Martin Jenson - The Echo On The Stairs

[dem bones]

Martin Jenson - An Odour Of Decay (Nel, 1975)

When three sisters are bequeathed an old, empty house they decide to move in and make it their home. Innocent of the hint of menace that lurks there …

The eldest sister, Belinda, experiences sudden strange attacks of epilepsy; Sarah, the youngest, develops a craving for sexual perversion; and Nan, normally a contented, rational person, is infected with a morbid obsession with death.

The only clue to these evil transformations lies in an ancient text which defines death as an extension of life - where the evil forces of a character are indestructible and return to infect the living.

Someone must save the sisters from the power of the dead - and save them before their own personalities are irrevocably destroyed.[/i]

Franklin Marsh

A genuine NEL horror writer! I narrowly missed getting The Village of Fear recently, but have turned up An Odour of Decay. Dating from September 1975 you can tell from the title this isn't an animals on the rampage/mad scientist extravaganza. The cover features a blurry drawing of what appears to be a rotting corpse. The blurb on the back - "A story of possession. When three sisters are bequeathed an old empty house they decide to move in and make it their home, innocent of the hint of menace that lurks there... The eldest sister, Belinda, experiences sudden strange attacks of epilepsy; Sarah, the youngest, develops a craving for sexual perversion; and Nan, normally a contented rational person, is infected with a morbid obsession with death. The only clue to these evil transformations lies in an ancient text which defines death as an extension of life - where the evil forces of a character are indestructible and return to infect the living. Someone must save the sisters from the power of the dead - and save them before their own personalities are irrevocably destroyed....."

Phew! Somehow I don't think the 126 pages Mr Jenson has to tell his story is going to live up to this hype. I'll return when I've read the thing.

*******

Delirious - but not quite delirious enough. Not enough time to really get into the characters. Terence unfortunately takes centre stage for most of the book, but there is some interesting stuff along the way - including the hysterical finale.

severance

Just finished An Odour of Decay - and I think that FM was a bit harsh on it - IMO it's the best '70s Horror' I've read this year, just edging out Brian Ball's The Venomous Serpent. The writing is excellent, the characters are as fleshed out as you're going to get in 126 pages, and the tension is impressively ramped up during the final night in the house. Perhaps all the disparate events climaxing simultaneously was a bit of a stretch, but it made for a superb, unflinching denouement.

Can't wait to get The Village of Fear and The Echo on the Stairs if this is anything to go by. This gets a 7.75 on my overly-complicated rating scale.

Franklin Marsh

Marsh harsh? Glad you enjoyed it Sev. I hope to return to The Odour fairly soon.

demonik

"There's a whiff of evil about. I can always tell".

I'm with Sev on this. What An Odour Of Decay lacks in characterization it makes up for in atmosphere and the main players at least have enough quirks to differentiate one from the other. Pacey, too: the three sisters are poleaxed by the pong early on in the proceedings (none of that subtle Jamesian malarkey for Jenson) and each have been possessed by the spirit of Alistair Tait by the time you hit chapter two. Their ensuing personality disorders are increasingly unsettling; Belinda suffers spectacular epileptic fits, Nan takes on Tait's heartfelt belief that life is an unnecessary encumbrance when there's more fun to be had dead and meek, hippy-ish student Sarah gets into exploring the joys of sadism in a big way with a dis-likable hitchhiker and Nan's hapless boyfriend Lance ("a pop-orientated, bell-bottomed, pun-dropping oaf with long hair that did not suit him") copping the worst of her excesses.

Sensible Belinda's sensible bloke, Terence - a perma-tanned, grey, forty-something square - senses there's something evil afoot and gets to the bottom of it all without too much trouble thanks to chance meetings with a boozy Priest and a dolly-bird swinger he meets on his pub-crawls. For my money. the real star - decrepit Alistair Tate apart - is the evil-reeking stench itself which kicks up something scandalous; sheer essence of rotting corpse or, as Mr. Douglas the caretaker would have it, "it was like dung and cats pee combined, with a touch of tear gas thrown in".

Thanks, Jerrylad!

[severance]

The Village of Fear by Martin Jenson, New English Library, April 1974

Wellesford is much like any other quiet, little English Village, with its cheery postman, its rows of quaint, white-fronted cottages, its elegant church with stout steeple, its Conservative Club...

We're slowly but ever so surely submerged into this little world of parish magazines and boiled eggs for breakfast - rural England in the 1970s. Introduced in turn to Colonel Harry Rodgers, president of the aforementioned Wellesford Conservative Club (and his sagging wife, Dolly); Dave Marriot, manager of the local Social Club in his pale green silk suit "like an affluent bookmaker"; and shameless self-publicist and founder of the Wellesford Film Society, Tom Radcliffe complete with flares, peroxide blond wig - like Andy Warhol's but lacking the pre-fabricated Pop Art "honesty" of Warhol's 'do' - and "young, bright and promiscuous" live-in 'friend'; Goldie of the "very large naked breasts".

