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Post by dem bones on Dec 6, 2007 6:34:39 GMT
Richard Davis (ed) - Tandem Horror 2 (Tandem, 1968) Introduction - Richard Davis
Angus James - Working for Miss Arethusa Robin Smyth - The Dooley Street Centre Forward J. Ramsey Campbell - Reply Guaranteed Rosemary Timperley - Ice in Their Laughter Julia Birley - Dead on His Feet Walter Harris - The Forgiver Simon Pilkington - The Inheritance Elizabeth Fancett - I’m Not Mad Yet D. E. Piper - From Our Special Correspondent J. Ramsey Campbell - The Stocking Richard Davis - The Lady by the Stream Rosemary Timperley - Voices in the Night Michel Parry - The Last BusGreat introduction from Davis outlining his intention to move away from the repetition of other contemporary horror anthologies in favour of new stories with a now feel. Helpful pen portraits of the contributors, only one of whom, Rosemary Timperley, was well known at the time. Includes: Robin Smyth - The Dooley Street Centre Forward: The local kids hone their football skills on the bombsite. One evening they're joined by Harry Todd, new to the area, a reluctant Boy's Brigade recruit with a pathological hatred for Mr. Fairweather from said establishment and, most of all, his own mother. Narrator Smiffy is about to get toughed up by his chums for shinning the leather straight over the warehouse roof but Harry saves his skin by supplying a new 'ball' .... Very reminiscent of Prison Break in Shock #3 and just as deliciously horrid. J. Ramsey Campbell - Reply Guaranteed: Brichester. Recovering in hospital, Viv answers a lonely hearts ad. The address given, she later learns, is that of a house on Mercy Hill, formerly the domicile of a "one man brothel" and possible rapist. By the end of his days, this fellow was confined to a wheelchair thanks to his multiple venereal diseases. Viv encounters his bandaged ghost and the farcical climax is equal parts scary and laugh-out-loud funny. Michel Parry - The Last Bus: Edward Crump, embittered square (he's the assistant manager of a grocers shop), packs a knife and boards the last bus from Bridgley. Tonight he will finally achieve international fame and avenge himself on rotten happy people into the bargain. As the journey through Essex begins he sizes up his fellow passengers - which to take out first? Little does he imagine that another bored, demoralised workforce are more up for carnage than he is. Elizabeth Fancett - I’m Not Mad Yet: Devlin is the only person to survive the nuclear holocaust. He's holed up in Dr. Reith's surgery with the skeletal remains of the GP. The telephone rings .... Walter Harris - The Forgiver: Don Jose del Fuego, sixty and mad, fancies a bit of mutilation-murder will get his old pulses racing. He selects a poor travelling priest as his victim, reasoning that a man of the cloth is duty-bound to forgive his killer so God won't have any grounds to punish him. Yeah, right. And the ending is straight out of The Monk! J. Ramsey Campbell - The Stocking: Tom. Not a man to engage in a a harmless, pass-the-time office flirtation, and certainly not one to follow through that creaky black door along the alley which has always frightened you. But Sheila isn't to know that .... to be continued ...
Thanks Des!
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Post by dem bones on Oct 12, 2017 18:18:50 GMT
Where was I?
Angus James - Working for Miss Arethusa: "How many replies do you think we'll get this time?". Miss Arethusa and her minion Miss Fletcher place an advertisement in the local newspaper. "Wanted. Intelligent young man to assist two elderly ladies in important family research. Must be strong and of willing disposition. University degree an advantage." Several applicants are rejected before they agree on the most suitable candidate, a pleasant chap named Robert. The job is straightforward. Robert will bury twelve trunks full of diaries written by Miss Arethusa's grandfather deep under the rose-beds. Each day the ladies and their geriatric lodger, Commander Cardloft, a part time Peeping Tom, arrange deckchairs around the fast deepening pit to watch Robert at work. How long will he endure before the task proves too much for him? I think Charles L. Grant might have approved of this one. Julia Birley - Dead on His Feet: "Are you sure you didn't take a little pill or a lump of sugar?". Dinah Shaw, a twenty-one year old typist, is smitten by leather jacket hoodlum Mario Rossatti, a smack dealer too fond of his own wares. Nancy, Dinah's fat, know-it-all flatmate, is forever nagging her about her appalling taste in boyfriend, but Dinah just knows he has a sweeter side. Dinah sets off for the Frogmen gig at the Jazz Club in Mayfair, hoping beyond hope her Romeo shows up. He does! And better still, no sign of his gormless Derek Mulvaney. Dinah enjoys the most thrilling night of her young life.
