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Post by dem bones on Aug 14, 2010 17:44:59 GMT
Christopher Fowler - Roofworld (Legend/ Leisure Circle, 1988: Arrow, 1989) Blurb:
"A heady mix of the fantastic and the macabre. Exhilarating and terrifying" - RAMSEY CAMPBELL
"Horror, mystery, fantasy ... a delicious strain of black humour. Exhilarating, an immensely entertaining read"- FEAR
High on the London rooftops, in a dangerous twilight world, lives a secret society of misfits. Very few people on the streets below know that the Roofworld exists but the battle is beginning for the ultimate prize — London itself:
New heights of terror are in store for innocent bystanders...
PROMOTION DETAILS
ARROW'S SEPTEMBER BESTSELLER
National £75,000 cinema advertising campaign reaching 82% of all cinema audiences
Spectacular 3D point-of-sale including colour mobiles, display pieces, dumpins with cut-out headers, posters and shelftalkers
*Full page colour advertising in Publishing News and The Bookseller
400 pages 178 X 110mm £3.99
September 21Brushing aside all opposition to climb up-top of the terrifying 'to re-read' pile, one of THE great London horror novels. Strange thing, at the time i was in contact with two people who loved the book and it turned out we each had copies of the uncorrected proof promo version. Found a copy of the Legend hardback in a charity shop last year, but to this day, i don't think i've ever seen a copy of the official Arrow paperback edition! On the dust-jacket, Fowler's interests are listed as "the disturbing and bizarre aspects of the city" and Roofworld bears him out. The story takes place over ten days in the run up to Christmas, 198- and right from the off we know we're in for a horror novel. The renegade Roofworld Imperator Chymes and his henchman launch a young, drugged prisoner on a nylon cable from the bell-tower of St. Peter's RC Church, Soho Square to the centre of the massive neon Coca Cola sign at Piccadilly Circus. It explodes on impact .... D.I. Hargreave and his squad - more of whom later - at first reach the extraordinary conclusion that it's a suicide! Hargreaves led the previous summer's controversial 'Leicester Square Vampire' investigation and the press won't let him live it down. He's sleeping with his Sergeant, Janice Longbright, a sharp, buxom, seam-stockinged siren of a policewoman who looks like she just stepped out of a 'fifties movie. Of late, Screenwriter Robert Linden has been having nightmares, and Skinner his odious, smarmy yuppie creep of a boss at the film production company is seeing to it that he's days are no bundle of joy either. Robert has been trying to locate a copy of Charlotte Endsleigh's novel The Newgate Legacy (Gunner & Crowfield, 1985), "a social satire set in a decayed, overcrowded prison" and having as much as much luck as we've had landing a copy of the fabled "Belmont 1970 edition" of Peter Saxon's Brother Blood. His company want to secure the rights for a TV serial. Even when he eventually traces a copy to the local library it doesn't do him any good as, oh dear, Mrs. Endsleigh was beaten to death last year when she surprised a burglar at her Hampstead home. There's an estranged punk daughter but the last anyone heard of her she'd taken to drugs and become a squatter. And then there's Rose Leonard, a serial hobbyist whose latest passion is for photographing cityscape's. To this end, tonight she's broken into a five story office block in Regents Street via the fire escape. Perched on a ledge, she witnesses an extraordinary scene. "Running figures, some loping, some as if swinging on invisible ropes, bounding and leaping across the angled rooftops on the other side of the street. There were perhaps fifteen of them, young, old, men, women, it was difficult to tell. There was even a dog of some kind, darting silently between her feet." The strange airborne tribe vanish into the night and, on the late bus home, Rose wonders if she hallucinated the episode, but the strip of film tells her otherwise. You get the impression her dramatic photograph could land her in terrible danger if certain parties learn of its existence ..... to be continued ....
