I found it somewhat daunting to dive into the sequel, The Queen of Bedlam. Friends hounded me. I made excuses. My copy is signed, so I can’t take it on the bus. It’s a hardcover, so it’s difficult to read in bed. And so on. But the truth is that I was nervous about reentering a world that had meant so much to me, about reuniting with the character of Matthew Corbett, to whom I had looked for comfort throughout my reading of Nightbird.

Well, I’ve broken through the wall of inertia to discover what blend of black and white magic Mr. McCammon has stirred up with round two of his Matthew Corbett thrillers. I can say this much: My timing is good, since I just finished The Queen of Bedlam and book three, Mister Slaughter, should be arriving in my mailbox any day now. Maybe the tortoise really does beat the hare on occasion. Waiting months to read Mister Slaughter would be an agony at this point.

Gordian plots, meticulously crafted characters, and a poetic mastery of the English language are the maker’s mark of the first two Corbett novels, and from everything I’ve read about the forthcoming Mister Slaughter, the same will be true going forward. These are the kind of books you want to begin rereading as soon as you’ve finished them, and I have no doubt that I’ll want to take myself through the entire series again one day. It’s been an amazing adventure so far, and there are so many things I’m still curious about. Good thing McCammon plans to write ten of these things.

A good friend considers The Queen of Bedlam to be perhaps the best book he’s ever read. When he told me that, I was halfway through Bedlam and responded that I wasn’t sure it was better than its predecessor but that the consistency between the two books was remarkable. (I already considered Nightbird to be my favorite McCammon novel—or perhaps tied with Stinger.) Now that I’ve read both Corbett novels, I can certainly see my friend’s point. Bedlam is a whopper of a good time.

Because of my strong attachment to the first book, it’s difficult to try to be objective about this, but I’m willing to admit that Bedlam might just be the better novel of the two. But they’re different books. Cut from the same cloth, of course. But different. Where Nightbird is a relentless, brooding meditation on the nature of justice and depravity, Bedlam is a rollicking adventure story. Still, there’s crossover to be found. Nightbird has its spurts of high adventure, and Bedlam is loaded with an unerring depth of human understanding. Simply put, I can’t wait to find out what happens next.

In Bedlam we’re given a glimpse of Mister Slaughter. Enough to know that he has the potential to make every villain that has gone before him in McCammon’s late 17th/early 18th century detective series squeak like a mouse by comparison. And then there’s the mysterious Professor Fell, a character who hasn’t yet been formally introduced (that we know of) but whose crimes are fairly well understood by the end of Bedlam. There’s enough peril in Matthew Corbett’s future, it would seem, to send most men running in the opposite direction.

And yet despite my absolute absorption into this series of books that has brought one of my favorite writers back into the light of day after a frustrating absence of ten years, I think I’m almost as excited about the contemporary novel he has planned for publication after the third Corbett book. A book by Robert McCammon that takes place in the here and now is something we haven’t had in a good long while, and the mere idea of it thrills me to gooseflesh.

I’ve compared Clive Barker to Charles Dickens, which seems odd on the surface, but my basis for the comparison was simply the incredible outpouring of innovation that has come from both men’s pens. With McCammon, perhaps the comparison could be made more in terms of actual style and approach, especially with respect to the Corbett saga. The books aren’t set in Victorian England, and of course McCammon isn’t British, but I sense that his expectations of what a novel can and should accomplish are similar to those of Dickens. These are big, character-driven novels that aren’t afraid to put evil in its place and human dignity at center stage. And there can be no doubt that McCammon has had as much fun naming his characters for this series as Dickens did in all of his work.

There’s only one place to visit if you’re hungry for more information about the Matthew Corbett novels, or Mr. McCammon’s career in general. If Hunter Goatley doesn’t have what you’re looking for on his official Robert McCammon website, he’s likely got a link to it. Do yourself a favor and stop by.