The Gannon Books by Dean Ballenger

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Mantis By E.B. Stambaugh

Mantis
By E.B. Stambaugh
Futura 1989
Paperback, 288 pages

 

                Of course, every book pales in comparison to Pierce Nace’s incomparable Eat Them Alive, but having a go at another giant mantis book takes a lot of guts. E. M. Stambaugh, whoever you are, I tip my hat to you for even thinking about it. Mantis is no Eat Them Alive, but it is well-written and despite being overly character-driven, it’s not a bad timewaster.

               

                Jerrod Rudd is the Chief of Police in Pleasant Grove, California, a sleepy town where nothing much happens. His marriage is in shambles. He doesn’t have time for his wife, his kids or anything but his job. His annoying Godmother, who raised him, gives his annoying daughter a small Praying Mantis for a science project and the child learns all about her new pet. Meanwhile, the quiet town is besieged by animal slaughters: some dogs, some horses, and then an all-out bloodbath in the local animal shelter. No tracks are left behind and the point of entry to the shelter appears to have been from the skylight.

 

                OK, being that the book is called Mantis and there’s a big Praying Mantis on the cover, we know what’s going on. It sometimes gets a bit tedious waiting for Rudd to sort things out but the information that trickles in is interesting. Bite marks get larger as time goes on, suggesting that whatever is responsible is growing. Unfortunately, his Godmother is a wannabe detective, and she gets super annoying, talking to the press and such. Like Rudd, I wanted to punch her. Much of the book is pure soap opera, with the husband/ wife problems and the big city detective, her old flame, brought in to help. Luckily, the writing is excellent, and I never drifted off, but I was constantly thinking get to the Mantis part!!!

               

                Once it finally does (like 200 or so pages in), blood flows and I was happy. It seems that one of the pet mantid’s siblings got radiated in the local toxic waste dump and grew and grew. I always thought those mantis egg cases that you can buy for your garden were a bad idea. True fact: most of those egg cases in garden stores are Chinese Mantids. Thus, you are introducing an invasive species when you’re trying to keep aphids off of your broccoli. Don’t be a tool. Like Clarice, the annoying Godmother.

Savage By Paul Boorstin

Savage
By Paul Boorstin
1981 Berkley Books
Paperback, 291 pages

 

                I’d read The Accursed by Paul Boorstin and liked it so when I saw he had another horror book out with a nifty keyhole step-back decap cover, I knew I’d like to have it in my collection. Luckily, it wasn’t expensive when I found one in pretty good shape (although my cat has since bitten four holes into the cover). The drawback to this book is that the Berkley edition has tiny, densely packed print that made it a real chore to read. The narrative and writing is very good but it would have benefitted from some pruning and much larger print.

 

                Photojournalist Christine Latham is given an assignment to cover the opening of the El Dorada Hotel in (the fictional) Panaguas in South America. Panaguas is in the middle of a revolution and guerillas are all but guaranteed to show up at the resort. The luxury hotel was built on cleared jungle land after the country’s leader disposed of the native people by all means possible. Of the many beautiful people invited to the opening, only a handful arrive and pretty soon, heads are gonna roll. Literally.

 

                The cast of characters is good and are all given ample time to blossom; the producer and his busty starlet, a washed up pop star, an older psychic woman, an anthropologist, the country’s leaders and numerous mercenaries amongst them. All of them are very flawed and except for Chris, none of them are likely to be someone you’ll root for but you do get familiar with them, which keeps what might be their fates on your mind. I mean, Chris finds some real shrunken heads among the touristy fake ones in the gift shop, and then some of the characters wind up headless. Who is doing the killing? And the shrinking? The story plays out as a mystery as much as a horror adventure complete with red herrings and plenty of plot twists. It’s good to have a strong woman as the main character of an Eighties novel for a change, too.

 

                Boorstin is an excellent writer and pens some lovely passages and the gore, once it comes, splashes with vigor. The bodies pile up and there are some wonderfully shocking set-pieces. For our characters, escape is impossible, survival improbable. The book feels overlong by the time you’ve hit the halfway mark but picks up steam in the second half. Still, with that tiny print, plowing through this one is rough going, no matter how much you’d like to. There are a few jaw-dropping twists that I never saw coming and all in all, this one is a keeper, though I doubt I’ll ever read it again. But that step-back cover alone is worth it.