And then there is Austin Trench, M.A., Wellesford's greying but wiry and well-tended, fifty-five year old vicar - his still powerful six-foot frame the result of years of self-denial. When we first meet Trench he seems very much your average country vicar, seated at his desk in his study, listening to the birds and the "faint rustling of the ivy" around the vicarage, at the same time drinking in the scent of "freshly clipped grass" from the churchyard outside his window.

But what is he scribbling obsessively in his notebooks? Why is he so nervous about the delivery of the small, black book in the brown paper parcel? And why does he suffer seizures and vomit up his breakfast egg when he communes with the Holy Spirit?

Jenson turns things up just one notch with every chapter.

It transpires that the Reverend Trench has discovered an ancient document in the corner of his crypt, a prophetic sermon which foretells how; "One day, men with unruly hair, wild eyed and lost in drink and other looseness" will threaten the peace and quiet, not to mention the moral rectitude, of this his little corner of England. Clearly, in Trench's mind, a reference to those noisy, long-haired youngsters and their "sl*ttish" girlfriends who hang about outside the village Social Club of an evening. Furthermore, says our long-departed prophet of doom, we should "beware the falseness of corrupt brotherhood, the black laughter and the leperous wine of the hell-bent kinship". Obviously the local Tories, who've just applied to extend their drinking licence (spot on there, I'd say...).

And what's worse, that arrogant young trendy, Tom Radcliffe, is planning on screening Bunuel's "blasphemous" Viridiana to an audience of naively unsuspecting villagers little prepared for the tide of filth which is about to engulf them cinematically speaking.

Radcliffe is, it must be said, a particularly irritating and self-serving character who speaks in headlines - "Raver Gives Rabies To Rapist!" - and has a habit of addressing people as, "baby".

So what's a reactionary, sexually-repressed flail of the Lord to do cast adrift in such Godless times? Listen to the voices in his head of course...

In Chapter 3, far and away my favourite so far, we're introduced to the Yellow Helmets - where would any self-respecting NEL title of the 1970s be without at least one biker gang to spice up the proceedings?

The Helmets aren't exactly your typical Angels from Hell though. The fifteen members - "ten of whom had their own bikes" - meet up each evening in the car park of the Social Club to share a couple of cans of shandy and enjoy a few games of tag and blind man's buff. Their leader is Gunner an ex-Hell's Angel who suffers from alopecia.

The ensuing showdown between hellfire Trench, a kind of unholy cross between Travis Bickle and Derek Nimmo, and our not-so-wayward angels is worth the purchase price alone, for my money.

"Return to the place where you learned your savagery!" (Coventry apparently), intones the silvery-headed, bible-toting 'evan-gilante'.

"Bugger off, Vicar!" reply the Helmets from behind a hail of shandy cans.

And so onto the bar of the Conservative Club for a confrontation with Bunty Carmichael - "one of the louder ladies who attended the club regularly" - and a bed-hopping, buck-toothed builder's wife who thinks everything is "creepy".

At chapter's end, we leave Austin Trench, M.A., brow-beaten but unbowed, back in his study consulting a copy of 'The Urban Guerilla: His Methods' and planning his Divine retribution.

Thus far it's little short of New English gold. Strangely sinister and oddly unsettling, but I couldn't really explain why. Not entirely what I was expecting, but really rather good.

The above was written by Steve on the old board many moons ago, and after just finishing it myself, I'm not sure what else I can say that Steve hasn't already said better!. After thoroughly enjoying Jenson's An Odour of Decay, this is perhaps a step down, but I love the depth of characterisation he can get into a mere 128 pages, even of insignificant villagers. The only real thing that bugs me is it wasn't long enough - with just three pages to go, Trench was still wiping out villagers with no one any the wiser, and I couldn't help thinking 'how the hell is Jenson going to wrap this up in a satisfying manner? - maybe he had the same thoughts because in truth he doesn't but that's only a slight blemish on another cracking little 70s NEL horror.

[dem bones]

Martin Jenson - The Echo On The Stairs (Nel, March 1977)

Tony Masero

Blurb
AN OLD LADY DIES IN BRUTAL CIRCUMSTANCES. A YOUNG BOY IS DRIVEN TO SUICIDE. A SCIENTIST IS KILLED BEHIND THE WHEEL OF HIS CAR.

These events cast a shadow over the lives of Eric, Peter and Ronald, three friends who are drawn deeper into the living horror of a punishment that claws at them from the past.

A novel of harrowing suspense and mounting terror, the story of a guilt that refuses to die and a vengeance that cannot be assuaged.


