The Bornless Keeper - P. B. Yuill

[blackmonk]

The Bornless Keeper
P. B. Yuill
Macmillan 1974
Orbit/Futura 1975

i140.photobucket.com/albums/r39/imagesds/vault of evil/born.jpg[/img]

Blurb
The most haunting novel of terror since The Hound of the Baskervilles.

A drowsy summer afternoon on an island off the South coast of Britain. A faint rustling in the undergrowth, a glimpse of the grotesquely feathered head – and the slash of razor sharp talons on naked flesh.

The Keeper vanished, the jays chattered on in the silver pine tops and a savagely mutilated corpse seeped blood under the ferns…

Reviews
“Gruesome, bewildering and very readable.” Sunday Express

“Like The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Bornless Keeper has an age old curse and a mysterious horror… It is, in fact, even more frightening; and as horror closes in, you feel you are yourself running – panting – from the approaching claws.” Oxford Times

“Really scarifying.” Yorkshire Post

“Spinetingling tension.” Newcastle Journal

A wealthy eccentric old woman, owner of Peacock Island dies in bed in her rambling castle. Rats mill about in her bed sheets, her face eaten to the bone by the rodents. A man from the mainland delivers groceries and discovers her corpse. Hastily returning to the boat something lumbers from the rhododendrons, a feathered thing, a clawed thing. It attacks and the man lies dead. The mystery of Peacock Island becomes the focus of the police and a television crew who sneak on to the island. But what is the Keeper? Speculation suggests a monstrous bird, a grotesque ape, an evil dwarf…

An enjoyable read with some very creepy moments. The atmosphere of the island is well defined and effective with Yuill’s descriptions of the crumbling buildings, the sinister foliage through which the Keeper stalks and wildlife in particular the screaming peacocks and jays. If you enjoyed P. McCartney’s Who Sups with the Devil, I’m sure you’ll lap this one up.

The author, P. B. Yuill is responsible for the crime novels and TV series Hazell. The flap on the dust jacket of the 1st edition states, “P. B. Yuill is a pseudonym. The author does not want his real identity disclosed.” Yuill is actually the combination of Gordon Williams (The Siege of Trencher’s Farm/Straw Dogs) and Terry Venables (yes, the footballer/ football manager).

[noose]

Aha - I see the second cover is by John Holmes!

[blackmonk]

Nov 25, 2010 10:43:50 GMT @noose said:

Aha - I see the second cover is by John Holmes!

It is rather good! The cover for the hard back is credited to Chris Yates.

[cromagnonman]

Here we have a book which, if there was any justice in the world, ought to have come complete with an apology from the publisher over the calibre of the cover art. It really is an object lesson in abject awfulness, isn't it. Contrary to what it seems to suggest this is not the story of Sesame Street's Big Bird going postal. But if you do get that idea fixed in your head then the first few pages will only serve to cement it there. And that is a serious handicap towards taking the book seriously. But "endeavour to persevere", as Chief Dan George so memorably put it in The Outlaw Josey Wales, and you will be presented with a story that slowly and surely begins to exert a compulsive and compelling hold.


Situated just off of the coastal resort of Mundham is Peacock Island, home to the rich eccentric and reclusive Lady Bennett who will allow almost nobody else to set foot on the place. Not that there is anyone much interested in doing so anyway. Local folklore maintains that the island is home to a terrifying guardian called The Bornless Keeper who delights in "pointing the Road to Hell" to anyone who trespasses there. And when a local fisherman does make the mistake of landing there and has his throat slashed and his eyes gouged out for his trouble, and an investigating policeman then has his head stoved in, it begins to seem as if there may be more to the legend than ignorant superstition.


The story subsequently proceeds along two parallel but ultimately converging paths. The first is a standard police procedural taken in the company of Victor Daniels, a one time high flying Scotland Yard detective now idling away the years till his retirement in this provincial backwater. The second follows the fortunes of a tv crew that sneaks onto the island in search of a scoop and ends up discovering a whole lot more than they bargained for.


Of the two narrative threads the second is marginally the more enjoyable on account of its greater scope for exercising the petty jealousies, rivalries and sexual tension that exists between the quartet. The first is more focused on the mutual antagonism extant between the shrewd, astute and cosmopolitan Daniels and his boorish, unimaginative rustic plod of a boss, Superintendent Alf Groves. Both strands, told in workmanlike unflashy prose, make for entertaining reading and this is a perfect piece of holiday hokum for reading on the beach.


It is exactly the sort of story that you could imagine someone like Tyburn making into a film once upon a time. It has all the hallmarks of a low budget mid 70s shocker and its probably worth speculating that it might well have been written with just that possibility in mind. It has all the hallmarks of a production of the period: the isolated setting, the local legend, the small cast of disparate characters being stalked by a murderous something or other. Would have been great.
Sadly the time when such stories could be filmed credibly are now long gone. The sheer ubiquitousness of modern communications technology makes it almost impossible for an audience now to believe that any group of people can be so completely cut off and isolated as the tv crew in this story are. Technology may be a miracle but it has wreaked havoc with dramatic scenarios.


As is now well known the name P B Yuill was a pseudonym for the novelist Gordon Williams who famously wrote THE SIEGE OF TRENCHER'S FARM, on which Straw Dogs was loosely based. Curiously THE BORNLESS KEEPER regurgitates the most notorious and contentious scene from the film which wasn't actually present in the original book. This seems particularly perverse on account of Williams's own objections to the film.


