Guy N. Smith – The Camp

Guy N. Smith – The Camp (Sphere, 1989)

Les Edwards

Hi De Hi! meets James Herbert’s The Fog as blissfully unsuspecting holiday campers are used as guinea pigs for the new C551 drug and take to butchering one another in their chalets.

“A bit far fetched, even by GNS standards. A holiday camp becomes the site of bizarre mind control experiments”  concludes Vault’s tame GNS authority, funkdooby.

William Hope Hodgson – The Boats Of The Glen Carrig

William Hope Hodgson – The Boats Of The Glen Carrig (Sphere, 1982)

Les Edwards

Hodgson’s first novel (1907), a Sc-Fi Horror hybrid, finds  Mariners adrift on the Sargasso sea in peril from murderous, stumpy armed and tentacled ‘Weed Devils’.

Guy N. Smith – The Ghoul

Guy N. Smith – The Ghoul (Sphere, 1976)

Les Edwards

Blurb

Two cars roar away into the darkness from the noisy brilliance of a party, on a race to Land’s End. But a few hours later inpenetrable fog brings them to a halt on a deserted moorrland road, and brings the occupants to the brink of an unspeakable fate. For nearby is a house of horror and death, a house which harbours a terrible creature which feeds on human flesh …. the ghoul.

Graham Masterton – Charnel House

Graham Masterton – Charnel House (Sphere, 1979)

Les Edwards

Review by Nightreader:

Set in San Francisco the story opens with retired engineer Seymour Wallis visiting the Sanitation Department to report that his house is breathing. He thinks he’s got an animal trapped in the walls. John Hyatt (narrator and hero of the piece) is sceptical but agrees to make a house call anyway.

Cue creepy house with it’s coyote doorknocker, framed and dusty pictures and a bronze carving of bear with the face of a sleeping woman.

As one taxi driver says: “Weird with a capital ‘wuh’ “.

The story begins to unfold gradually through various manifestations – possession and grisly death (the guy really shouldn’t have stuck his head up a chimney in that house)…

After the obligatory “these things don’t happen” scene, the characters become involved – Dr. Jarvis, and Jane (who works in a New Age bookshop) who uncovers a Navahoe legend about the return of an Indian demon…

Thank goodness the gang decided to call in the old medicine man, George Thousand Names. “He was compassionate, and understanding, but he was also cynical and wise, and you knew that whatever he said was God’s honest truth.” A good guy to have on your side then.

Meanwhile more death and destruction ensue as the demon gains strength. Masterton seems to find the most inventive ways of slaughtering people.

But amid all the supernatural horror and gruesome violent death there is a lot of humour. When John goes to visit George Thousand Names at his hotel: “He was wearing a red satin bathrobe and slippers with beads sewn all over them. He looked as if he were starring in a cowboy movie financed by Liberace.” The wisecracking humour of the main characters makes them likeable, and by the end you are really rooting for them.

The final conflict is spectacular but quite far-fetched. But what else could it be? I’ve read so many books that get to the final few pages and you’re left thinking “is that it?”. The ending here is big, bold, cinematic, daft but satisfying.

You might have guessed I enjoyed this one. But if I’m really honest it was ‘The Manitou’ all over again basically. The same criticism can be levelled at the majority of Masterton’s horrors – he found a formula that worked so he carried on using it, and still is (the demon from ‘The Manitou’ returned again in 2005 in ‘Manitou Blood’). Having said that I’m still prepared to set aside my cynicism for an exciting, mostly undemanding but entertaining supernatural horror read.

Christopher Fowler – City Jitters

Christopher Fowler  – City Jitters (Sphere 1986)

City Jitters: Cover, Les Edwards

COUNCIL REPORT: Car Parks
Left Hand Drive
COUNCIL REPORT: Night Clubs
Perry in Seraglio
COUNCIL REPORT: Taxi cabs
Any Minute Now
COUNCIL REPORT: Video Arcades
Change for the Sky Master
COUNCIL REPORT: Burglaries
Tigertooth
COUNCIL REPORT: Strip Clubs
Vanishing Acts
COUNCIL REPORT: Slums
Her Finest Hour
COUNCIL REPORT: Hotels
The Cleansing
COUNCIL REPORT: Suburbs
What is wrong with this picture?
COUNCIL REPORT: Total City Breakdown
Loaded Blanks
Epilogue

From the intro:
“Welcome to the scariest place on earth.

A place of back alleys and strip joints, suburbs and slums. A place where the new fears live. The city.

The new fears are not of dungeons and vampires. They are fears of modern living. These days we are more scared of muggers than of monsters.

Within these pages you’ll find no werewolves or zombies, but ordinary events which take unpleasant and surprising turns.

Ten linked together tales of modern malevolence which could happen to you, today. Tales set in the most commonplace, most disturbing place of all.

There is nowhere more jittery than the city!”

Thanks to Nightreader for providing the cover scan and contents list.