The Black Death By Gwyneth Cravens and John S. Marr

The Black Death
By Gwyneth Cravens and John S. Marr
1977 Ballantine Books
Paperback, 354 pages

 

                The Bubonic Plague hits Manhattan! It’s hard to look at older books like this now that we’ve had the Covid pandemic, but this one is well written and is delivered in a fast-moving text for most of its telling, revealing little by little until there is a real shit show happening. A warning: there are some pretty racist assholes in the story and a silly, sexist subplot.

 

                Sarah Dobbs returns from a vacation on the West Coast feeling ill and as she rests in her parents’ luxury home in Manhattan, she gets worse. While hospitalized, it takes a while to figure out what she is (soon was) suffering from but once they discover the contagion, it is a race to find everybody that she might have come in contact with. This part of the book is exciting, and it takes up most of the first third of the narrative. Thinking it was contained, they hear about a hooker that had contacted it and spread it all over, even the nice part of town.

 

                Spanish Harlem is hit hard with the epidemic and here is where class and racism comes into play. Once the government knows it is the plague, they are quick to blame the poor for the disease. Surely this was planted on US soil by Cuba! The president’s top aide, who has delusions of grandeur and a shady past, is planting that seed into the president’s noggin. At about 200 pages in, a lot of meetings and arguments between politicians, bureaucrats, and specialists begin and it starts to bog down the book. Then our hero contracts the bug…

 

                David Hart is a Department of Health official. It is he who identifies the problem and as a hero, he is admirable, trying to save as many lives as possible. I thought that his horniness when he gazed upon his lovely co-worker Dolores was a little bit jarring and out of place, but the romance gives his character motive later on. He does catch the bug after saving thousands and when he wakes up, miraculously cured, the setting is a post-apocalyptic nightmare of gangs, corpses, rats and fear. And, quite honestly, silliness. But it’s exciting silliness.

 

                The authors are very thorough when describing what an invading disease does to the human body as well as what certain drugs do to the invading disease. It gets very scientific at times but never to the detriment of the story. A ton of research went into this thriller, and it all gets you thinking. When all is said and done, the book says as much about what scumbags all politicians are as it does about trying to live through a catastrophic time. Not so much has changed, really.

Bedlam By Harry Adam Knight

Bedlam
By Harry Adam Knight
1992 Gollancz
Paperback, 215 pages

 

                When thinking of John Brosnan’s (with Leroy Kettle sometimes) books written as Harry Adam Knight, I tend to look at the Big Three; The Fungus (1985), Slimer (1983) and Carnosaur (1984). This one was unknown to me for a while until I stumbled upon it on a certain auction site. I grabbed it and I’m glad I did. While it isn’t a nature-runs-amok tale like the others, there is plenty of gruesome goodness on tap.

 

                Marc Gilmour is a serial killer known as The Bone Man. He is very clever, very cruel and completely twisted. The police in London finally catch him and put him away forever. He winds up in Dr. Stephanie Lyell’s care. She and her crew have a drug they want to try on him to try to make him... saner? To test its safeness, she even tries it on herself, noting nothing out of the ordinary in her physiology. But the people in the building that she lives in all have the same dream as she does, sometimes with catastrophic results!

 

                After she dreams of her sister burning in a fire (which happened during her teens), a guy catches fire and leaps to his death. No fire in his apartment, though. This brings Detective Seargent Terry Hamilton into her life, for better or worse, and they try to unravel the mysteries that keep piling up. Hamilton had a run-in with the Bone Man in his past; Gilmour was responsible for his wife and kid’s deaths. He can’t believe that anyone would try to reform that psycho.

 

                That is the set-up and, of course, once he starts getting his drugs, The Bone Man can pretty much take over the entire town. Except for Lyell and Hamilton, who are now both taking the drug. Still, he makes their world a surreal, alternate reality filled with confusion and terror, playing their greatest fears against them. Hamilton’s dead wife is back, as well as Lyell’s burnt neighbor who assaults her in a particularly disgusting scene. There’s also a rain of living fetuses that will please the gore-hounds. Yes, this is different from the other HAK books, but it has a lot of merit of its own. I really enjoyed it (>splat<) and highly recommend it if you can find it.  The Gollancz paperback has a nice cover by Tom Stimpson.

 

                Added bonus, “Knight” mentions a textbook written by Professor Simon Ian Childer, another of Brosnan’s pseudonyms!

The Lake By R. Karl Largent

The Lake
By R. Karl Largent
1993 Leisure
Paperback, 365 pages

 

                I normally do not like books written in first person narrative. Especially in horror books. I mean, you know right away that the storyteller survives. And if that main character is a bit of a smarmy, self-important twat, then it makes it even harder to dig in. I got over it and let the story evolve but I never really liked Elliot Wages.

