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Post by nightreader on Nov 2, 2007 18:23:25 GMT
Who Sups With The Devil?- P. McCartney (NEL 1975) Really enjoyed this one, literally from start to finish. It’s got a great opening scene, with Sister Mary Clare hearing a strange noise in the dark. On investigating she sees a figure which she initially thinks is another nun, but… “…then it turned around to face the light… With a scream that shattered the silence and sent echoes ringing throughout the old castle, she sank unconscious to the floor and the crucifix and the torch clinked and clattered across the stone flags, for the face that looked out from beneath the black habit was the face of death. Wild staring lidless eyes in a mask of decay.” The story takes place in and around Pwll Castle in Wales, now home to a community of nuns who also run a boarding school for girls. Strange things have been seen and heard in the castle but it isn’t until the murder of one of the nuns that the Police are called in. Detective Inspector Bob March and his assistant Sergeant John Fitzgerald of Scotland Yard don’t like being in the wilds of Wales and DI Bob doesn’t have much time for the supernatural either. It isn’t long before there is evidence of a Black Mass being held in the crypt of the castle, another body turns up, the mysterious cowled figure makes regular appearances and a strange black dog is seen around the castle walls. There are also secret tunnels and a dodgy Doctor with an exotic and beautiful wife. Very enjoyable read with a good strong ending (which I won’t spoil). Anyone know anything about the writer? It can’t be Paul McBeatle can it? |
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Post by killercrab on Apr 29, 2009 3:48:17 GMT
I'm reading this at the moment and Nightreader is accurate in his assessment. It took a couple of chapters for me to get into the rhythm - that's par for the course though for most 1970's NELs I've read. The style suggests an older writer - words like *hop* for dance suggest the 1950's - not current slang. Disco refered to as discotheque etc. It's certainly worked itself into a pleasurable read.
A
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Post by Steve on Aug 13, 2009 23:13:29 GMT
Anyone know anything about the writer? The style suggests an older writer... Bought a copy of this recently and, well, have a look for yourself... Not sure how far this goes, if it all, to solving the mystery surrounding the author's identity. Can we safely assume from this that P. McCartney was indeed P. McCartney - whoever P. McCartney is/was? My only thought from looking at the handwriting is to echo Ade's feeling that it was an older writer. Just something about the writing. Doesn't come across as, you know, a 'young and thrusting' author. Don't know though, I'm not a graphologist. What does anyone else reckon? Could P. McCartney be a woman perhaps? Might explain the use of an initial when putting ones name to a book in what, I imagine, was still seen at that time as being a bit of a man's game? And who's Mary? (not Sister Mary Clare surely!) Mary, if you should happen to see this, I'd love to know the story of how you came to get this signed. |
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njhorror
New Face In Hell
Man of Il Mangia
Posts: 7
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Post by njhorror on Aug 22, 2009 19:46:23 GMT
I just ordered this.
Looks good!
and just received it today.
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Post by andydecker on May 27, 2023 10:46:11 GMT
Paul McCartney - Who Sups with the Devil? (NEL, 1975, 144 pages)  I remember this as not really to be up to its potential, too tame and some clumsy writing too. Which was quite a shame because all the ingredients were there. The mystery about the writer is still not solved. I guess, it was a pseudonym cooked up in a pub lunch by Laurence James and friends who fell laughing from the counter because of the joke. |
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Post by dem bones on Jun 16, 2023 10:04:46 GMT
"The Inspector hadn't wanted the case. It wasn't his cup of tea at all. He had mixed with all sorts of people in his work from the highest in the land to the scum of the earth, and until now, had fondly imagined that no type, rank or station could possibly shake his self confidence. But this was different, and the thought annoyed him. He was about to be put down in the midst of a girls' school run by nuns! Old maids in uniform who had to be queer, he figured, ever to have become what they were."