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 14, 2010 18:47:19 GMT
I read about half of this when it was first published. I remember it as being extremely inspired, imaginative, and thrilling, and have often regretted not finishing it. I gave up on it on principle, however, at the point where one character throws "a box of hard disks" at another, feeling the author had revealed himself as a complete idiot. I was often very harsh in my judgments as a young man---perhaps too harsh.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Aug 14, 2010 20:31:07 GMT
I'm a big fan of Mr Fowler, and this was the first of his novels that I read, many years ago. I remember it being lots of fun.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 16, 2010 7:04:22 GMT
It's certainly been a joy so far. I'd forgotten just how frenetic the pace is and the murders are plain horrible!
One faction of the Roofworld community are a violent lot when they get going and the punishments dished out by their Kangaroo Count severe. Young Toad has been deemed a traitor or at best, a blabbermouth, but hooded Judge Chymes is prepared to be "merciful" which is just about the worse news you want to hear. Once a vicious raven has done with his face, Toad is allowed to return to the "insect world" via the non-scenic route. You feel sorry for the poor bastard who will have to remove his corpse from the spiked railings in the morning.
Robert visits the late Charlotte Endsleigh's Hampstead apartment on the off chance she'll have left some paperwork pertaining to her wishes in regard to the novel should a film company ever come calling. Who should be acting as the estate's manager but Rose Leonard! Robert finds the notes for Charlotte's work in progress - an investigation of the Roofworld cult to which there can be no doubt her purple haired daughter belonged as, when Rose gets her photo's developed, she identifies a troubled-looking Sarah in the thick of the group. The wimpish Robert is all for showing the set to the police, but Rose reminds him she was trespassing at the time. Besides, wouldn't it be more fun if they were to investigate the matter themselves? No it wouldn't, insists Robert: doesn't she realise that Charlotte Endsleigh was murdered for writing about these people?
Chymes has another of his problematic subjects murdered in gruesome fashion. Samuel, like Toad, had been with the community from the early days, but going cold turkey has opened his eyes to the wrongness of recent developments. He marvels that the leader could ever have persuaded him to assist in the murder of Toad, someone he'd always thought of as a dear friend. Where once it had all been a pure, anti-Capitalist movement with benign, New Age outlook, this recent schism - which saw Chymes and his bully boys breakaway from Nathaniel Zalan's peaceful core movement - smacks of a Dictatorship in the making with Chymes as Hitler. In four or five pages we've come to like and, perhaps, identify with Samuel, making what happens next all the more harrowing ...
Meanwhile, following a lead in Charlotte's notes, Robert and Rose visit a seedy Leicester Square Amusement Arcade where they bribe some information from Nick, a sixteen year old punk with a natty spiderweb tattoo above his eye and a friend of the recently impaled Toad. When they leave the Arcade - Robert £20 and his spare change lighter - they have a name for those they seek - the 7N Krewe - and a contact for tomorrow night. "Simon. He dresses really weird. You can't miss him".
And i'm still only up to p.90.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 17, 2010 18:02:51 GMT
Well, did you get to the part about the "hard disks" yet?
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Post by dem bones on Aug 17, 2010 19:28:52 GMT
Not yet, JoJo, but will let you know when i do. There's an outside chance i'll bump into Mr. Fowler again soon as he's sometimes spotted browsing the bookstalls at the local market. if i get talking to him, maybe i'll ask if the incident came from life. A brief interlude before i get stuck back in. Ali Bey's cover artwork for the Legend hardcover edition, accomplished as it is, just doesn't seem appropriate to me somehow. Weirdly, the Jay Eff photo-cover for Soho Black strikes me as perfect for Roofworld. I know, they're not actually on any roof, but in my head this is how Nathaniel Zalan's tribe look! |
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Post by dem bones on Aug 20, 2010 9:20:34 GMT
"Look at this, Ian. A massive quantity of Warfarin in the body. God, what a nasty way to die."