                Mr. Wages is an author spending the summer in a small vacation town where he somehow becomes the most popular resident. He dates the town’s most beautiful woman, and he has the respect of most of the population. Despite a less than average summer season, the town of Jericho is bracing for the upcoming Jubilee, when tourists will flock to the town’s lake for fun and frivolity. BUT (yes, there is always a big but), there have been a couple of missing or mutilated kids, an oversized, mutant gar, a mysterious fog, and a permeating odor… should the Jubilee actually take place? Holy Jaws, Batman!

                OK, despite the wonderful cover, The Lake is not a Creature Feature story. Yes, there are a few outsized, aggressive gar, but the real danger is that fog. It seems that a factory on the lake is releasing some deadly shit into the water and it’s mixing with some other shit and making a flesh melting fog. OK, I’m still interested.

                At 365 pages, this book is far thicker than I usually like to delve in to and somewhere around the half-way mark, it became quite a slog. But I soldiered on and by the last quarter of the book, I’ll be goddamned… it got pretty damn exciting. After learning that it wasn’t going to be about bloodthirsty gar, I was a bit disappointed, but it really turned out to be a pretty good thriller. Not a horror novel by any stretch, but a tight, suspenseful nail-biter. Largent has a number of actual horror novels under his belt, so I’m looking forward to checking some of them out.

                As long as they’re not written in first person…

The Deadly Deep By Jon Messmann

The Deadly Deep
By Jon Messmann
1976 Signet
Paperback, 222 pages

                If you have read any of my reviews, you know that I love when nature strikes back, and animals start killing humans. This one, despite being fairly early in the nature-runs-amok cycle, was not on my radar until recently. I finally discovered it, picked it up and was rewarded with a pretty fun book. Not perfect by any means, but pretty darn good.

 

                Some disturbances have been happening along the Atlantic Coast of the US, like a whale smashing a fishing boat to bits, and lobsters attacking the men trapping them. Aran Holder, a science writer, thinks he may have a hot new lead on something to write about and, after his girlfriend is nipped by sea bass, he contacts his old pal at the Fish and Wildlife Service. Sure enough, shit has been going down and Holder is not only going to write about this phenomenon, but he’s also going to help investigate it.

 

                Yes, there are plenty of meetings as scientists and the military try to sort things out, but Messman keeps things rolling along with fresh attacks as the epidemic spreads around the world. Cephalopods, fish of all sizes and even crabs get into the action. (This book came out the same year as Guy N. Smith’s essential Night of the Crabs so 1976 was definitely a banner year for crustaceans.) Sealife even get together to form a tsunami to wipe out Miami Beach. Well done!

 

                When it isn’t an action set piece breaking up the meetings, it’s a sex scene. While the women in the book are intelligent and key to the plot, they also have boobs and Messman loves big boobs. So do I, as a matter of fact. So, there’s sex, animals killing humans, and a military zealot being humiliated; what’s not to love? Well, Holder is kind of a dick for a main character. He even cheats on his girlfriend that he realizes he’s fallen in love with… to “comfort” a woman he’s working with. Also, the ending was a bit of a fizzle.

 

                Overall, I can recommend this one, especially to fans of animal attack stories. It is more intellectual than many of its kin (Messmann is no dummy) and the book is well-written. The science is even almost plausible, I guess. So, dig in, grab a boob or two and read about lobsters snipping the Gorton’s fisherman to ribbons. I have no idea who painted the somewhat confusing cover, but it’s a dandy.

Night Mask By William W. Johnstone

Night Mask
By William W. Johnstone
1994 Zebra
Paperback, 350 pages

                There have been a few homicides of late in La Barca, California and the victims’ faces are missing! That’s right, their faces have been flayed off and taken. This revolting turn of events has a somewhat familiar ring to it, so detectives Leo Franks and Lani Prejean start a cross-country investigation to get to the bottom of it. And how does it tie in to La Barca’s easy listening radio station?

 

                Johnstone really puts the pedal to the metal in this one, delivering mind-melting gore and over the top cruelty, but always keeping his sense of humor intact. The body count is staggering, and the two detectives do everything they can, legal or not, to get to the bottom of it. It become clear pretty early on that “The Ripper” is likely more than one person.

 

                Of course, most of Johnstone’s usual right-wing bullshit is on display here, in fact, he spouts off more than usual. Guns are good, heavy metal is evil, the gay community are freaks, and only God can really be trusted. Whereas that usually adds to the camp charm of a Johnstone book, it gets to be a little too much in Night Mask. Don’t get me wrong; denouncing heavy metal as the work of Satan is never not fun but the gay bashing gets quite irksome.

