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.

Plasmid By Jo Gannon and Robert Knight

Plasmid
By Jo Gannon and Robert Knight
1980 Star
Paperback, 191 pages
                                             

                                                

    First, let’s get it straight. This was originally written as a screenplay by Jo Gannon. Evidently, it didn’t get picked up for a movie, and this book was written by Robert Knight based on Gannon’s screenplay. Surely the fun wordplay here and there are Knight’s, but the story is a good one and knowing it was written for the screen, it really makes me wish it had been made into a film! Sources say that Robert Knight is a pseudonym for Sci-Fi writer Christopher Evans, who wrote other tie-ins, so I’m inclined to believe it.

    Trouble is a’brewin’ at the Fairfield Institute of Genetic Research in Oakhaven, somewhere in England. It seems a patient has killed a couple of doctors and escaped. The patient has chalk white skin and a taste for killing. This brings a lot of unwanted attention to the Institute, especially from Paula Scott, a rabid radio reporter who smells a cover-up. There’s a lot of shit going down and the formula that turned the escaped killer into a mutant is being protected by its shady creator. Meanwhile, everyone that the mutant infects goes plasmid as well. This sets up some fun gore sequences.

    It's great to have the main protagonist be a woman and Paula is no pushover at all. She is a strong ass-kicker who is braver and smarter than those she is up against. Even as a romance blooms between Paula and her boss, she is still a woman of her own means. What is it about crisis in 80s horror books that makes people need to fuck? Well, we get one fairly tasteful sex scene here but otherwise, it’s all business. Paula’s character is the most fully explored, best written in the book, a welcome change from the usual 80s misogyny.

    The last third of the book has the military bumbling their way to the rescue. Their cure might be worse than the plasmid mutants living in the sewer. They plan on pumping poison gas into those sewers, figuring everyone in the city will hear the Prime Minister’s speech telling them to seal up all cracks and holes. I tell you; the doctors and military and government are idiots. That seems to be the main thing Gannon’s script meant to say. Paula gets to tell off the PM nicely, too.

    This is a good, fast-moving and satisfying book, mostly a thriller with mutants. I enjoyed casting it and setting up the camera angles and making my own Plasmid movie. Like most Star books, this one has a cool cover, too.

Carnosaur By Harry Adam Knight

 

Carnosaur
By Harry Adam Knight
2022 Valancourt
Paperback, 205 pages

 

    John Brosnan was a prolific Science Fiction, comic book (2000 AD), and movie book writer, but when he strapped on the name “Harry Adam Knight” or “Simon Ian Childer” (often co-writing with Leroy Kettle), he let the entrails fly and the world became a better place. The “HAK” and “SIC” (Brosnan was very aware of the words that his pseudonyms were almost spelling) are all great fun and worth the gore-hound’s time.

 

    Carnosaur was one that I had been yearning for for quite some time but prices on old copies of the 1984 Star paperback and the movie tie-in edition from Tor in 1993 have gotten out of hand. Enter Valancourt Books, my Knight in shining armor! Their new release (with a snazzy cover by Lynne Hansen and an introduction by Will Errickson of the indispensable Too Much Horror Fiction blog) made my 2022 suck a lot less.

     

    Were those gory murders committed by a Siberian Tiger that had escaped from a private zoo? Rich zoo owner Sir Penward says yes and has his tiger put down. But one witness, a kid, says something else, setting reporter David Pascal off in pursuit of the truth. To cut to the chase, he finds it. Penward has been extracting DNA from dinosaur fossils and creating his own living dinosaurs. Before you can say “Holy Jurassic Park!,” you need to know that this mofo came out six years before Michael Crichton’s best-seller.

 

    Brosnan (writing alone as Knight this time) gets a lot of action going with an exciting pack of dinosaurs. Featured most prominently are Deinonychus, Tarbosaurus, Megalosaurus, and Plesiosaurus, but there are others, as well as big cats and bulls and other things that can fuck you up. Goddamn, this is a lot of fun. If the dinosaur doesn’t get you, the panther will. Gore, sex, cartoonish adversaries, and dinosaurs. It really doesn’t get much better than this.

 

    If you’ve only seen Roger Corman’s production of the film adaptation, you haven’t enjoyed this story. While I enjoy the film (and its sequels), it just doesn’t have the scope of the book. Buy this, read it, and thank me later. No, thank Valancourt Books for the wonderful work they’ve been doing bringing these kinds of books back from the dead.

 

Update: Since writing this review in 2022, I have obtained the original Star Books edition and the movie tie-in from Tor in 1993. Enjoy these covers!

                       

                                           Star Books 1984                                          Tor movie tie-in 1993

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