 

                The Berkley edition has an extra 19 pages devoted to a preview of Laurence Block’s (then forthcoming) novel Ariel that I didn’t bother reading because it was in the same tiny typeface. I just couldn’t do it to myself.

The Web By Richard Lewis

The Web
By Richard Lewis
1981 Hamlyn
Paperback, 204 pages

 

                When Alan Radnor turns into Richard Lewis, he writes books for me! As Lewis, he wrote a half dozen creepy-crawlies-versus-humans novels and all of them are loads of fun. This one is a sequel to his successful debut critter novel Spiders (1978). Many of his books don’t stick in your head for a long time, but they deliver the goods and are a hoot while you’re digging in.

 

                Of course, James Herbert’s The Rats (1974) started the whole Britain-under-attack genre, but we must also credit the same author’s The Fog (1975) for the folks-going-murderously-insane storyline that also frequently turns up in these books. The spiders that return in Lewis’s sequel are a little different. Sure, some of them devour their victims down to the bone, leaving just a husk, but a mutated form of spider can envenomate their victim and that, my dear, will cause violent insanity. They also enjoy wrapping up humans in tight webs to be devoured later. Evolution, that’s what it is.

 

                Much of the book is just a bunch of brief vignettes, characters set up only to be slaughtered. One fun passage is with the spinster schoolteacher whose routine is broken up after being bitten by one of the new spiders. She goes bonkers on her class of cheeky, young students and starts killing and beating them, as well as anyone who tries to stop her. I love it when bratty kids aren’t spared! Another fun set piece is a prison attack where the trapped convicts are sitting ducks for the arachnid army.

 

                It doesn’t matter if you haven’t read Lewis’s first spider novel; when the action from the first book is referenced, it is notated for your convenience. Since we have new mutations here, consider it an all-new story and enjoy the onslaught. Derivative? Yes. Any new ideas? Nope. Do I recommend it? Hell yes! Fun, gory, stupid, 80s pulp… just the way I like it.

Bestial By Ray Garton

Bestial
By Ray Garton
2009 Leisure Books
Paperback, 339 pages

                Bestial is Garton’s sequel to 2008’s Ravenous (reviewed in Midnight #9) but there’s more to it than that. Martin Burgess hires Investigators Karen Moffett and Gavin Keoph to look into the werewolf rumors he’d heard about in Big Rock, California. Those three characters are returning from Garton’s Night Life (2005) which was a sequel to his successful vampire novel Live Girls (1987). Got that? It doesn’t really matter if you have read any of the previous books; Bestial is self-contained and any references to the earlier works are easy to follow.

 

                So, the rumors are true; there is werewolf activity in Big Rock, and Burgess’s previous investigator has disappeared. Karen and Gavin know how tough their job is. As they begin to believe what we already know, we get treated to a pure werewolf birth. It gets fed a human baby to munch on upon it’s emergence into the world. Yes, there is plenty of graphic gore here and that scene is in the prologue! And, of course, as in Ravenous, werewolf-ism is spread by sexual activity. Lots of fucking and gore ensues.

 

                The main thrust (you’re welcome) of this one is to start a new race of pure werewolves and take over the law and the church in town and grow their new race. I’ll admit that there were a few too many characters that I had to juggle with as I struggled with the small and tight typeface, but it all became crystal clear in an epic scene in a hospital emergency room as a second wolf kid is born. After that, I knew everybody and couldn’t put the book down. The ER slaughter is a magnificent segment of the novel that works up some beautiful bursting visions of horror. The characters are all fleshed out enough to make you care one way or another, and their situations become very important to the reader.

 

                The ending is another explosive and exciting scene that kept me on the edge of my… well, pillow, I guess, since I usually read in bed. For my money, this sequel is better than the original book. There is ample room for a sequel to this but since Garton sadly passed away in 2024 (he was younger than me… not fair!), we’ll never get it.

