Satan’s Seductress By Brian McNaughton

Satan’s Seductress
By Brian McNaughton
1981 Star Books
Paperback, 254 pages

                This is the direct follow-up to McNaughton’s Satan’s Mistress, which was a follow-up (in name only) to his previous Satan’s Love Child. This book picks up four years after the killing and satanic craziness that happened in Mistress and some of the characters from that book return. Should you read Satan’s Mistress before this one? Yes, you probably should.

 

                Amy Miniter had a small role in the previous book, but she managed to survive the massacre that happened in Mount Tabor, Connecticut and she’s back. Away for four years, she returned to settle her mother’s affairs, so she moved into a new apartment complex. The complex, not so surprisingly, was built on top of the town dump where the witch Mirdath was buried. Strange things are afoot in the apartments and the shy, frail and neurotic Amy is targeted to house Mirdath’s resurrected spirit. Tatty journalist Martin Paige (really, it must be McNaughton himself!) is in town looking to write a book on the massacre and puts himself into Amy’s life whether she wants him or not.

 

                Cult leader Howard Ashcroft returns from the previous book as does Amy’s old high-school teacher Mr. Bamberger, both seeking to reincarnate the witch. Amy’s downstairs neighbors provide plenty of sex and violence as the apartment complex goes loony. Todd is an Ashcroft follower and has a mean streak a mile wide anyway. Just ask his girlfriend Toni. What the cult really wants is the Necronomicon and Martin has found it, but can he hold onto it as the world fills with unreality, danger and time-loops?

 

                This book isn’t nearly as action-packed as its predecessor, but it matches it in the surrealism department. Events happen, but then things change back to “normal”, and then back until the reader and the characters are unsure what is real anymore. That is not a knock on the story telling, it is all part of the fun. McNaughton blends suspense, hallucinations, humor and desperation in sure even strokes. Gorehounds will enjoy Toni’s death and subsequent appearances in the story.

 

                This book was rereleased in 2000 by Wildside Press with McNaughton’s original, intended text and title as Worse Things Waiting. As I suggest with Satan’s Mistress, why not go with the more fun and loopier version as Satan’s Seductress? And rather than the big Satan face used on the 1980 Carlyle cover, hold out for the nude art by Gino D'Achille on the Star Books release. His covers are stunning.

Satan’s Mistress By Brian McNaughton

Satan’s Mistress
By Brian McNaughton
1978 Carlyle
Paperback, 252 pages

                McNaughton’s follow-up to Satan’s Love Child isn’t as sex-filled as its predecessor, but it’s a truly inspired piece of lunacy in and of itself. Nobody in the book has a shred of decency and wonderfully awful things happen to everyone.

 

                The Laughlins are a fucked-up family. Mom’s an insane hippy, dad is a commercial artist and young Patrick is confused as hell. They live in Mom’s inherited old Mill that has a suspect history. Patrick is an awkward nerd but has typical teenage thoughts and desires, and dreams of a red-haired mistress. In the waking world, he has a crush on a cheerleader. When the folks have an “adult” party, everyone gathers at the Mill and, quite literally, all hell starts to break loose. You see, Mom has found a hidden passageway in the basement that leads to her ancestor’s library which is filled with evil writings. It turns out that the Cthulhu Mythos that Lovecraft wrote about was not fiction!

 

                That’s about the gist of it and believe me, that premise allows all kinds of wacky things to happen. Patrick gets taken over by evil spirits, Dad buggers his gay boss, and everyone gets wrapped up in the madness. There is incest, infant-eating, possession, and brutality, but it’s all served up with a healthy sense of humor and clever storytelling. At one point, the family lawyer, a Lovecraft fan, figures out the connection when he finds the real Necronomicon in the library and says he has to call Colin Wilson, L. Sprague de Camp and Robert E. Briney, all real-life writers who have dabbled in the Mythos (the last one, a collaborator with McNaughton!) to see what they know about it.

 

                In a word, this book is fun. Sit back and enjoy the silly weirdness. By the way, it was Carlyle Books that made this and three other books “the Satan Series” back in the day. Overall, they don’t really share a common thread, though the third book, Satan’s Seductress, does continue this storyline. This title has been restored as Downward to Darkness with McNaughton’s original, preferred text and title, by Wildside Press and it is readily available online. But feel free to stick with this, the pulpier version, for a wild ride.

Satan’s Love Child By Brian McNaughton

Satan’s Love Child

By Brian McNaughton
1977 Carlyle
Paperback, 256 pages

 

                After a decade or so of publishing adult paperbacks, Bee-Line Books started the imprint of Carlyle Communications in 1977 to test the waters of more respectable book genres. Like Horror. They hired one of their authors, Brian McNaughton, who had written a handful of adult books with the nom de porn Mark Bloodstone to start things out. Satan’s Love Child was the result.

 

                Marcia, a former hippie, is a reporter for the Riveredge Banner, a small-town newspaper. She is also the married mother of three children. Speaking of hippies, a group of them have been hanging around in town and raising a lot of suspicion and Marcia feels that she, with her background, should get a crack at a story. But with murders (some townsfolk point to her pet Doberman as the killer), a crumbling marriage and a teenage daughter, Melody, that hates her stepfather and disappears into the night, Marcia has her hands very full.

 

                Man, everybody hates hippies. Like, just because they’re dirty outsiders doesn’t mean they’re dangerous. Unless they really are a Satanic cult, hell bent on raising the Old Ones and sacrificing the innocent to achieve their goal. Melody’s future and her mother’s past look like they’re going on similar paths and Hell couldn’t be happier. And is there an actual monster on the prowl?

 

                McNaughton is an excellent writer but evidently, when he turned in his manuscript, the publisher asked him to spice it up significantly. You know, like the other books they were trying to break away from. Well, he sure did. The added hard-core sex scenes stand out like a sore thumb and are howlingly hilarious next to the somewhat solemn story that he’d been telling. Not that his previous draft was without a sense of humor, but the sex is so in-your-face that you just have to laugh. No book ever published has more uses of the words “cunt” and “prick”. And all of the good things that go with them.

 

                Like the other McNaughton Satan books I have read, this first one is an easy quick read that never has a chance to get dull. Marcia is a good character, though she is surrounded by less than desirable folks. Her mothering is questionable (always leaving the two youngest children alone) but her motives are just. McNaughton’s original draft, without the howling porn, is now in print as Gemini Rising by Wildside Press (2018). But hey, as a McNaughton fan, why not read as many words that he has written as possible? Even if a huge percentage of those words are “cunt”.