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Post by dem bones on Nov 12, 2010 9:11:51 GMT
Guy N. Smith - Phobia (Grafton, 1990) Luis Rey Blurb: Scared to Death ...
Number thirteen Schooner Street was a typical terraced house in an up-and-coming area of south London - or so John and Leah Strike thought when they first moved in with their children. But then the nightmares started - vivid, harrowing images of gruesome violence that tore into their consciousness leaving behind rabid, phobic reactions to the simplest of everyday things. Caught in a web of their own deepest fears ‑ too scared to leave home, too terrified to remain ‑ reason told them that the only thing to fear was fear itself. But then the terrors that festered in the shadows of the evil house took on a life of their own - and the grisly killings began ...
Phobia is the horrifying tale of mind terror where no secret fear is safe, no nightmare too horrible to come true - and even the grave is no place to rest in peace.
Starts like it means business. The Strikes have just moved from leafy Chingford to South London and before they've even unpacked, Leah is having doubts. Her marriage to John isn't all that it should be. She's not much of one for sex, he's very demanding and, after that nasty business when he whipped out his Polaroid in bed and demanded she pose for him, Readers Wives-style, her guess is that he's getting it elsewhere. It has taken GNS only a very few pages to paint John Strike as an unsympathetic, utterly deluded character. Strike wears a Barbour jacket to the bank and drives a Jeep to show he's a good old country boy at heart, and believes himself indispensable to the company whereas, in reality, he's just another idiot for scary boss Mr. Kenton to jump on when things go wrong. To celebrate moving house, John has embarked on an affair with frustrated Ruth from the typing pool. Anyway, within days of moving in to the house on Schooner Street, John, Leah and their three kids are all suffering horrendous dreams. Sarah (big fan of the Police and Michael Jackson) refuses to sleep with the light off and baby Ben routinely pisses his Arsenal pyjama bottoms. Leah endures panic attacks, convinced somebody is watching her. John's recurring nightmare - he's involved in a head-on collision with a rusty Ford Escort whose driver is slowly decapitated on the smashed windscreen - is all the worse for it's unnervingly premonition-ish quality ... What's going on? Has it anything to do with mysterious previous occupants the Graftons (snicker) who "lived like pigs" and let the place go to ruin?
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Post by dem bones on Nov 15, 2010 8:56:08 GMT
" ... It was all part of the stupid image he was attempting to create, along with the Suzuki, the ridiculous waxed jacket and the green wellies under the stairs: a country squire living in south London. That was only one step up from the little boy who dressed up to play cowboys."
My guess is that one of GNS's former colleagues at the bank really annoyed him.
It's been decent stuff so far, with the first all-important bad sex interlude worth the wait (as with the best of Smith's "heroes", John Strike boasts a seemingly permanent protrusion in his trousers), but Leah has more to concern her than a philandering poseur of a husband she no longer loves. Her latest fixation is that the mice - or even RATS - in the attic are deliberately gnawing on the electricity wires to set the house ablaze. By now the whole family bar eldest boy Sam are enduring nightmares on a permanent basis and somehow, the fact he's been spared is what disturbs her most of all. Matters aren't helped when, on an expedition to the supermarket, Leah and the kids witness an old tramp's gory death under the wheels of a car. Blinded by blood and brains, Leah at first believes little Ben to be the victim and has to be restrained while the ambulance crew scrape what's left of Aqualung from the tarmac. He'd only just found a juicy dog-end in the bins so you can but hope he got to smoke it before disaster struck. Even this grisly episode fails to unsettle Sam who casually flicks through a copy of Match magazine while all around him are losing their minds.
The latest on previous residents the Grafton's is that they weren't always smelly - it was only when the multiple PHOBIAS started that they let the place degenerate. And why had John Strike landed this des res at such a snip? Because nobody else wanted to live there.
TBC
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Thana Niveau
Devils Coach Horse
We who walk here walk alone.
Posts: 109
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Post by Thana Niveau on Nov 15, 2010 13:20:18 GMT
Fears and nightmares are two of my pet obsessions so I'm very very tempted by this one. I've never read any GNS before but your review is making me curious...