The Yuill pen name is more commonly associated with the Hazell novels that Williams wrote in collaboration with the football legend Terry Venebles. There is no suggestion that Venebles had any sort of input into THE BORNLESS KEEPER however. More's the pity. But it's hard to imagine El Tel having much to contribute to a horror story. Unless you count his rendition of "What Do You Want to Make those Eyes at Me For?". Or graphic recollections of trading tackles with Norman 'Bites-Yer-Legs' Hunter and Ron 'Chopper' Harris. 

[dem bones]

Hate to publicly admit it, but I'm very fond of that cover and the book sounds terrific.

Read the Williams-Venables collaboration They Used To Play On Grass not so long back, but couldn't get it together to attempt a review. It's not especially rewarding plot-wise, but the Commoners F.C. players (working class underdogs punching above their weight, putting the big boys noses out of joint, etc.) are so deeply unpleasant they can only have been drawn from El Tel's playing career. Strange thing is, I got the feeling they were intended as sympathetic characters. Maybe Venables-via-Williams was just telling it like it is. Manager John Gallagher is a great bloke, mind.

[dem bones]

P. B. Yuill - The Bornless Keeper (Orbit,1975: orig. Futura 1974)

Blurb:
"GRUESOME, BEWILDERING AND VERY READABLE." SUNDAY EXPRESS
A drowsy summer afternoon on an island off the South Coast of Britain. A faint rustling in the undergrowth, a glimpse of the grotesquely feathered head - and the slash of razor sharp talons on naked flesh.
The Keeper vanished, the jay's chattered on in the silver pine-tops and a savagely mutilated corpse seeped blood under the ferns.
"Like The Hound Of The Baskervilles, The Bornless Keeper has an age old curse and a mysterious horror .... it is, in fact, even more frightening; and as horror closes in, you feel you are yourself running - panting - from the approaching claws." OXFORD TIMES.
"Spinetingling tension" NEWCASTLE JOURNAL

"Curious building," Maltravers said. "Exactly the right setting for a gory English-style murder."

The cover photograph for the hardback edition (as posted by Crom up top of this thread) makes more sense when you realise it is a fairly accurate depiction of the cruelly deformed Keeper in costume.

By a lucky coincidence, I completed this immediately prior to beginning Adam Nevill's The Ritual, another novel centred around an ill-prepared foursome stalked through a wilderness by someone or something lethally hostile toward trespassers. In The Bornless Keeper, the prey are an in-fighting TV documentary crew headed by newly appointed executive producer, Victoria Dryden Chambers, an impossibly strident feminist with chips on both shoulders. Victoria is at odds with director Julian Maltevers (bitchy homosexual) and Jock the perpetually pissed boatman. Inexplicably, cameraman Pugsy dotes on her as a Goddess. She exploits his devotion for all he's worth. Initially, its unlikely many readers care what happens to any one of these unlovely stereotypes provided it's unpleasant, but that may change when the killing starts.

Peacock Island is home to Lady Bennett, a fabulously wealthy recluse who has allowed no-one to set foot on her land since a tragic drowning "accident" several years ago. When she fails to haul in her fortnightly supplies, fisherman Turle Greeno defies orders to visit her decrepit mansion. He never returns. Sergeant Bob Gould, investigating his disappearance, is likewise murdered by throat-tearing, eyeball-plucking person or supernatural entity unknown. Word reaches the documentary crew who bribe Jock to ferry them out to the island. To spice up the report, Maltravers and Pugsy fake a ' phantom monk' manifestation. The Keeper sees all and, without their realising, swipes the cowl.

This reader found the sparring match between Inspector Victor Daniels and his glory-seeking superior, Superintendent Groves far preferable to the misadventures of the TV Documentary team. Groves detests outsiders, especially know-it-all London coppers, so Daniels, ex of the Met., bears the brunt of his sarcasm. Daniels transferred to the South Coast for a quiet time of it, so just his luck to wind up with an inexplicable case of multiple murders on a desolate island. As with the TV crew, Groves is ultimately revealed as a more sympathetic character than we'd been lead to suppose, almost a Cop equivalent of The Venomous Serpent's immortal pub landlord, Arthur Meggitt.

Aug 2, 2016 22:39:02 GMT cromagnonman said:

As is now well known the name P B Yuill was a pseudonym for the novelist Gordon Williams who famously wrote THE SIEGE OF TRENCHER'S FARM, on which Straw Dogs was loosely based. Curiously THE BORNLESS KEEPER regurgitates the most notorious and contentious scene from the film which wasn't actually present in the original book. This seems particularly perverse on account of Williams's own objections to the film.

This flummoxed me, too. In light of the Straw Dogs fall out, it's difficult to read it as anything other than an obscure dig at Peckinpah. It's not a pleasant scene to visualise, that's for sure.

Thanks, Crom.

[andydecker]

This sounds interesting. A pretty basic plot, but surely effictive.

I would have never picked this up, though. I had to look up what Bornless is and am not sure I understood.

[Jojo Lapin X]

Jul 21, 2018 19:20:24 GMT andydecker said:

I had to look up what Bornless is and am not sure I understood.

It means "without born."

[andydecker]

Thanks, Jojo.

[andydecker]

P. B. Yuill - The Bornless Keeper (Mcmillan UK, hc, 1974, 192 pages)

Cover: Chris Yates

Cover found on the net. Thanks to the original scanner.

P. B. Yuill is a pseudonym for Gordon Williams and Terry Venables.

[dem bones]

Turned out we had two threads for this one Andreas, so have merged them. The Chris Yates cover is classy.

[andydecker]

Jun 28, 2023 9:46:46 GMT dem bones said:

Turned out we had two threads for this one Andreas, so have merged them. The Chris Yates cover is classy.

Thanks. I missed the other one. Most of the threads I find without decent covers I have forgotten, even if I wrote or post or two. Weird.