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Post by dem bones on Apr 29, 2010 10:25:54 GMT
Brian McNaughton - Satan's Mistress (Star, 1981) Blurb: DAUGHTER OF LUST AND DARKNESS
She haunted his dream's with her vicious sensuality: the image of the red-haired siren raged in his blood, becoming his one reality. Driven by the blinding force of those sweet nightmares, he wakens from the sleep of centuries a monstrosity he cannot control MIRDATH, SATAN'S MISTRESS.
Soon he is not the possessor, but the possessed: the instrument of her insatiable flesh-hunger, tearing a hideous swathe through the shattered torpor of the quiet New England town. For years I've been haunted by one of the first horror novels I ever read. Couldn't remember the author, title or very much about it at all save for an unsavoury episode at a party - and the cover illustration, a blob of brown-red jelly with tubes poking out from it. So on picking up a copy of Satan's Mistress the last thing I was expecting was a reunion with my old friend, but yes, this is it - and it's even better than I thought. The Laughlins - Frank, Rose and son Patrick - have just moved into a renovated water-mill in a quiet New England village. Unbeknown to them, they gazumped Howard Ashcroft, local showbiz Satanist, who was interested in the property on account of its sinister reputation. The Mill once belonged to Mordred Glendower, a powerful Elizabethan Black Magician, whose equally diabolical mistress, Mirdath, had her hash settled by outraged Puritan folk. Mordred, it seems, concealed 'treasure' somewhere in the basement of the mill .... From the first, Patrick, a shy, bespectacled early teenager, has erotic dreams of a beautiful, vicious woman with flame red hair and it seems his father Frank, a professional illustrator, is enduring similar visions as he finds himself unconsciously incorporating the woman's image into all his artwork. With Halloween fast-approaching, Rose, a successful writer, imposes on Frank to host a Halloween fancy dress party at the Mill. Ashcroft's is the first name on the list - he's recently added to his notoriety after the half-eaten corpse of a baby was recovered from the river. As it turns out, he's an amiable enough bloke, genuinely interested in the occult but by no means an adept. Patrick, leaned on by his mum, decides to invite Shana Jennings, the best-looking girl in school (he has always lets her copy his homework) and she pretends to accept before spitefully letting him down. Eventually, she does show up - with a bunch of thugs - but Patrick, who has dressed as Mordred Glendower for the occasion and has been talking and acting strange all evening, throws some kind of fit and has to be pulled off the ringleader before he kills him. Patrick's not the only one who is weirding out. His parents have a row; Frank is upset that Rose is spending too much time flirting with her prodigy, aspiring author Rupert Spencer, who is clearly in love with her. Rose counters that he's becoming an unbearable drunk. Frank storms off to try his luck with one of Howard Ashcroft's followers - a gorgeous but overtly sluttish babe in a backless dress - and escorts her to his workshop ... Rose walks in on the action, but Frank is as appalled as her to discover he's screwing someone other than who he thought. His partner is the wrong sex, for a start. As for Rose, she's learned the whereabouts of the 'treasure' - an impossibly rare collection of Grimoires and Black Sorcery classics, including a John Dee translation of the fabled Necronicom .... Patrick, possessed by Mordred, locates the spot in the town dump where Mirdath's body was unceremoniously buried and, having scrounged a lift from Rupert, sets his now devoted disciple Shana to digging her up. Mirdath is ravenous after all this time in the ground and is soon tearing up the village-folk to feed her appetite. Mordred has also manifested as a separate entity to Patrick and having chained the abomination that once was beautiful Mirdath in the basement, sets about torturing her to reveal the full Litany of Hastur that will let loose Yog-Sothoth and the Great Old Ones on mankind. Only then will he do as she begs - allow her to return to the grave. In the meantime, she'll need sustenance. Mordred is keen to dispose of Patrick's parents - he instead offers up their nosey next-door neighbour - but how long will they be able to keep the monstrosity contained ....? There's enough bad sex to warrant the 'a novel of carnal terror' tag, but Satan's Mistress is scrupulously free of the full-on porn interludes written into Satan's Lovechild. I like the way McNaughton incorporates the Cthulhu Mythos into the story: very sparing, just enough references to Lovecraft (and Colin Wilson) as necessary rather than smashing the reader over the head with some kind of treatise. The horror set-pieces are genuinely nasty too (wait 'til Mirdath gets going). Have had a real good run of novels recently - the Peter Saxon double-bill, Lair, Death Tour, Baxter, Subterranean, Death Bell and McNaughton's aforementioned Satan's Lovechild. Satan's Mistress is the one I enjoyed over all of them. But where did I misremember that Cthulhu cover from?