Back to the Roofworld and Sarah, the daughter of the murdered author, is up to her neck in it. As the girlfriend of leader Nat Zalan, she was always going to be Chymes favoured abduction target and now he's got her tied to a cross atop a skyscraper. A female minion disguises herself as the missing girl to lure Zalan to St. Katherine's Dock, "no mans land", where only the timely intervention of Lee, his trusty lieutenant, saves his life. As they lead the impostor away for questioning, Chymes, ever the charmer, launches a spear at her back.
Rose and Robert are attacked by a black-clad hoodlum intent on relieving them of Charlotte Endsleigh's incendiary notebook. Fortunately, Rose travels with a can of mace for such occasions. The young West Indian is as plucky and engaging as Robert is, initially, downtrodden and undynamic, but he is thriving in her company. So, aside from the horror, fantasy, police procedural and black comedy aspects, we've a love story. Actually, we've at least three.
A skinned corpse - Samuel's - drops from the sky to land outside Mr. Buckley's Regent Street jewellers. Not good for business, rotten luck for the victim, top news for the reader as it brings DI Ian Hargreaves and, more to the point, the divine Sergeant Janice Longbright back center stage, "Her solid, ample bosom ... in danger of bursting from the smart blue linen jacket in which it was encased". Small wonder Hargreaves' concentration is shot to pieces and he's had no joy in identifying his three dead bodies. She's just cracked the tricky "Harrods Shoplifting Case", too. In nylons.
One thing i'd forgotten since first reading it, is just how shocking the violence is.
JoJo, out of curiosity, which edition did you read? The uncorrected proof runs to 396 in paperback, the Legend, 344. so even accounting for more words per page it seems much revision went on. will have a check later, see if any chapters went missing.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 20, 2010 9:33:07 GMT
JoJo, out of curiosity, which edition did you read? The uncorrected proof runs to 396 in paperback, the Legend, 344. so even accounting for more words per page it seems much revision went on. will have a check later, see if any chapters went missing. I believe it was this one (Arrow, 1989):  |
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Post by dem bones on Aug 20, 2010 9:42:41 GMT
ah, now if i'm not mistaken, that looks like the legit Arrow edition so i'll come to the flying hard-discs eventually. If you've the copy handy, and a minute to spare, what's the page count?
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 20, 2010 9:48:10 GMT
ah, now if i'm not mistaken, that looks like the legit Arrow edition so i'll come to the flying hard-discs eventually. If you've the copy handy, and a minute to spare, what's the page count? My copy of the book is certainly here somewhere, not far from where I am sitting, but is nevertheless inaccessible, I am afraid. How can that be, you ask? Well, I would rather not go into that. Amazon UK, from where the picture comes, claims it is 400 pages long, however. |
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Post by ramseycampbell on Aug 20, 2010 13:05:37 GMT
I was often very harsh in my judgments as a young man---perhaps too harsh. Why, aren't you still? |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 20, 2010 14:07:39 GMT
I was often very harsh in my judgments as a young man---perhaps too harsh. Why, aren't you still? Nothing like back in the good old days, I assure you. |
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Post by ramseycampbell on Aug 21, 2010 12:43:48 GMT
Nothing like back in the good old days, I assure you. Forgive me! A comment from somewhere - along the lines of "thirty years of repetitive garbage" - had lodged in my mind. |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 21, 2010 13:07:15 GMT
Oops! Well, if it is any consolation, I hate all of contemporary "horror" fiction---no, make that all contemporary fiction. It just means I am not currently part of your target audience, and possibly completely out of touch with everything. I would not worry too much about it.
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Post by ramseycampbell on Aug 21, 2010 13:25:54 GMT
Oops! Well, if it is any consolation, I hate all of contemporary "horror" fiction---no, make that all contemporary fiction. It just means I am not currently part of your target audience, and possibly completely out of touch with everything. I would not worry too much about it. To be honest, I don't have a target audience - I just write the stuff and hope someone likes it. I'm a bit bemused if I understand you right, though - do you feel I changed as a writer around 1980, then? I'd say that in some ways much of Demons by Daylight and especially The Height of the Scream were more aggressively "contemporary" than some of my later tales. |
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