Angelus - Peter Tremayne

[erebus]

Anyone read this book ?
Just started it and was just pondering how it may pad out.
Superb artwork on the cover from Steve Crisp who always paints wonderfully. But as this is a Tremayne novel I somehow think the cover will not echo its contents. I mean Peter Tremayne is kind of nice , polite and Subtle about the way he writes. And even Morgow Rises with its grabbing plot and lurid cover was rather like a certificate 12 film.
So far here we have an American who has flown over to Ireland to teach Latin in a school way out in the hills. Some kid has stabbed a chisel in his hand and another has had a bout of hysteria, both have amnesia. And now the biology class tarantula has escaped ( Gasp ! )
Hmmmm I will stick it out but sadly as with all this fellows novels I have had a hard time enjoying them. He writes very well its just I don't seem to get into the story.

[killercrab]

Why persist with Tremayne's novels - you obviously aren't the audience?! I loved MORGOW and found LOCH NESS fun if long. Got ANGELUS , ANTS plus KISS OF THE COBRA to read and missed picking up NICOR awhile back! I like his stuff - good middle ground horror.

ade

[erebus]

I'm willing to give everyone a try. And perhaps I had read the more lesser efforts if you will before the stronger books.
The plots and summaries are great and also the covers to his books are very eye catching ( although there is that old saying )
It is not a personal attack at Tremayne. He writes very very well, I just don't seem to get entertained if you will.
Although Angelus is shaping up to be better than his others I have since read ( ANTS, MORGOW, SWAMP, ZOMBIE ) and even if I don't like this book in the end I will probably end up picking up Trollnight. That sums up how stoopid I am I guess

[fritzmaitland]

Hmmmm. I've owned precisely two Tremayne books. Angelus! Which I thoroughly enjoyed, and The Ants which I tried to read a number of times and failed.

[erebus]

Well I have read Angelus. And it without a doubt his best book. I really enjoyed it and perhaps if I had read this first I would have had a different outlook on his works.
This book is way better than his other novels and seems to me has a slight Guy N Smith ness to it.
Hmm Maybe Tracking NICOR, TROLLNIGHT and KISS OF THE COBRA will be worthwhile afterall.

[fritzmaitland]

Good man! And many happy returns by the way.

[erebus]

Why Thank You Sir .

[dem bones]

not had much joy finding his novels, just an ex-library Zombie! (for our younger readers, libraries really did once offer a neat selection of Sphere and Hamlyn paperbacks). i'm guessing here, erebus, but i don't think you'd find it as rewarding as Angelus; it seemed a bit flat to me, forgotten the moment you finish it. the odd thing is, i've read quite a few of his short horror tales spread over various anthologies and they've delivered without fail. and The Hound Of Frankenstein, originally published as a (very) short Mills & Boon novel, is my favourite Hammer film that never was. happy birthday!

[dem bones]

Peter Tremayne - Angelus! (Panther, 1985)

Steven Crisp

Blurb:
SEND NOT TO ASK FOR WHAT THE BELL TOLLS
IT TOLLS FOR STARK, BLOODY HORROR ...
The exclusive college of St Peter Damian stood in one of the most beautiful parts of the remote Irish countryside.
Yet there was nothing beautiful about the nightmare sequence of rape, mutilation and gruesome death that beset the college that fatal autumn.
Ed Devlin, the young Irish-American tutor who thought he'd achieved a lifelong ambition in getting a post at St Peter Damian, had no idea of the vicious vortex of slaughter into which he was about to be drawn. Soon the regular ringing of the college's Angelus bell took on overtones of demonic terror as it tolled out ever more horrific messages of carnage most foul ...

"Tremayne is BLOODY good." - PENTHOUSE
"Tremayne is an absolutely gorgeous read, especially on a dark winter's night with lightening flashing, thunder rumbling and rain scratching at the window pane like anxious fingers." - Dublin Sunday Press


Finally got my claws into a copy and it is very different in mood and feel to the B movie thrills of Ants! and Zombie!, much more in keeping with the horrored-up Celtic folklore that informs several of his shorter macabre pieces. 240 pages of fairly large print, i belted through it in two sessions with no inclination to stop and take notes.

St Peter Damian, situated high in the Kerry mountains, is the country's leading Catholic private board school. 27 year old Ed Devlin's arrival from Boston as assistant Latin master coincides with the term of terror. Ed has been brought up to believe himself Irish, though, of course, it takes only a few days back in 'the old country' to confirm that he is a plastic Paddy. The first murder occurs on the boat over, with an elderly invalid murdered in her wheelchair. When Inspector Lethane's men fail to come up with a suspect, he is shifted from Dublin to Kerry by way of a humiliating demotion. At least events at the posh school will keep him occupied.

The first incident involves young Dowling deliberately driving a chisel through his hand during woodwork, only to develop amnesia when questioned about the incident. Next Cathal Harty, star pupil and official school bully, risesduring the night to take a stroll tthrough the woods to the treacherous Black Bog, and wades into the quicksands. When Higgins, the first year's #1 sneak and crawler, is very nearly burned alive in the sports pavilion, it's obvious that there has been too much nasty business for it to be a coincidence. But who is responsible? Liam Curtois, the progressive, liberal-minded deputy principle, has a typically outlandish theory, but it's not one to share with the stuffed shirts, until -

Maureen Corrigan, the school gardener's beautiful, mentally retarded, fifteen-year old daughter, is raped. Suspicion falls on O'Gorman, the randy caretaker, who keeps a stash of porno mags down in the boiler room. But he swears it was one of the pupils assaulted her. Sorche, Devlin's love interest, believes the old perve, but it does him no good: the police pursue him up into the dangerous mountains where he falls over the cliff edge.

Meanwhile Curtois has been researching one of the new boys, Claude Bisset, an angel-faced twelve year old with a history of psychopathic behaviour. His smarmy psychiatrist, Dr, Klugerman, claims to have "cured" the child, but all he has achieved is to develop the boy's talents for telekinesis and telepathy. How can Curtois stop a devil-child who can read his mind? The murder spree continues, the deaths getting nastier as the psycho schoolkid hits top form - Father Martin, the biology teacher, finds a severed head in a specimen jar, and a tarantula goes missing from the lab. Can nobody stop the little bastard?