 

                The scope of the book gets a little too big after a while, as well, and the cozy little killer-thriller starts to get a little long in the tooth. The kill-pits and the disenchanted (heavy-metal) teen followers of The Ripper gets silly. He had a nice little, gory potboiler going but went and made it too big to truly satisfy. Still, I enjoyed this book a lot. Huge print, lots of breaks, gallons of blood, mounds of rotting corpses, and a compelling story (to a point) had me blowing through this one in just a couple of days. There are more twists and turns than needed but dig in, check your brain at the door, load your gun and genuflect… you’re in for a fun ride.

 

               

Nightmare By Lewis Mallory

Nightmare
By Lewis Mallory
1984 Hamlyn
Paperback, 157 pages

 

                This one isn’t terrible, but it feels kind of like a contractual obligation book. The story, such as it is, just meanders along until its somewhat predictable conclusion. There is no passion in the storytelling. Maybe Mallory mailed it in or maybe this is just how he writes: it is the first novel of his that I have read. The book moves quickly enough and there are some excellent set-pieces but many of the settings and characters are paper-thin. But then, I don’t ask for much, so I read on.

 

                The book is about Gideon, a young brat who wants to be left alone, wants things his way, and has the power to make it happen. After torching his parents’ house with them in it, he winds up in a hospital ward, locked away from his sister. She is the only person he has any kind of need for and having survived the fire, she is the key to getting him out. But it won’t be easy as he is fucking weird, and everybody sees it. He remains silent when doctors (or anyone) ask him anything.

               

                Gideon has the power to take a person’s most intimate fear and turn it on them. Policeman Cooper is attacked by spiders, Nurse Simpson has a run-in with a pack of dogs, his sister’s boyfriend Phil was besieged by rats… or was it all in their heads? At any rate, their fear killed them, and nobody knew it was Gideon’s fault except Phil, who survived the rodent rage. Can he make Gideon’s sister see the light before he destroys her, too?

 

                As mentioned above, there are some good set-pieces, such as when Gideon drives his hospital roommate over the edge, and he cuts his own throat with a broken window. The animal attacks are fun: they are the reason I bought the book in the first place. So, while overall the writing seems kind of lazy, it’s still a quick, short novel that delivers the goods as long as you’re not looking for anything too deep. As per usual, Hamlyn gave this a corker of a cover!

Feeding Ground By John Monsees

Feeding Ground
By John Monsees
2025 Grindhouse Horror
Paperback, 232 pages

 

                How to review a book that is dedicated to me and my friend Eric Wright, the guy who got me started on reviewing paperbacks? Easy! I’ll just review it. Mr. Monsees is a friend, but I can be objective. But he does write directly to my tastes so he always gets glowing reviews! He, along with Hunter Shea, absolutely get it! And yes, the author acknowledges that this book is an unofficial Guy N. Smith crab book and he really gets the flavor down perfectly.

 

                The seaside town of Saltwick in North Yorkshire, England is in deep shit. The fish processing plant has contaminated the water with industrial runoff and it has made the local crabs bigger, more aggressive and smarter. After an attack in that very plant and a few missing vacationers, surely they’ll call off the town’s annual festival! No, the mayor wants to cover it up, in true Larry Vaughn style and that puts every townsperson and visitor in even deeper shit. Giant razor-sharp claws shred, dissect and inspect the many humans who go down in a pool of red. These crabs not only destroy humans, but they’re also studying them, learning how to take over the world to become the top species. In all honesty, seeing what’s going on in the US these days (March 2025), I should think they’d do a better job.

 

                A lesser author would have saved up the festival massacre for the climax but Monsees throws us to the crabs in the middle of the book, stranding our main characters (and plenty of crab fodder) in unsafe buildings and stores and eventually, the labyrinthine tunnels under the city where they’re still very much prone to attack. The crabs had been rebuilding these tunnels for decades. Scientist Emma Carlisle, drunken fisherman Jack, factory worker Danny and others are the  town’s last chance. But good luck, because the crabs are using tactical intelligence, cutting off escape routes, rounding humans up into kill zones. See? I told you they were smart.

 

                This book delivers everything you would want and hope for, and more. Obviously, we come for the gore and Monsees never disappoints in that respect. Entrails spill, blood sprays and limbs are severed. The gore is deliciously rendered with prose that would make Ramsey Campbell proud. Monsees, an American, serves up a British flavor that rings true to my eyes (admittedly, also American). Top shelf writing all around, though I must confess that I thought the word “systematically” got a little overused when describing the crabs’ intelligent actions, but I guess there’s no better word for it. In truth, I felt that the last third of the book lapsed a little into information overload and some repetition. Not that the climax isn’t thrilling but for a few chapters working towards the end, things felt a little bogged down.

 

                But that’s just a small bit of nitpicking. This book is to be relished right up alongside the GNS crab literature and I plan on filing it in the crustacean section of my library with those classics. If you haven’t yet checked out John Monsees’ writing, do yourself a favor and dig in. I can guarantee a good read.