Labyrinth By Eric Mackenzie-Lamb

Labyrinth
By Eric Mackenzie-Lamb
1979 Hamlyn
Paperback, 239 pages

 

                You know that I love me some Hamlyn Horrors! I’ll grab any one that I can find at a reasonable price. This one was unknown to me when I stumbled across it and I couldn’t resist a nice swampy horror. I didn’t really get that with this book but it had a lot more to offer, for better or worse, than a hackneyed ol’ swamp monster.

 

                Tom Davison is taking his University students on a field trip into the Okefenokee. While on the trip, one of his male students, Kirby, is taking core samples and comes up with a couple of Confederate coins (the origin of which is in the prologue) while a female student, Helen Garson,  unsuccessfully throws herself at the teacher.  After the trip, Davison takes the coins to be appraised in Miami and hears about their history and their worth. Upon returning to the University, he learns that Helen had told her father, a rich local businessman, and the authorities that Davison had assaulted her. Good time to head back to the swamp. End of part one.

 

                In part two, we learn more about Helen’s father, how he got rich and the unsavory ways he runs his business. Conveniently, the coin appraiser also deals in illegal migrant workers which Mr. Garson has been hiring and the gig is up. Garson’s top man is also a ruthless killer.  After snuffing the old man while Helen watches, things get crazy. With a heavy heart full of regret, Helen heads out to find Davison in the swamp. Kirby and a friend head to the swamp to find Davison while the gay killer and his gay henchmen head in to find Helen. The swamp is going to be hoppin’.

 

                There is a lot of good stuff in this book. The killer is particularly ruthless and Davison’s reptile knowledge is scientifically accurate. We get lots of native fauna behaving correctly which is a welcome change from a lot of books of the era. And how can you not love a book that goes into great detail about rare coins? But making the bad guys all homosexuals seems like a pretty broad stroke of prejudice. It turns out that Mackenzie-Lamb’s real-life father (explorer and botanist Elke, formerly Ivan, Mackenzie) transitioned in 1971 so I guess the author was still working out some acceptance problems. Women don’t fare a lot better though what Helen lacks in brains, she makes up for with balls.

 

                This is Mackenzie-Lamb’s only novel and it is a fast paced thriller with good points and despite its flaws, I’d have to recommend it for Hamlyn fans. It’s more of an adventure/ crime narrative than a horror, but it should satisfy your bloodthirsty needs.

Feast By Graham Masterton

Feast
By Graham Masterton
1988 Pinnacle Books
Paperback, 448 pages

                Graham Masterton’s cannibal classic has a lot of fans and a lot of detractors. I consider myself a fan, though with some reservations. Masterton is, of course, an excellent writer and storyteller and keeps the narrative flowing forward at a decent tempo. There are portions of the book, however, that slow down a bit and feel like padding, especially in the middle. Some pacing problems and repetition (and dozens of annoying typos in the Pinnacle edition) get in the way of this being a perfectly enjoyable experience. And I say that with the main character being kind of a dickhead. He wasn’t a problem for me.

 

                Charlie McLean (the dickhead) is a traveling restaurant critic going through small town Connecticut with his estranged son, 15 year old Martin, trying to spend some “get to know you” time together. Charlie learns of a secret dining club called Le Reposoir and desperately wants to get into it. All of his attempts are squashed and eventually, he gives up. Until his son goes missing and he learns that Martin has joined a cult, the Célèstines (at Le Reposoir), one that believes that the way to Jesus and spirituality is self-cannibalism. The cult is well-protected legally, as the “victims” are willing participants and there is little that Charlie can do. His attempts to “rescue” Martin get him nothing but trouble. With Journalist/ instant love interest Robyn in tow, he heads to New Orleans to the Célèstines headquarters to try a different way to gain access to his son.

 

                For me, the book got a little overlong while still in Connecticut and as the story became a road trip, but once they reached the Big Easy, things really started to pick up. Charlie’s effort to join the cult by practicing their ways is an unforgettable scene that even had me squirming and the sights and sounds of the New Orleans complex are horrifying yet shown with a spirituality and calmness that makes it feel twice as bad. You see, the Célèstines think that with Martin’s offering, they will bring about the Second Coming and nothing will stop them from making this come to pass, especially not Charlie’s harassment.

 

                So we have a great story by an excellent author but perhaps the scope is too big, dragging things down a bit. There are also a lot of convenient characters in on the whole plot to capture Martin that in retrospect were very much in the right place at the right time. Still, my suspension of disbelief is very strong so I just went with the flow. While the book could have lost 100 pages and should have had an actual proof-reader, I still enjoyed this and will hold it in high regard. Bob Larkin’s step-back cover art is a thing of rare beauty and that alone is worth the high price tag that Feast often commands. That the story is good, all quibbles aside, is icing on the cake.

    In 1989, Sphere released the title as Ritual with a less exciting (but still cool) step-back cover.

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.