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Post by dem bones on Dec 3, 2009 8:25:19 GMT
Brian Ball - Devil's Peak (New English Library, 1972) Blurb: Stranded in a High Peak transport cafe during a freak snowstorm, Jerry Howard finds himself in a vortex of Satanism.
Brenda was a motorway girl with a strange scar on back. The Mark of the Beast. She knew the history the Brindley legend. And she alone knew the rites.
She had been on Devil's Peak before. Now it was Walpurgisnacht and the horned goat was expected.
Events moved to a horrendous climax.25 year old Jerry Howard, a "beardie weirdie" student researching lost villages, is not having the best of days. His girlfriend Debbie has dumped him for a pen-friend in South Shields she's never met, and now, climbing alone in the Peak District, he's marooned miles above Hagthorpe village as a fierce snowstorm rages. Sacrificing his beer-cans, he barely makes it over Tollers Edge and onto the road, but he's injured, exhausted and likely to die of exposure until he spots the large Diesel engine up ahead. Unfortunately, he still has to attract the attention of the driver, Bill Ainsley, who is busy inside, having picked up lorry-driver groupie Brenda 'the Fender' earlier. Brenda, a fearsome,strangely attractive Yorkshire girl, curses Jerry for a Peeping Tom and is all for leaving him to die, but Bill is sympathetic and gets him to the Castle Caff and comparative safety - or so it seems. The Caff is owned by lecherous Sam Raybould and his domineering, if neurotic wife Sylvia, who dotes over a truly f**k**g annoying poodle, Sukie (in his feverish condition, Jerry at first takes it for a terrifying barking chicken). Sylvia is as hostile toward the mini-skirted "slut" as Brenda is hostile to Jerry, but they'll all have to put up with each other until the storm clears in a couple of days. Just to add to Mrs. Raybould's misery, Sam, tending his lorry, discovers a coach load of fifteen year old schoolgirls trapped in a drift - yet more flesh for her randy husband to ogle. At least Brenda seems to be behaving herself, but why is she always fondling the coal scuttle so suggestively, like it's some kind of charm? While all this drama is going on, we get to learn something of the legends surrounding the area. An Army lieutenant, boy scouts - several people have gone missing on the Peaks, their bodies never recovered, and the locals murmour darkly of the Devil-haunted 'Hag's Hole', from which, it is said, a creepy green light emanates. Jerry sniggers at all this superstitious malarkey .... until Sukie, making herself useful at last, goes digging behind the collapsed wall in the cellar - and comes back with a beret containing a strip of decayed flesh from a human scalp! What's behind the wall? Jerry plucks up courage to take a look: skeletons and rotting corpses everywhere! The girls, bereft of their teacher, now fall in with Brenda, who soon has them performing naked dance routines before the fire when everyone else is "asleep". Of course, Sam Raybould isn't going to miss an opportunity to live up to his reputation, and the increasingly inquisitive Jerry likewise cops an eyeful. The weirdest thing is, the girls are mimicking the figures on the coal scuttle Brenda has taken such a shine to. Walpurgisnacht is here. Can Jerry convince the others that Brenda is evil? The snow won't ease up .... TBC
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Post by killercrab on Dec 3, 2009 16:01:50 GMT
This is the last book I managed to finish - going through a funny reading patch of late - struggling to finish stuff. Really liked Devil's Peak - so will be interested to hear your conclusions Dem. Bloody great cover though it doesn't make much sense - maybe that's why I like it.
KC
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Post by dem bones on Dec 4, 2009 8:18:52 GMT
Fifty pages to go and so far, getting on better with it than i did Lessons For The Damned (great fun while you're reading it but that bloody ludicrous ending!). Devil's Peak is perfect reading for the freezing nights we've been having, and i love all that creeping around in the cellar with a candle stuffed in a Tizer bottle business. Steve gave us a great Brian Ball post on Vault Mk. 1 which he might like to move across? |
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Post by killercrab on Dec 4, 2009 16:31:33 GMT
getting on better with it than i did Lessons For The Damned (great fun while you're reading it but that bloody ludicrous ending!)I've got this one to read! Got a great cover tho'. Ball is the dogs bollocks in my book for Venomous Serpent ( which you'll hopefully read some day). I've still to find his witchfinder books.  KC
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Post by dem bones on Dec 18, 2009 11:02:03 GMT
Finally got around to the last fifty pages, most of them set in the rotting cadaver-strewn cavern beneath the cafe where, two centuries before, Lord Titus Brindley and family were trapped inside as they celebrated the Black Mass. Brenda the trucker groupie is a Brindley and, with the innocent schoolgirl's firmly under her spell, plans to revive her evil ancestors for more Devil-raising and human sacrifice! Only "beardy weirdie" student Jerry has the knowledge to stop them, but will he rise to the challenge?
Well! It's certainly a very different novel than I was expecting. Having set all the potentially steamy elements in place, Mr. Ball handles them with more restraint than any author in the history of NEL (imagine such a set up in Laurence James' hands), so what we end up with a neat, suspenseful, proper Black Magic story. There's even a touch of M. R. James in the constant reference to an imaginary historical document, the journal of nineteenth century gentleman antiquary, Alfred Douglas Davenant, who "braved the Venomous Serpent" and thoroughly researched the Brindley legend. For all that, it's not exactly Ghost Stories Of An Antiquary: one particularly tense episode ends in pure Carry On style with the semi-revived corpse of the Magister copping a distress flare up his arse, while the necromantic ritual stuff should have gained Devil's Peak a place in Dennis Wheatley's Library Of The Occult!
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Post by severance on Feb 11, 2017 19:59:56 GMT
I'm having a bash at this one at the moment, at the recent Linford Mystery Library edition (2009), and can't help wondering if Mr. Ball's taken the opportunity to make a few updates. In one scene the rescued schoolgirls, in their thirst to be entertained, pester old lech Sam to borrow a CD player if he's got one. Didn't get my first CD player until 1988, a full sixteen years after this came out!! And Jerry's other half, Debbie, has gone back to her Newcastle trawler captain - not a pen friend. No matter, it's still a cracking read, as we've come to expect from Mr. Ball. Must crack on...
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