Scotland Yard's DI Bob March and Sergeant John Fitzgerald travel to Wales to investigate a brutal murder at Pwll Castle. The former, an eccentric recluse named Abraham Llewellyn, sold the property to the Nuns at a ridiculously low price. The Sisters have since opened the South Wing as a board school for the daughters of rich parents. Llewellyn, the last of a diabolical line, has since died in an asylum.
Mother Superior, Sister Veronica Mary, insists that her school's good name must not be tarnished, but it is a little late for that. ; Morgan, the most lurid reporter on the Daily Clarion, is already on the case with an exhumation of the Maria Monk falsehood and unsubstantiated claims of "Devil Worship at Murder Castle." Sister Veronica Mary admits to the detectives that; "Things started to happen as soon as we moved in. Voices whispering in the great hall. Footsteps echoing through empty corridors. The breathing of a man in deadly panic. You could sense the terror that filled the soul of the poor wretch, whoever he was."
They were to get so much worse. First, Sister Mary Clare, hugely popular with her colleagues, had to be "sent away" following an encounter with a rotting thing in a habit; a local girl, Joyce Carson, eighteen, has since reported to have seen a skull-faced man fleeing her home in the early hours. And now this horrific and cowardly attack on Sister Anne, knifed with such violence as to impale her to the mattress!
Who or what could have done this monstrous thing? Can it be that the nuns and their pupils share the castle with a coven of phantom Devil-Worshippers?
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Post by Knygathin on Jun 17, 2023 5:17:57 GMT
Not sure how far this goes, if it all, to solving the mystery surrounding the author's identity. Can we safely assume from this that P. McCartney was indeed P. McCartney - whoever P. McCartney is/was? Doesn't the signature say Paul McCartney? Gods knows, he may have had enough spare time for it. |
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Post by dem bones on Jun 18, 2023 15:57:27 GMT
I remember this as not really to be up to its potential, too tame and some clumsy writing too. Which was quite a shame because all the ingredients were there. Professor Williams, a scholar of ancient religions, devil-worship and "supernatural" phenomena, has studied the history of the Llewellyn's from the Middle Ages and it is his considered verdict that the world was no worse for the passing of this "tyrannical, cruel, oppressive" family. He mentions an episode from three centuries ago as of possible relevance to the ongoing investigation. The head of the family was burnt at the stake for abducting babies and sacrificing them to Satan. The body count escalates. There are further reported sightings of the "shapeless nun" with the leprous face and/ or what appears to be a phantom black Hellhound. Suspicion falls on the nuns' maid, Anna Karen (!), an East German refugee, who has gone AWOL from the castle. She's not an easy woman to miss. "Built on the lines of a Welsh Rugby full-back, with shoulders Mr Universe might have envied and a face obviously, but not skilfully, carved from pure granite, she would not have looked out of place as one of the Hitler Super Youths who guarded the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. But, dressed as a maid in a black frock and white apron, with ribboned plaits hanging to her ample bosoms, she looked like Victor Mature miscast as Alice in Wonderland." The Detectives believe they've found her when a corpse, horribly bloated and decomposed, is retrieved from the river, but the Mother Superior identifies it by the distinctive rosary. Some sicko has disinterred Sister Anna! The Scotland Yard men reopen her coffin to find poor dead Anna dead in her place! By now the London men suspect everyone they've come in contact with that isn't a (non-creepy) nun, not least Mr & Mrs Scott, the smarmy young village doctor and his New Guinean wife, Feyita. Then there's the sensationalist hack, Morgan, who'll do anything for a lurid story. And how about the too-pleasant-to-live old couple hosting them at the lodge? Then they learn of the slow-witted village blacksmith, believed incinerated in a fire that consumed his forge as he held a brand to the face of the village flirt who'd played him for a fool. What if he didn't die .... I think Who Sups With the Devil? one slimline NEL (140+ pages) might have benefitted for an extra 50 pages. I found the multi-layered mystery intriguing, and the horror set pieces accomplished, but McCartney leaves him/herself with too many strands to tie up in too little space. |
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