Murder Bound, Continued

A Norwegian draug resembles a zombie because it is a walking corpse but also resembles a ghost because it haunts the living by night. Maybe a draug is a zombie possessed by its ghost, a concept to be found among James Bond's Voodooist adversaries in Ian Fleming's Live And Let Die?

One draug walks in Poul Anderson's historical fantasy short story, "The Tale of Hauk." Another seems to walk in his San Francisco-based detective novel, Murder Bound (New York, 1962). In the latter work, a Norwegian sailor imagines a drowned body clinging to the keel of a ship in the harbor and coming ashore by night... Thus, this detective novel refers both to the astronomical universe, which is the setting of much of Anderson's sf, and to Norse mythology, which is the background of several of his works of fantasy.

I was right about one of the sailors being a Communist but that was an easy deduction because his politics were obvious from his dialogue. However, this man's secret activities do not include spying. Instead, he clandestinely visits his mentally retarded daughter who, despite his atheism, he has placed in the care of a convent, concealing her very existence from his colleagues, his comrades and even his second wife. (In this respect, he fortuitously resembles "Karla," the Russian adversary of John Le Carre's Smiley.) So far, this makes him a good man, although misguided, but I do not yet know whether he will turn out to be guilty of murder or attempted murder.