David Garner – This Fell Sergeant

Lucinda Cowell

David Garner – This Fell Sergeant (NEL 1974)

Blurb:

Gordon Summers ran a very respectable security form – or so it seemed. In reality he was the toughest hood in London. Intelligent, capable and highly sexed he manipulated people as he pleased – his price for betrayal was death. And Summers liked to kill. But his organization had one weak link, his slow-witted brother Maurice. And because Maurice made one small, very stupid mistake, Summers was able to do all the killing he liked – only this time it was in order to save his own skin.

Ok, so This Fell Sergeant isn’t strictly horror fiction either, but it’s been the cause of much excitement since friend H. P. Saucecraft first introduced it to on the Vault forum, and that due in no small part to Lucinda Cowell’s striking (not to mention a little daring!) artwork. We like Lucinda’s stuff!

Thanks to H. P. Saucecraft for posting the cover and Franklin ‘Master of the Macabre’ Marsh for saving me the job of transcribing the blurb!

see also the This Fell Sergeant thread on the Vault Forum. Now includes Vault roving reporter Franklin Marsh’s exclusive interview with Lucinda Cowell!

Michael Slade – Ripper

Michael Slade – Ripper (New English Library, 1995)

Chris Moore

Blurb:

JACK THE RIPPER IS DEAD, RIGHT? DON’T BET YOUR LIFE ON IT!
Who would slash the body to shreds, then rip the face off America’s foremost feminist – and hang her out to die?
Who would take a pair of twin hookers on a terror trip that made death seem innocent and sweet?
Who would turn a secluded island gathering of bright and beautiful people into a carnival of carnage?
What grim and grisly figure stood, dripping knife in hand, at the end of the most horrifying trail of death and deception Detectives Robert DeClercq and Zinc Chandler ever followed/

A lot of people were dying to find out …

Alfred Hitchcock – The Late Unlamented

Alfred Hitchcock [Peter Haining] (ed.) – The Late Unlamented (NEL Four Square 1967)

Jonathan Craig – The Late Unlamented
Arthur Porges – The Telltale Eye
Carroll Mayers – Ghost Of A Chance
Leo R. Ellis – The Madness Machine
C.B. Gilford – A Witch For The Burning
Donald Honig – Haunted Hall
Richard Levinson & William Link – The End Of An Era
Carroll Mayers – Until Death Do Us Part
August Derleth – The China Cottage
Wenzell Brown – Death By Misadventure
Lawrence Block – When this Man Dies
Richard Hardwick – Sheriff Peavy’s Cosa Nostra Caper

‘This collection of stories has been selected by Peter Haining from issues of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine published during the last five years in the USA…’

Thanks to nightreader for providing the scan and contents.

Alfred Hitchcock – Haunted Houseful

Alfred Hitchcock [Robert Arthur] (ed.) – Haunted Houseful (Four Square, 1965)

Josh Kirby

I’ve not seen a copy, but believe the contents to be the same as the Random House original from 1961, subtitled ‘Nine “COOL” stories about Haunted Houses and Ghosts for Boys and Girls’, which comprise.

Manly Wade Wellman – Let’s Haunt A House
Constance Savery – The Wastwych Secret
Walter R. Brooks – Jimmy Takes Vanishing Lessons
Jack Bechdolt – The Mystery Of Rabbit Run
Elizabeth Coatsworth – The Forgotten Island
John Kendrick Bangs – The Water Ghost Of Harrowby Hall
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Red-Headed League
Mark Twain – The Treasure In The Cave
Donald & Louise Peattie – The Mystery In Four-And-A-Half Street

Would appreciate if someone could confirm or deny! It certainly doesn’t look heavy on horror content, does it?

Robert Bloch – The Scarf

Robert Bloch – The Scarf (Nel, 1972: originally Dial, USA, 1947)

Robert Bloch - The Scarf

Fame – of sorts – came early to Dan Morley.

So did temptation.

So did the easy money and the glittering women who thrust it on him, begging him to accept.

And so did murder.

All he needed was a soft maroon scarf, looped lightly around both wrists: and it was not just one victim or even two ….

Thanks to Justin Marriott of Paperback Fanatic for the cover scan.