An Odour Of Decay
Does what it says on the tin, really. The Echo on the Stairs, is about three friends whose lives take a turn for the better - they get new girlfriends and at work things are on the up.
But then inevitability things start to go wrong, each one has someone important to them die, and their careers take a nose dive. Yes, it's all down to a shared guilty past and of course they have to pay for it!

An odd choice of title though, it refers to a brief part of the climax. - Dr. Terror, Vault MK I

Self-styled muckraking journalist Eric Kane has just had his rock solid exposé of a corrupt councillor censored by his editor, Barry Maxwell. Maxwell explains that Councillor Laithwaite's weakness for schoolgirls and beefy rugger chaps is not what the public wish to read about, that under his editorship, The Bulletin will stick rigidly to a policy of "facts, lucid reportage and total avoidance of innuendo" (also known as the Vault approach in reverse). We suspect he will not be in his job very long and anyway, whoever heard of an editor named Maxwell?

Kane is so miffed at having his beloved work defaced that, failing to cop off with fellow scribe Jenny Clayton, he rounds up his two oldest friends for a fierce lunchtime session: Peter Bellamy is a schoolteacher whose numbskull pupils are driving him to frenzy, Dr. Ronald McQuaid has spent the past decade in relative penury as he develops the ultimate male contraceptive. Each, in their own way, is frustrated in his career. As the drink flows, Eric suggests that maybe it was time for all three to consider marriage. Peter ruefully laughs that one off with "Guilt will keep us bachelors until the day we die." Whatever that's about, it does not go down well with his companions.

Chapter two, and we find each member of the trio on his uppers. Kane is power- sharing with a declining Maxwell meaning he can publish sordid material to his heart's content. Bellamy finally has a child prodigy to mould, and, after so many false dawns, Dr. McQuaid's vaccine is ready to fly. All that "guilt" stuff is forgotten as each decides it's time to find himself a woman. What could possibly go really horribly wrong?

To be continued ..

[dem bones]

It's shaping up now. Kane hires a fantasy secretary, Mary Young ("visual clichés abounded, the kind he had pored over in his fathers hidden cache of spicy novels", etc.). She comes from Braintree. Romance blossoms even if she's a die hard feminist and there'll be no funny business until she decides the time is right. On the plus side, Mary is sweet on his long-widowed, 70 year old mum, Ethel, who lives alone save for Barney the Dalmation in a cottage over Eversham way. The two get along famously and Mary takes to visiting alone now Eric is so tied up in his work.

Meanwhile Dr. Ronald McQuaid has found time enough away from his colleague and fellow workaholic Jack Ferguson at the Parkfield Vaccine Research Labs to embark on a relationship with a shy, petite blonde named Anne.

Peter Bellamy is in his element nurturing boy genius Tony Reece, a deeply religious lad of sixteen. Bellamy is initially delighted when the star pupil confides an ethical dilemma: he has been seeing a woman and temptation is playing havoc with his beliefs. The tutor is at least in a position to appreciate the youth's struggle, having surprised his friends - and, most of all, himself - by somnambulating into a loving, if chaste, relationship with Tracey from accounts. In fact, for all that Mary took hold of something that wasn't the gear-stick as Eric drove her home after ther job interview, months in and not one of the relationships has yet culminated in a wrestling match on the bed. It's not as though the girls are anti-sex. One of them is keeping her hand in by corrupting a minor.

Mary in Elsie's garden picking flowers, the pair chatting away happily like lifelong friends. But suddenly Mary's mood does a 180° swing, as does the Dalmation's. When the old lady shouts at him to stop growling, Barney bites off her finger. Mary remains impassive, ignoring Elsie's pleas for help even as the dog drags her down and tears at her face and neck. It's all so out of nowhere as to be genuinely shocking. Thirty pages in and Jenson has hit his An Odour Of Decay stride.

Eric Kane is distraught at the grisly death of his mum. Mary explains that she called and, getting no answer, slipped around back of the cottage to find the mutilated corpse. McQuaid and Bellamy find his company unbearable and do their best to avoid him until he's over the initial shock. They too will suffer crippling bereavements soon enough. Whatever the men's shared guilty secret, their girlfriends seem to know all about it even if we readers don't.

Up to page 66 (of 125), and every indication of another winner.

[killercrab]

This and Odour of Decay have always been on my wants list. ;D

KC ( who just finished Straub's Shadowland - all 445 pages of it!) Enjoyed it too.

[dem bones]

Sept 2, 2011 21:40:57 GMT killercrab said:

KC ( who just finished Straub's Shadowland - all 445 pages of it!)

* faints *

Jenson's one of the home grown NEL greats for sure. The Village Of Fear and An Odour Of Decay threads weren't doing anything much, so it makes good sense to amalgamate all three into one Jenson shrine?

