For a book that's only supposed to exist in the fevered imagination of H.P. Lovecraft, The Necronomicon has been a tireless performer for Avon, with slightly more than 800,000 copies sold since its first paperback appearance in 1980. At least, that's what the book's editor, "Simon," says in Dead Names: The Dark History of the Necronomicon, which snuck into the occult and New Age sections of America's bookstores with little fanfare this month. Those of you who picked up the book during your high school heavy metal or ceremonial magick phases might be interested in the backstory, but for the uninitiated, Simon's story can be a repetitive muddle, a true crime story that takes a weird mythological detour and never fully finds its way back.

The book basically boils down to three sections. In the first, Simon explains how he came across the mysterious manuscript—which in essence purports to be an operating manual for a magical system with roots in ancient Sumerian religion—in a story that involves book thieves working for a fake Eastern Orthdox bishop who might have been involved with people who might've been involved with the assassination of JFK, and an occult bookshop that might have been frequented by members of a cult said to be responsible for the Son of Sam killings. The middle section explores the Sumerian and Arabic elements in greater detail, attempting to establish a connection both to Lovecraft's horror fiction and to the occult philosophies of Aleister Crowley, and then the final section details why the people who think Simon made the whole thing up are full of it. As I say, it's all a bit of a muddle, one that probably won't convince anybody that Avon's Necronomicon is real.* But the story's just wild enough to convince some people; heck, in that regard, it's like a real-life Dan Brown novel.

*...as opposed to the one Llewellyn put out in 2004, which has always been presented as a deliberate Lovecraft pastiche. Frankly, I've always been a little scared of the Avon book, but you have to understand that in the context of getting a massive case of the heebie-jeebies after reading Lovecraft back-to-back with Robert Anton Wilson's Masks of the Illuminati. Heck, even reading Daniel Pinchbeck gives me the chills.