The Festering By Guy N. Smith

The Festering
By Guy N. Smith
1989 Arrow
Paperback, 191 pages

 

                A word to the wise. If you ever find yourself in a Guy N. Smith novel and you’re thinking of leaving the bustling city life behind for a new, relaxed life in a remote area of England, do not follow your dreams. As the Great Scribbler has shown us over and over again, it is a bad idea.

 

                Mike and Holly Mannion have made such a decision. Mike is an artist, and they have spent every last dime on Garth Cottage because of Holly’s desire to leave the rat race. With very tight expenses, they lose their running water due to a drought; the water pumps in from a stream that is very low. They decide to have a well put in behind the cottage and a dependable company comes in to drill the borehole. They have to go very deep and, unknown to anybody, they drill through a diseased carcass of a man buried there centuries ago.

 

                It starts with the stink. It continues with festering boils that pop up and spew foul custard. It imbues it’s victims with madness and sexual deviations. It ends with death. The work crew is the first to succumb, being closest to the contagion. With water unfit to use, a sludge covered yard, and that permeating stench, the Mannions aren’t pleased with their situation. And wait a minute, aren’t the two of them acting a bit overly amorous with the wrong people?

 

                This is GNS at his most visceral best. The seclusion, the hopelessness, the smell and the discomfort are beautifully portrayed on every page. We get everything we want in a great pulp horror novel: weeping sores, bursting pustules, pointless inappropriate sex, nasty characters whose suffering you can’t wait to witness, and a breathless narrative. And lots of pus and oozing liquids. Two of my favorite words, squelch and slurry, are used numerous times. I smiled as I winced. Perfection.

 

                This has become a tough book to find (and afford) these days due to the fact that it has had but one printing from Arrow Books (though Black Hill books put it out on Kindle in 2012). Add the amazing Terry Oakes cover to the scarcity and you have a collector’s item worth doling out the big bucks for.

The Wilds By Claude Teweles

The Wilds
By Claude Teweles
1989 Dell
Paperback, 213 pages

                Of course, the first reason that you need this book is to pore over Jill Bauman’s amazing cover art. If that doesn’t grab your eye, I don’t know what will. Some readers have complained that despite the cover, this is not a horror book, but I beg to differ. The events that the characters go through are horrific indeed and though this is mainly an adventure story, the horrors are very real. The back cover mentions Deliverance and Lord of the Flies and I can see both in here; humans trying to survive while nature kicks their ass.

 

                A couple of counselors take a group of teen and younger kids on an overnight hike into “The Wilds”, a section of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, to show them how to track and really get along in the wilderness. Gordon, a counselor, is back as the mountain expert, even after a fatal mishap the previous year. He has a lot to prove to himself. Del is a 15 year old who looks and acts older and thinks of himself as an unofficial counselor, though in reality he is still just a kid. Kyle is a moody kid who would rather just be left alone and has a love/ hate relationship with Del. And so the group ascends. What could possibly go wrong?

 

                The tension between Del and Kyle makes them split up going up the mountain, forcing Mr. Dugan, the man in charge, to go look for him and take a near fatal fall. And then Gordon takes a fall, leaving most of the kids to their own devices high up in The Wilds. No problem, right? Until an unexpected blizzard hits. Hey, it was June but up there, there’s always a chance of snow.

 

                Not everyone is going to survive. Each chapter (except one) starts with either Gordon, Del or Kyle’s name and we see things from their point of view and food runs out, hope runs out and nature has its way with them. Each of them has personal baggage that will weigh heavily on them during their ordeal. The smaller kids also worry about “Donner Man” thanks to a campfire story about the Donner Party and the cannibalistic results. The suspense, the tension and yes, the horror really ratchets up to eleven and you can feel The Wilds taking them in. I had the misfortune of reading this during a cold snap in May and I was shivering under the blankets.

 

                This is a top shelf struggle for survival story right here. Fathom Press reissued the book in 2025. Look for it with Julia Teweles as the author as she transitioned in 2007. I will be keeping my eye out for Teweles’ other horror book The Stalker (Zebra Books) because I liked this one a lot.