Thompson & Daly - The Number To Call Is ....

[dem bones]

Raymond Thompson & Treve Daly - The Number To Call Is .... (Corgi, 1980: Originally Souvenir, 1979)

Blurb:

Torture, Rape and Slaughter are always on TV. But this time it's for real.

The Place: Silver Springs, Alabama, USA. Somewhere no one's ever heard of until ....

The Time: 9.00 p.m. On a Sunday evening in August 1978.

The Occasion: A marathon charity phone-in staged within the confines of a major TV studio - "If you want to help these wonderful kids, the number to call is ..."

The uninvited visitors: a gang of psychopathic terrorists with murderous resentments against society - and the largest captive audience in the history of the world.

One of those lucky dip books I'm sure we all pick up from time to time. Never heard of the novel or its authors, but the cover promises nastiness as does the blurb. When you discover that the telethon is in aid of kids suffering from muscular dystrophy and one of the four terrorists is a deranged black Viet vet with a hideously burnt face and an artificial arm and leg, the sickness potential alone inspires confidence that, yes, you've come to the right place even if the bastard does run to 319 pages. And it's worth sticking with.

Something I really appreciate is that it doesn't hang about. 'Frederic', the brainy Mr. Big of the operation, has precision-planned everything down to the last detail, so in less time than it takes to tell he and his three stooges - the aforementioned horror, Smithy, flanked by rad-fem bisexual Willow and clean-cut Sonny - have complete control of the KYBC studio and the audience have been crammed into two booby-trapped basement rooms, all but for a bunch of ladies (locked in an industrial freezer) and the stars of the show:

• Manny Prole: Jewish Comedian whose once glittering career is now desperately in need of resuscitation. Hosting the Telethon is his big comeback opportunity!
  
• Morgan "The gentile Barbara Streisand" Stevens: Has taken music biz by storm with a couple of hit singles and a top ten album. Getting her to play a live set is a huge coupe for KYBC.
  
• Gloria de Petrie: Sixty year old bombshell of the Mae West school. Large globes, quite possibly surgically enhanced.
  
• Micheal: Gloria's bisexual sparring partner.
  
• Simon and Jackie: The two chipper kids in the wheelchairs.
  
• David Jones: The marathon's self-serving producer.
  

Nothing in his career has prepared 'hick', honest to goodness sheriff Ben Bayles for an incident of this nature and, with the state governor and even the President desperate to distance themselves from the situation to ensure no blame is attached to them when the gory massacre kicks off, he's marooned hopelessly out of his depth. Worse, he's been saddled with glory-seeking Monkman of the FBI who favours some major SWAT team action versus the wannabe Beider Meinhof gang and sod the hostages. Bayles' only hope is thirty-something psychologist Dr. Reynolds, a psychological profiler and veteran of several hostage crisis', some of which even ended peacefully! But she's never had to deal with anyone quite as pathologically twisted as 'Frederic' and his gung-ho martyrs before. Also, plastic-faced Smithy reckons he owes it to himself to give Morgan one up her white bottom on live TV - which, quite apart from being ungallant, complicates the negotiations something rotten. And 'Frederic' decides to up the ante by making little Jackie a nice hot - scalding - cup of tea .....

Still, should anyone survive, they can console themselves with the thought that 'crazy' KYBC have never known ratings like this before!