Jack Fergusun driving home after a long day at the lab. A woman meditating in the middle of a lonely road steps in front of his car. She laughs as he swerves to avoid her and ploughs straight through a fence and over an embankment. The woman is Anne, his colleague Dr. McQuaid's girlfriend, who has been freaking out her man with mood-swings every bit as dramatic as Mary Young's. "Shy and kittenish one moment, a bleak-eyed evangelist the next." Ferguson is the best part dead before his petrol tank explodes to make sure.

Eric Kane is still having no luck in persuading Mary that they really should be sharing a bed ("He had switched topics, hoping to approach the dirty talk by a rear entrance" !!!). It's the same story with Bellamy and Tracy-from-accounts, but she's put on quite a show for his protégé - could be that she's related to Goldie of the "very large naked breasts" from Village Of Fear. Young Tony Reece eventually succumbs to her charms and is so upset at his transgression that he tops himself. Mission accomplished. And still the three friends have yet to catch on that there is a conspiracy afoot and their recently acquired fiancees are implicated in all three tragedy's.

damn! only sixty pages to go. i'm wondering if 'Martin Jenson' was a pseudonym? if not, it's our loss that he doesn't seem to have written anything else.

[killercrab]

* faints *

Yes I know and it was still easier to read than The Wood! I've just ordered a penny copy of Ghost Story , so whilst I'm waiting I'm reading The Doll Who Ate His Mother. I find moving from one writing style to another jarring sometimes , in this case Straub breaks up his chapter into convenient bite size pieces whilst Campbell writes one long chapter after another. My hit and run reading style suits the former I find.



damn! only sixty pages to go. i'm wondering if 'Martin Jenson' was a pseudonym? if not, it's our loss that he doesn't seem to have written anything else.

A Jenson shrine is fitting - like Mike Linaker he seems to have only written 3 *horrors* which is a shame. I've fond memories of discovering Village Of Fear here at the Vault and reading a gen-uine Nel horror at last !

[dem bones]

Will be interested to learn what you make of The Doll Who Ate His Mother. I know you will have a good time with Ghost Story. It's still the only Straub novel I've read, not sure why that is because, for a relatively lumpy book, it never once drags or, at least, didn't for me.

It's pluses all the way with Echo On The Stairs which exceeded my high expectations, and deservedly joins Falling Angel and The Woman In Black on list of personal outstanding supernatural horror novels read in 2011. That last sixty pages felt like twenty.

Kane, Bellamy and McQuaid are in pieces. Inexplicable errors and misjudgements have seen each of their brilliant careers implode in the wake of the tragedies, and now all three stare unemployment in the face. Peter Bellamy, who believes them cursed, visits Miss Preedy, a fortune teller of repute, but no sooner has the session began than the old woman briefly glimpses something that persuades her she'd rather not be reading his bumps after all. She throws him out telling him never to return.

The following day, Preedy encounters a beautiful young girl in a churchyard. The medium recognises her as the ghostly gatecrasher from the previous night, though, thankfully, minus the aura of utter malevolence. The girl assures Miss Preedy no harm will befall her, provided she stay away from her home this night. Preedy, who knows when she's in the presence of the vengeful dead, readily complies.

Eric invites his two old friends and their partners around to a house-warming weekend at his new place in Kineton. It will be an opportunity for the boys to at last meet each others' girlfriends, except the ladies all cry off, blaming prior engagements with "an old chum" or the ever-reliable "sick relative." Mary promises she'll round up the others and drive them back by evening.

In the absence of their ladies, the tortured trio at last speak openly of their dreadful deed of twenty years ago, the guilt which has haunted them ever since. Is all the misery that's befallen them of late some kind of supernatural retribution?

The pubs are shut. The women still haven't arrived. Eric, Donald and Peter spend a morose time of it, worrying themselves sick that there's been an accident, eventually drinking themselves into alcoholic oblivion. Once they've retired to bed, Peter Bellamy is the first to hear the echo on the stairs ...

To detail the events of the final thirteen pages would be spoiler too many, but like The Woman In Black, that you've a fair idea of what's coming doesn't detract from the creepiness of the thing as events move relentlessly toward their inevitable doom laden conclusion. The ghost is brilliant and Jenson even bucks a 'seventies NEL tradition to deliver an ending worthy of what's gone before.

Pop culture references: the extreme fashion statements of that swinging cat Lance in An Odour Of Decay are sadly missed, but passing references to Benson & Hedges, "dolly birds" (of course), de Sade's Justine and Pink Floyd on the stereo in Regents Wine Bar, Leamington.

Recommended without hesitation.

[killercrab]

will be interested to learn what you make of The Doll Who Ate His Mother

Kind of weird but in a good way and definitely a page turner so far! Hell it's a classic right?

KC