Justin Marriott (ed.) Paperback Fanatic # 21

Justin Marriott (ed.) Paperback Fanatic # 21 (January 2012)

Contents:

Fanatical Thoughts

Fanatical Mail: letters from Bam!!!, Colin Clyne, Andreas Decker, Holger Hasse, Mark Savage, Mike Chivers, Steve Lines, Stephen Sennitt, Stuart Williams, Gary Dobbs, Andy Boot, Kev Demant, Nigel Taylor

Justiin Marriott – Bounding From the Thirties! The Corinth regency reprints of The Phantom Detective and Dr Death, plus Corinth Checklist.

Rob Matthews – Gold Medal’s Golden Age. Part 1 of a definitive A-Z

Andreas Decker – 50 years of Rhodan- a celebration of pulp astronaut Perry Rhodan’s 50th birthday

Andrew Myers – TNT “the overlooked and demented men’s adventure series”

James Doig – Frank Bernier: A Forgotten Australian Paperback Artist.

Abraham Merritt cover gallery- examples from around the world

Paperback Dungeon: Johnny Mains on John Burke (1922-1911)
Review of Hip Pocket Sleaze
Graham Andrews – Fit To Be Tied (new column devoted to film novelisations)
John Kenney – Glorious Trash (regular column)

For further details, orders, etc, visit Fanatic HQ – and do it soon!

David Holman & Larry Pryce – Fleshbait

David Holman & Larry Pryce – Fleshbait (NEL, 1979)

Review by Severance

Just finished this, and if anyone hasn’t yet read this, or is thinking of doing so soon – don’t bother, it’s lousy, uninspired, one-dimensional and is several hours of reading time that I’d like back!!

For god’s sake the bloody fish aren’t even interested in devouring humanity, which would have given us some decent death scenes at least, all they do is drown – with the authors impying that with their new-found intelligence the fish just want to get their own back!

How on earth did this take two people to write?

Am I being too hard on this? Did anyone else enjoy it??

It was the first in a 4 book animal rampage read I’m embarking on, the others being Linaker’s Scorpion: Second Generation, Sharman’s The Cats and Herbert’s Lair – I sincerely hope its the lowpoint!!!!!

Plus there’s no sex, no descriptions of female breasts – the authors surely had no clue of what’s expected!! :)

Brian Ball – Lessons For The Damned

Brian Ball – Lessons For The Damned (Nel, 1971)

I thoroughly enjoyed Ball’s The Venomous Sepent a few months back, so I’d been looking forward to the day when Lesson for the Damned worked its way to the top of the ‘to be read’ pile – and now that it has, thankfully it in no way disappointed.

Penelope (Penny) Carstairs is an ordinary junior school teacher in the village of Hoggins in the Peak District, except for the fact that she’s a nymphomaniac and bored. She’s screwing two men at the moment, Claude Witherington, the married headmaster of her school, who knows exactly what to do to please her in their pre-school sessions (though the old cleaner is getting suspicious). Bruce Tyler the farmer’s son, on the other hand doesn’t have much of a clue, but is strong, athletic and crazy about climbing rocks, cliffs, even buildings in the village. In one scene he climbs up to her bedroom – “Penny! The bloody catch is fastened! Let me in! Come on! I’m holding on by a fingernail and my right bollock!”

Her two very boring domesticated housewife friends Jean and Anne-Marie (whose particularly ugly baby gets called Sweetie the whole time) persuade Penny to go a night school class run by Alcybiades Barton and learns of a supposed witch buried up alive against the church wall two hundred years ago.

That’s all the plot I’m going to give, as I’d hate to ruin it for those of you yet to read this wonderful slice of 70s kitsch.

The only thing that lets it down slightly is a “To the Devil a Daughter”-type weak ending, but apart from that it’s spot-on. Curt didn’t think much of it at “Groovy Age of Horror”, but then he is a yank  :)  I reckon he missed a lot of the Britishness about the characters, little Jimmy West dropping his pencil and trying to see her knickers in class, the school fete and assemblies, singing rugby songs in the pub on a Friday night – this gets a solid 7.5 from me, just below “Venomous Sepent” and “Tanith” but above “Village of Blood.”

Review by Severance

See also Vault’s Brian Ball thread