John Blackburn - Devil Daddy

[dem bones]

John Blackburn - Devil Daddy (Jonathan Cape, 1972)

Blurb (from the Sidgwick & Jackson paperback edition, 1974)

Why should a sexually assaulted teenager become an elderly woman in a matter of hours? Why was a naked corpse fed to starving pigs? Who are the Seven Whistlers?

Only Medieval legend and the occult can provide the true solution, and forestall an epidemic that could be as devastating as the Black Death.

Prof. Herbert Henson, a serious student of the occult and co-editor of the well-regarded Psychic Observer, secures an interview with the reclusive John Batterday by posing as an enthusiastic art collector. Batterday is an illustrator of children's books whose own taste is for the morbid paintings of Bosch, Callot, Durer and others of the death, hellfire and evil school whose spartan home is decorated with excellent copies of their ghastliest creations. "This is the kind of work Mr. Batterday treasures', Henson explains to his friend and colleague Lady Tania Levin, "and I believe I know why." Lady Tania, for her part, knows that Henson is in for a shock when he first sets eyes on Batterday for the man is the dead spit - the very deceased phlegm, as it were - of her husband, Sir Marcus, an extraordinary man who survived Belsen-Bergen to become one of the world's leading bacteriologist, winning a Nobel prize for his services to medicine along the way.

Henson's interest in Batterday - quite the gloomiest man he's ever encountered - is in his seeming immortality. Over the past three years he has been the sole survivor of three tragedies which, by rights, should have put paid to him along with everyone else. When Lady Tania blurts out the real reason for Henson's visit, Batterday is not best pleased, advises that he has nothing to contribute to his magazine and suggests the Prof. should leave it at that.

As Batterday is showing his guest's out, he is shot at from a passing car. The bullet hits home but he passes it off as a "flesh wound" and refuses all offers of medical assistance, preferring to attend his own wounds. He implores Henson and Lady Levin not to inform the police of the incident. The sniper, he claims, is working on behalf of art dealers to whom he owes a substantial sum over a fraudulent masterpiece, so there was never any intention to kill him. The reader is under the impression that he's not being entirely straight, but then we've had the benefit of the prologue.

While his wife's out gallivanting with Herson and this mumbo jumbo ideas, Sir Marcus is enduring a torrid time of it. Sixteen year old trainee librarian Elsie Kerr has been admitted to casualty in a terrible state. After a night at the cinema she was picked up by person or - more likely - persons unknown, raped, beaten, branded, flogged and dumped unconscious in a Fulham gutter. It looks like the work of some particularly sadistic Satanic cult. As Sir Marcus looks over the poor girl, she awakes from her drugged sleep, stares straight at him and screams: "It's him ... he did it to me .... Daddy ..... Daddy ..... Devil Daddy ...."

When Sir Marcus confides in his wife, Lady Tania relates the afternoon's events at his "doppelganger"'s place and, of course, if Elsie Kerr really 'recognised' her husband as her tormentor, chances are that his double was in some way responsible. They drive over to Battersday's to find the place trashed, the paintings mutilated and DI Frankie Moxton and a constable investigating the break-in. There's no sign of the illustrator.

Meanwhile, Elsie Kerr's condition has taken an uncanny turn for the worse. Sixteen years of age but she has the body of a woman in her sixties ..... seventies .... eighties .....

To be continued (bleedin' brilliant so far)......

[dem bones]

...... nineties ..... and .... out.

I hope Captain the honourary Arthur Seaton-Osterbury reappears in the second half of the book as he's the best rotten old scoundrel I've encountered in many a moon. His wife, Molly, only married him because, being a "snobbish harridan", she fancied a double-barreled piece of the aristocracy and he only married her on account of daddy's obscene wealth. Understandably, when, shortly after the Captain had walked his blushing bride down the aisle, it transpired that he was an undischarged bankrupt, his father and brother had disowned him, he'd been expelled from Eton for gross indecency and drummed out of the army for being drunk on parade, that old school tie didn't count for so much and the embittered Molly has since devoted her time to making his life a misery. What good a filthy rich wife when the parsimonious old bat bawls him out for spending the little pocket money she allows him in The Rose & Crown and nags him narrow for neglecting the livestock? If only his father would die in a blazing car crash! If only something equally fatal would befall Molly! Then he'd be rich and get himself a mini-skirted dolly bird!

Imagine his joy when, trudging off to feed the pigs he finds the porkers are already happily feasting away on ...... God! please let it be his wife!

No such luck. The police think it's probably Battersday. Lady Tania is just off to identify what's left of the corpse as I write.

TBC

[dem bones]

I gave up taking notes for much of the second half of the book because I was enjoying the ride so much and hopefully, that sincere recommendation will make up in some small way for the impenetrable excuse for a summing up that follows.

Nervous moments as Sir Marcus speculates that the dead Batterday may have originated from outer space. Establishing his place of origin isn't exactly the top priority just now as it seems the disease that transformed pretty young Elsie Kerr into a haggard crone (an extreme strain of "rampant progeria") is highly contagious - soon the world could be in the grip of an epidemic more lethal than the Black Death! How can it be stopped? One of Sir Marcus's colleagues has a state of the art computer (i.e., it's the size of the Sydney Opera House and has loads of lights flashing on and off), so they programme it to absorb all the information on Earth, but it's as hopeless as Windows ME, coming on all smarmy and baffling everyone with it's cryptic data. It has a very long-winded way of informing them what they need to know - Batterday was the Wandering Jew! - and by the time Sir Marcus catches on, his nosey parker of a wife is just about to pay a visit on Prof. Henson's friend at The Psychic Observer, that nice Canon Hamilton ...

Throughout the novel, Blackburn gradually reveals more about the defrocked Canon, Prof. Henson and their Satanist cronies who fed Batterday to the pigs, and Dennis Wheatley's lobster-breath fatso's notwithstanding, it has to be said that they are unquestionably the most incompetent bunch of diabolists I have EVER encountered in a horror novel, even if they do invent the snuff movie. Not only have they unleashed rampant progeria on the planet, but Batterday - the Typhoid Mary of the piece - made sure he infected them even as they were preparing to eat bits of him at a Black Mass! Beyond any hope of surviving more than a few hours, all that's left for them is to impress Lucifer by taking a speedboat along the Thames and spreading the disease amongst a bunch of schoolkids out celebrating Guy Fawkes night.

And there was me thinking this one wasn't as busy as Children Of The Night!

[jkdunham]

Ah, so it's basically just another rehash of the old 'Speedboating Satanists unleash rampant progeria/Supercomputer reveals suspected dead alien to be Wandering Jew' plot?

When will these writer-types come up with something original?

If I had a million pounds for every 'Speedboating Satanists unleash rampant progeria/Supercomputer reveals suspected dead alien to be Wandering Jew' book I've read, I'd be a millionaire.

Once I'd read this one.

[dem bones]

Jul 3, 2008 15:32:17 GMT @jkdunham said:

Ah, so it's basically just another rehash of the old 'Speedboating Satanists unleash rampant progeria/Supercomputer reveals suspected dead alien to be Wandering Jew' plot?

When will these writer-types come up with something original?

Ah, but don't forget, this one has a snuff movie scene. You name me another 'Speedboating Satanists unleash rampant progeria/Supercomputer reveals suspected dead alien to be Wandering Jew' novel where the diabolists film a torture murder/ cannibal feast at a Black Mass. Without that, I admit, it would be far too conventional to make much of an impression.