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.

The Colony By Paul Lalley

The Colony
By Paul Lalley
1979 Carlyle
Paperback, 221 pages

 

                Carlyle was porn publisher Bee-Line’s imprint for publishing other genres. They had had some success with Brian McNaughton’s Satan series so you’d think they would have had a lot of horror novels made to order but there aren’t many. This nature-strikes-back monsterpiece is one of the few I can find, and finding it (affordable, or at all) hasn’t been easy. Reading it certainly was easy.

 

                The book starts right off with a bang. The South American Fire Ant has served up a few corpses in a small Mississippi town. Luckily, they have Mark West of the Crop and Pest Commission and an able-bodied sheriff in the person of Web Maddox. Together, these two try to wrap their brains around how these foreign insects have come to set up colonies in their sleepy town. A visiting carnival is attacked just pages after it is mentioned, which made me feel pretty darn good about the Pediatric Hospital mentioned on page 9!

 

                The attacks are suitably gruesome and the first third of the book is riddled with envenomated and chewed up humans. The middle section slows down a bit so we can get some back story on our heroes and the other characters involved in the admittedly paper-thin plot. Mark and Web form a good friendship and soon become a good buddy team. Women? Not much to see here, folks. Mark is seeing his secretary but not seriously and he has an ex-wife. That’s pretty much the only estrogen in the book.

 

                Still, reading this one is a hoot. Lalley, whoever he might be, is no Shakespeare and the text is filled with monstrous mistakes: misspellings, missing words, improper or missing punctuation. It only adds to the charm. (I’m sure Bee-Lines porn books were similarly error-ridden.) Funny enough, Mark West’s ex-wife is a proofreader!! I commented to my own wife that the ex-Mrs. West should have worked on this book!

 

                Unlike McNaughton’s Satan’s Love Child published by Carlyle in 1977, it appears that Lalley wasn’t asked to sex-up the narrative. It is quite chaste, in fact, unless you count the town’s name, which is Beaverton. But we won’t count that, OK? This book, warts and all, is an extremely fun read and it blows the shit out of Peter Tremain’s tepid Ants (Sphere, 1979).

The Woodlice By G.P. Nedloh

 

The Woodlice
By G.P. Nedloh
2025 Self-published
Paperback, 131 pages

 

 

                When I was a kid, I called them Pill Bugs (I still do). I’d also heard Roly-Polies and Sow Bugs. The author of this book introduced me to Chuggy-Pigs. There are over two hundred nicknames for this innocuous isopod, but a woodlouse by any other name is still a woodlouse. Author Graham P. Nedloh is a massive fan of Guy N. Smith and even thanks GNS for the inspiration in the book. Every word in this novella is a tribute to Smith and I found it to be a blast!

 

                The discovery of a deceased cow covered with woodlice gets Jack Fuller, a gamekeeper in the wonderfully named town of Bramblehurst, and the vacationing Dr. Sarah Brapples (another great name!) on the case. The woodlice, normally herbivores, seem to be eating the flesh of the carcass and are bigger than normal. When a couple of teens are found dead in the same manner, it is clear that there is a real problem in Bramblehurst. And possibly beyond.

 

                Genetech was developing a hormone to enhance plant resilience, but it seems that it affected other species as well. Like woodlice. So, we have the culprit but just how do you stop something like this? That is Jack and Sarah’s problem to solve. Meanwhile, characters are introduced and eaten, just how GNS would have done. Really, Nedloh checks all of the boxes, and I couldn’t be happier. Inappropriate sex scene? Check! Potential romance between two people who didn’t hit it off at first? Check! Best of all, mutated nature getting the taste of human flesh in all of its gory glory? Check, check, check! This is a valentine to fans of Smith’s work. You and me.

 

                Nedloh isn’t just aping the Great Scribbler, however. There are plenty of new ideas, my favorite of which is a woodlouse attack on a couple who had just started to peak on an acid trip. A ten-year-old torturing a bird gets a lovely and well-deserved comeuppance that had be jumping for joy. This being his first book, I would say that Nedloh is off to an auspicious start. Hopefully, he will keep at it and bless us with another tome inspired by my favorite author. And I enjoy the word “chitinous”.