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Post by dem bones on Nov 15, 2010 15:10:01 GMT
i can't help but worry you would be jumping in at the deep end with Phobia. Begging your pardon, your worshipess, but if i might be so bold as to suggest The Slime Beast as your book at bedtime to get you acclimatised? ;D
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Post by Johnlprobert on Nov 15, 2010 16:10:02 GMT
i can't help but worry you would be jumping in at the deep end with Phobia. Begging your pardon, your worshipess, but if i might be so bold as to suggest The Slime Beastas your book at bedtime to get you acclimatised? ;D Good old Vault - the only place where you can get advice on how to read Guy N Smith
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Thana Niveau
Devils Coach Horse
We who walk here walk alone.
Posts: 109
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Post by Thana Niveau on Nov 15, 2010 16:33:18 GMT
Thanks for that, Dem! Should be fun! Alternately, he could read it to me on the plane in a couple of months. Our other trans-Atlantic passengers shouldn't mind too much. ;D
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Post by dem bones on Nov 15, 2010 17:33:01 GMT
Thanks for that, Dem! Should be fun! Alternately, he could read it to me on the plane in a couple of months. Our other trans-Atlantic passengers shouldn't mind too much. ;D Alternatively, there's Doomflight. I can hear your fellow passengers chortling their appreciation even as i type.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Nov 15, 2010 18:32:29 GMT
This is the one someone on another message board tantalizingly summarized as "Druids attack an airport." Nothing can, of course, live up to the expectations that line produces in me.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 16, 2010 12:59:11 GMT
This is the one someone on another message board tantalizingly summarized as "Druids attack an airport." Nothing can, of course, live up to the expectations that line produces in me. "Druids attack an airport" is a brilliant tag-line, possibly better than Doomflight deserves. It's an odd one, didn't think much of it at the time, but months later and at least two episodes have stayed with me which is more than can be said for some of the 'better' novels i've read in the interim. "Schooner Street. He stood on the edge of the opposite pavement, reluctant to cross, trying not to look at the house because he could feel it looking at him. He was shuddering inside his waxproofed jacket because the brickwork and windows were a face again, with demented senile features, hollowed cheeks and bulging dead eyes that still saw ...." it's likely i'm speaking too soon, but as we reach half way, Phobia is ... well, it's almost subtle by GNS standards. Just a solitary genuine death and a couple of imaginary ones to date tells its own story. Sam can no longer complain of feeling left out as now he too has endured a terrifying experience. Since a visit to the Reptile house as an infant, he has had a morbid fear of snakes - so a newt in the overgrown back garden helpfully mutates into one right before his eyes. With the entire Strike family now living in fear of being either drowned, incinerated, dropped, driven over or crushed by Anaconda, there's nothing for it but to put the house back on the market and pray some property speculator is greedy enough to buy it. Meanwhile, Leah learns from Janet Johnson, the big-bummed proper yuppie next door, that the Grafton's mostly kept themselves to themselves although their son played with her boy, Jeremy, and apparently, possessed a too-vivid imagination, always whining on about bogeymen under the stairs and similar tommy-rot. He even told Jeremy that his parents were scared of number 13! Of course, Mrs. Johnson put it down to the Grafton's being financially out of their depth on such an exclusive street and looking for an excuse to retreat to a council house or whatever the natural abode of insignificant people is (don't worry: she's due a nasty shock.) Mrs. J invites Leah and the kids along for an afternoon at Hampton Court, but at the last moment Leah is struck down by her first ever attack of acute Agoraphobia and can't get past the front door. Home alone, she feels the prying eyes of the invisible heavy breather on her more intently than ever. She's so desperate, she even rings her husband, not that he'll be any use, too busy having it off with his fancy woman, whoever she is. In fact, John Strike is finding his bit on the side a bit of a nuisance. Ruth has ditched her husband (by Royal Mail) and thinks John should do the same to Leah and the kids as a demonstration of their eternal love. With Leah away for the weekend attending her father who has suffered a stroke, Mrs. Johnson at last gets her opportunity to snoop around the house and confirm that the Strikes aren't as rich as she and her stockbroker husband. The bloodied thing she finds impaled on the staircase is not to her taste .... Which brings us to Part 2, Autumn.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 26, 2010 8:47:19 GMT
It seems that GNS was lulling us into a false sense of security by troweling on the commendable restraint in part 1, as the next 70 doom laden pages are seeped in violent death, motorway carnage, rape, murder, death at a funeral, a generous helping of frustrated housewife frantically playing with herself interludes - it's difficult to know where to start!