The following morning, as lover girl sleeps in, Nancy reads an alarming report in the Sunday paper ...
D. E. Piper - From Our Special Correspondent: "The vast majority of alleged supernatural happenings are attributable either to imagination, misinterpretation or fraud, or, most likely of all, to a primitive and egotistical desire to become the focus of attention." Dr. Colin Waterhouse and his henchwoman Dr. Margaret 'Folly' Follett, a Professor of Abnormal Psychology, rent a convenient dilapidated farmhouse in remotest Didscombe to continue their covert experiments in tele-hypnosis. Waterhouse has mastered hypnotic suggestion to the extent where he can exert mind control over a subject at distance, but can he use it to revive the dead? A journalist is invited to witness his most ambitious experiment to date.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 13, 2017 15:11:14 GMT
A ghastly premonition, nightmare shift in a horror hospital and a rendezvous with Auld Clootie. Great slimline anthology this one. Rosemary Timperley - Voices in the Night: Miss Gray, a sixty-five year old spinster, can't sleep for the violent domestic squabbles of the couple above, yet she knows her upstairs neighbour for a single man who only very infrequently brings home a lady friend for better things than fighting. The bitter arguments escalate until the woman dead shoots her husband, four times to make sure, yet no report of a murder in the local press and not one of her fellow residents heard a thing. Is she losing her mind? As with so much of Ro Timperley's ghost and horror fiction, this is tidy rather than inspired. Fun while you're reading it, forgotten within half an hour. Having said that, there are exceptions ... Rosemary Timperley - Ice in Their Laughter: You know this one's going to be different when it opens with a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche. Mrs. Raynor, an auxiliary nurse, has a morbid fear of being assigned to Block C, the female geriatric ward, which has the most dreadful influence on even the kindliest staff, reducing them to sadistic devils in starched caps within a matter of hours. It's rumoured that one patient, the frail and perpetually terrified Mrs. Fallen, survived the concentration camps. In her lucid moments she claims to be haunted by Death camp killing machine Hans, the guard who took her for his mistress in exchange for her life .... Simon Pilkington - The Inheritance: Angus ventures out to Dracken Rock to meet its solitary resident, his uncle Cole Bartholemew, and claim his dubious legacy. Reprinted in Angus Campbell's Scottish Tales Of Terror, 1972. Richard Davis - The Lady by the Stream: Met this one in the superb The Female Of The Species. A Forty-six year old spinster befriends and falls in love with a ten year old boy. Charles Birkin could have told her how that would work out.
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Post by johnnymains on Aug 22, 2023 8:12:44 GMT
Simon Pilkington - The Inheritance: Angus ventures out to Dracken Rock to meet its solitary resident, his uncle Cole Bartholemew, and claim his dubious legacy. Reprinted in Angus Campbell's Scottish Tales Of Terror, 1972. Discovered that Simon Mark Pilkington wrote one other story called 'The Grand Diversion' for a 1967 edition of Blackwood's Magazine. He was the owner of Knockinaam Lodge Hotel in Portpatrick for 20 odd years and was the step-father of the author Charles Cumming (recently scripted the film PLANE). Born in 1938 and he died in Wiltshire, 2009. Richard Davis writing under a pseudonym it's not, which was always a thought.
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Aug 22, 2023 13:39:43 GMT
Simon Pilkington - The Inheritance: Angus ventures out to Dracken Rock to meet its solitary resident, his uncle Cole Bartholemew, and claim his dubious legacy. Reprinted in Angus Campbell's Scottish Tales Of Terror, 1972. Discovered that Simon Mark Pilkington wrote one other story called 'The Grand Diversion' for a 1967 edition of Blackwood's Magazine. He was the owner of Knockinaam Lodge Hotel in Portpatrick for 20 odd years and was the step-father of the author Charles Cumming (recently scripted the film PLANE). Born in 1938 and he died in Wiltshire, 2009. Richard Davis writing under a pseudonym it's not, which was always a thought. archive.org/details/sim_blackwoods-magazine_1967-07_302_1821/page/n1/mode/2upCharles Cumming's book The Trinity Six is dedicated to his memory.
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