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Post by andydecker on Apr 30, 2010 11:53:19 GMT
Here is the original Carlyle edition, but it is not the first edition. Not a bad cover, though, even if I like the Star better I want to re-read this for ages. So many books ...
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Post by severance on Apr 30, 2010 22:22:57 GMT
I thought Dem's cover image seemed familiar, and it does turn out that I've got the Star edition of this in my to-be-read pile, and Dem's review has certainly bumped it up a lot higher - maybe next year But then Andy's cover image also seemed familiar - and I thought 'better not have two bloody copies of this' - thankfully no. I've got the Carlyle edition of "Satan's Seductress"; which has an identical cover, except the face is red rather than blue (so it's pointless putting a scan up, you know what he looks like!!)
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Post by dem bones on Oct 16, 2014 21:10:56 GMT
Brian McNaughton - Satan's Seductress (Star, 1981) Blurb The carnal power of night reborn.
It was a brand new apartment building and Amy Miniter was a new tenant, trying to stifle the memory of her mother's murder in a brand new life. Then a journalist began asking questions about the Mount Tabor massacre; forcing Amy to explore the memories she dare not relive ... From the ground beneath the building rises an evil as old as the earth itself: a nameless force of lust that transforms the once timid Amy into a sexual predator. A force that summons her to the deserted mill, and to the bizarre eroticism of a Satanist orgy ruled by the queen of sensual darkness — Mirdath, Satan's Seductress.
*As recounted in Brian McNaughton's occult terror nightmare SATAN'S MISTRESS.Am just about to make a start on this but couldn't resist posting the cover. Can Seductress possibly live up to Satan's Mistress and Satan's Love Child?
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Post by mcannon on Oct 16, 2014 21:18:50 GMT
Struth - that's quite a cover, Dem! >> Can Seductress possibly live up to Satan's Mistress and Satan's Love Child? [/quote]>> Was the series ever continued with "Satan's Child-Support Case"?
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Post by andydecker on Dec 1, 2014 19:05:49 GMT
So I finally read the new edition which was done by Wildeside Press, under the new title Downward to Darkness.
The blurb concerning the substantially different book this is supposed to be, is, well, a bit exagerated imho. Basically some names were changed, authorities on Lovecraft at the end of chapter 8 are now Christophe Till and S.T. Joshi instead of L.S.DeCamp and Robert Briney in the Carlyle Edition. Other differences are some updated words, Bill Gates instead of General Motors. There are some sly digs included, like "that the CIA paid Derleth to trivialize the concept and make a hash of his unpublished fragments", which one can read as a joke on the Derleth critics. Substantial changes in the narrative itself I couldn't find.
This is still a nice novel. Basically the plot borrows heavily on HPLs The Dunwich Horror and Charles Dexter Ward. McNaughton has a cynical edge, which I like. Also I didn't mind that he played the "HPL was right" card which I nowaday detest in most cases as I consider this lazy writing. This novel was done in 1978 before Lovecraft became the acknowledged writer he is today and the countless Mythos stories which followed. So I can understand he thought this a good idea.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 1, 2014 19:39:37 GMT
Thanks for that, Andy. So it's pretty safe to stick with the Star edition?
I read Satan's Seductress recently, but only have the first bunch of notes to show for it, the rest being an unreadable scrawl because I spilt a drink over them (!).
"What can I do for you?"
"As I said, the facts in the Laughlin case. Pictures of the bodies, if you have any." "No pictures." He laughed. "No bodies. Just some bones and teeth and clothing, a truss from Frank Laughlin, barely enough to identify the victims .....His wife, Rose thought he was messing around with a neighbour, so she killed him and the neighbour, and her son Patrick, who apparently got in her way, and then dissolved all their bodies in acid. She died in a fire at the booby hatch a couple of years back. Poetic justice, you could say. They found less of her than we did of her victims. Case closed."
- Maurice Donovan, Mt. Tabor's Chief of Police, brings Martin Paige up to date.
Four years on from the massacre. Timid and reclusive, Amy has set up home in Brooksprite Gardens, built on the site of the former Mount Tabor garbage dump. Amy has astounded herself by following her late mother, Rose, into a career in Real Estate, for which she has a flair previously unsuspected. Although desperately pale and bereft of confidence, Amy is gradually adjusting to the outside world. Martin Paige, aspiring author, is currently scraping a living as a hack writer for Detective and 'True Crime' magazines. He also has over a hundred porno novels to his various pseudonyms. It's imperative he makes some proper cash fast, and an interview with Amy could the meal ticket he's longed for. You bet he makes sure their paths cross ...
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