GNS seems to have finally taken to his anti-hero, John Strike, who, it seems, isn't such a bad hat under the plastic wannabe yuppie facade. He's put 13 Schooner Street back on the market but knows in his heart that there will be no buyers and the best thing would be to burnt it and its evil occupant to the ground and claim on the insurance. But his efforts to set the place ablaze are scuppered at the last moment either by the arrival of the nuisance Ruth or, in the novel's most affecting moment, a rookie cop come to break the news that his three year old son has been killed in a car accident. A distraught John drives 150 miles to Barmouth to join Leah and the kids at her mothers, where he's greeted as the Devil incarnate. Marjorie Bourne has always despised him for "getting her daughter into trouble", necessitating marriage, and her downtrodden husband George isn't in any condition to intervene on his behalf. You get the impression George is looking forward to death to be rid of the spiteful old cow and if so, he won't have to wait much longer for his wish to come true.
Meanwhile, back at Schooner Street, jobless romeo Mike Gibson has stopped in the porch of number 13 with his new bird, Tracey. She let him put his hand up her blouse yesterday, so maybe she'll let him move onto the next step tonight. She won't. But some evil influence exerts itself over Mike, and almost before he knows it ...
Even as Gibson is raping Tracey on the doorstep, Don Lester, millionaire estate agent, is giving the property a once over, having let himself in with a spare key. It goes against his professional pride that he's not been able to find a permanent buyer for the house and is furious at the mess the Strikes have made of the place. They've not even cleaned the blood from the walls since the burglar came to such a sticky end at the close of part 1! Don feels the sinister, bad breathed presence watching him and panics. He tries to flee into the street but .... Agoraphobia! There's a commotion in the porch! If only they'd stop tussling and open the door! Eventually, a copper breaks it down, to find a gibbering lunatic cowering under a table. "The bugger's here ... Another bloody burglar - and a sex-killer to boot."
Informed of this latest grim development, directly following little Ben's funeral (which doesn't pass without incident you'll be delighted to hear), John Strike drives back to South London, determined to torch the place and who cares if he's done for arson? Nothing can stop him this time!
What's that up ahead on the motorway? Oh, it's a multiple pile up and loads of dead and dying people, including a little boy in an Arsenal shirt whose head has been completely obliterated ....
Fifty pages to go. One last push should do it.
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Post by David A. Riley on Nov 26, 2010 9:05:30 GMT
Like Thania, I've never read a GNS all the way through, even though we've sold umpteen copies in the shop! But your pieces on this book, Dem, do whet my appetite. It sounds outrageous fun.
David
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Post by dem bones on Nov 26, 2010 11:12:34 GMT
i reckon "outrageous fun" perfectly sums up the bulk of his work, though i'm not really the person to comment, having come to him much later than everyone else and read maybe twenty of the novels at most. Certain of our regulars manage to polish off his entire back catalogue before they get up for breakfast every morning. In Danish. Anyhow, Phobia turned out to be just what the doctor ordered; a thoroughly unpleasant ghost story with (once it gets going) surplus horror and bonus sex scenes which must be among the least engaging ever committed to print. John decides to do what most of us who read supernatural fiction would likely have tried long ago - research the history of 13 Schooner Street to help identify just whose ghost has it in for his fast dwindling family? For one awful moment i considered the alarming prospect of GNS going all MRJ on us, but a lightening fast consultation of the deeds is all it takes to reveal that only one person ever lasted more than a few weeks at number 13 - Joseph Nason, who lived there from 1928-1947. But who was Joseph Nason? The bank manager who handled the transaction, George Denby, is long retired but still alive and kicking down in Hastings, and his revelations confirm John's darkest fears. Nason, forty years dead through starvation, was a wealthy recluse of multiple phobias whose corpse was gnawed upon by the rats and mice he'd so obsessively attempted to snare. Mr. Denby's description of Nason as a cadaverous, sunken eyed old gent in a greasy trilby and ankle-length navy coat is a match for the entity which has haunted Strike's days and nights since he and his family moved in at number 13. But how can you destroy a man who has spent four decades rotting in a hermits grave, an undead who, to date, has outsmarted you at every turn? With Leah having finally returned from her unbearable mother with the two surviving children, the scene is set for one of Guy's patented suspenseful-but-a-bit-crap endings! Highly Recommended! Fans of Phobias might like to compare and contrast with this 'Thomas Luke' offering from the terrible house of NEL!
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Post by erebus on Aug 10, 2011 14:17:54 GMT
My GuyN Smith re-vist marathon is well underway. After the wonderful THIRST II : THE PLAGUE. I'm gonna jump straight into PHOBIA.
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