 

                No art credit for the cover. It doesn’t LOOK like A.I. and I hope it’s not because I will not support any book with an A.I. cover.

Infested By C.M. Forest

 

Infested
By C.M. Forest
2022 Eerie River Publishing
Paperback, 261 pages

 

    
            A new one that caught my eye. It looked like a bugs on the rampage type of thing, but it really isn’t that at all. It is much, much more for better or worse. I’m on the side of better.

            Olivia wakes up in her fancy, new high-rise apartment alone in a pool of her own puke and with the mother of all hangovers. Her husband is gone, the power is off and there’s a massive storm raging outside. Even worse, her neighbors are all either maimed and dying or violent lunatics trying to beat her to death. The men in the building have been taken over by parasites that look like giant earwigs and all they want to do is kill. Olivia is in deep shit.

 

               The first few chapters of this had me nervous that I was in for another Gerald’s Game, Stephen King’s shit-tastic bore fest, but as Olivia ventured out into the ruckus that was taking place in her building, it definitely eased my worries. Claustrophobic, yes but boring, no. Her search for her husband puts her in harm’s way and she has to mature into a self-reliant hero in short time, a task she isn’t sure she is up to. As the mystery unravels, she learns that there is a hell of a lot more going on in the high-rise than any of us could have imagined.

            This is a very nicely structured story, revealing just enough throughout the 54 short chapters to keep you reading and trying to figure out the big story along with Olivia. It does slog in some spots, but there is a lot to uncover and there’s always enough gore and violence, as well as stalking bug-zombies right around the corner to keep pushing you on. Betrayal, conspiracy theories and an ancient cult all work their way into the mix. The overall concept slides into science-fiction territory by the time we all know what’s going on, but it is a satisfying narrative in spite of (because of?) that. Hey, I’m a horror geek, not a sci-fi nerd. But make no mistake. This is a horror novel.

            This is Forest’s first novel and I’d say that he’s off to an auspicious start. This is an intriguing, well-told, exciting page-turner that more than delivers the goods; not as an animals-attack book, like I’d first expected, but as a tale of survival against interminable odds. Olivia is a believable character; she is very well written despite Forest’s gender! Give this one a read and wait with me for Forest’s next novel. He’s one to keep an eye on.

Bugged! By Donald F. Glut

 

Bugged!
By Donald F. Glut
1974 Manor Books
Paperback, 192 pages

 

                To me, Don Glut has always been a true Renaissance Man. Filmmaker, actor, screenwriter, director, musician, and dinosaur expert. It is his comic book writing that first made his name familiar in my life. He wrote for Warren’s seminal horror mags in the early Seventies (Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella) as well and countless stories for Gold Key, including creating Dr. Spektor and Tragg, two familiar titles in my house when I was growing up. I was excited to finally catch up with this pulpy horror novel from back in the day, written concurrently with much of his comic work that I’m most familiar with.

 

                Members of a college fraternity show up for their 20-year reunion. The meeting place is one member’s home, deep in the swamp. What could possibly go wrong? Well, first off, one by one, the members get devoured by various insects. Could the member they called “Bugs” be behind the nefarious deed? And if so, just how is he accomplishing this sordid feat?

 

                Glut’s comic book sensibility is on full display here and it works well, pushing along the quick pace of the book. The characters aren’t deep and Glut sets ‘em up and knocks ‘em down. You have a mad scientist, his hulking henchman and plenty of victims that deserve their fate. The short novel plays like an old mystery more than anything; it would have fit well into Popular Library’s Frankenstein Horror Series. But never fear… Glut ladles on huge dollops of gore to keep things from reading too antiquated.

 

                Bugged! Is back in print now in both paperback and as an audiobook. It’s a fun way to spend some time relaxing with an old fashioned, good ol’ pulp horror book. It will fit nicely in between the Glut-penned Star Wars novelizations on your bookshelf. Yes- he is a true Renaissance Man.

 

Manor actually gives the cover illustration a credit. It is by Robert Owens. Thank you, Manor.