Graham King - Killtest

[dem bones]

Graham King - Killtest (Arrow, 1978).

Blurb:
SUBJECT: Killtest Inc. Initial reports confirm multi-million dollar profits for clandestine Mafia/Triad investment in gladiatorial (repeat: gladiatorial) combat.

Secret 'entertainments' of unspeakably bestial and sadistic nature staged with help of ruthless, ultra-efficient security. Combats are viewed by audience in situ and simultaneously piped to closed-circuit TV and cinema screens nationwide.

Killtest Inc, must be smashed. Request instant action/ investigation. Imperative use best operative. Slush fund cleared (HL/TS) and unlimited.

When Special Branch agent Kipling Leering's cover is blown by the Soviets, he's ghosted back home to England for a new assignment: to infiltrate Killtest Inc. and identify the prime movers behind a global phenomenon. Killtest have recently staged another of their financially lucrative gladiatorial contests in Paranugua before an audience of 800 lucky, extremely wealthy perverts. As an appetizer for the main event, said ghouls were treated to 'Electrochess', the world's first live or die chess competition, the winner walking away with a fortune, the loser done to death with a cattle prod. These Torture & death as entertainment extravaganzas are proving a smash hit with cable tv audiences and subscribers to extreme S & M magazine with titles like Cain, but the government appear reluctant to condemn their barbaric activities or even acknowledge their existence. This is no great surprise.The readers are a step ahead of Leering as we know that, by invitation of the Mafia, Henschel Oppenheimer, a corrupt CIA agent, is now heading up the Killtest operation. Oppenheimer's time working for Agency was well spent in that he has accrued incriminating files on anyone likely to stand in his way. The Killtest board of directors include Dr. Carl Lethnal, a Nazi war criminal, as head of finance; Frank McSwiggan, Irish mercenary as chief of security: General Ton of the Triads as chief backer, and, the brains behind the games, Georges Mrabet.

"We're pirating the satellite facility from Unicorn Data. Their signals will be in trouble but by the time they wake up our transmission will be finished.'
'Fine, Georges. And the acts? You're not running short of Dadins are you?'
'No way, Hensch. Triple bill, including two women in the final bout. The four other men around the table seemed to lean forward, even General Ton, and Mrabet, for the first time that day, felt the intoxication of importance. He enjoyed the moment and sipped the dregs of his mint tea.
'Yes,' he resumed, `two women against a man. Real raunchy."
"Ah, we've had that before,' McSwiggan cut in.
"Fools rush in !' Mrabet said with a smile. 'There's a catch. I thought it up myself. Each of the gladiators is armed with a whip - they've been training for the past two weeks. And on each of them, right over the heart, will be taped a blister of plastic explosive, primed with a detonator. One crack of a whip in the right place and – WHAM ! - the loser won't know anything about it.'

Killtest are aware that they've been infiltrated by a limey and McSwiggan is sworn to stop him "like a Hiroshima watch." Things, we suspect/ hope, are about to get very messy ...
To be continued ...

[pulphack]

"Kipling Leering"? Absolutely splendid name - is this author Chris Wood or LJ in disguise, as that is one hell of a 'Confessions' name!

[andydecker]

This is one of the first english books I ever bought. (A Moorcock, a Spillane and a Colin Forbes of all writers being the others.) I remember hazily that I never finished it because I thought it boring. Or something. Not enough Rollerball?

This was a one-off from the writer, or?

Regardless I am very interested what you think about it!

[dem bones]

Jan 11, 2013 10:04:53 GMT pulphack said:

"Kipling Leering"? Absolutely splendid name - is this author Chris Wood or LJ in disguise, as that is one hell of a 'Confessions' name!

His friends call him 'Kippy' so probably for the best he doesn't have many.

Exploding tits to the contrary, LJ involvement is extremely unlikely - we're up to p.60 (of 270) and not even a hint of bad sex - but in light of recent revelations, there's not much you can put past Christopher Wood, though I think he's innocent on this occasion.

i've a weakess for these Rollerball rip-offs and futuristic extreme sport novels, Killerbowl, The Running Man, etc. Early days, but am enjoying Killtest. It's necessitated eight murders, but the next event, organised by the Triad arm of the organisation, is to be staged aboard The Santa Coronado off the coast of Hong Kong. Triad chief Lao Man and his hoods are expecting the British agent to gatecrash, indeed they'll be very disappointed if he doesn't as they want him dead and buried before he can cause them any headaches.

[dem bones]

Just passed p100 and it reads like H. H. Ewers' Tomato Sauce gone corporate.

The Killtest on the high seas is the most financially lucrative to date. MC for the occasion is desperately unhilarious Mel Tauber, a former rock impresario whose roster included Going Down On Mother, Children's Children and Cow Burp. Before his embezzlement bust he was talked of as future manager of the Rolling Stones. Anyhow, this one is billed as "The Eighth World Series of the Killtest Games", and the first contest features physically mismatched gladiators - or "Dodins" ("Do Anything, Die If Necessary") - wrestling on a board suspended over a swimming pool. Each man has his left leg encased in a cement cast. Next, Welsh giant Huw Gwent becomes the first ever combatant to survive two Killtests when he pulps his opponent's head with a mace. Finally, the literally explosive whip girls versus lash boy show-stopper (guess who wins?). Contrary to expectation, Leering makes no attempt at infiltrating the crowd, but his much admired colleague, Ludovic Bernard is less circumspect and his disguise - 'compulsive hamburger-eater American' - is so rubbish even Frank Cannon would have thought twice. His protracted torture-murder is less pleasant than even that of Valentina Lorrosco, a Mexican hooker duped into participation in fabled Killtest snuff gang-bang, Necrolust

Leering studies the FBI file on The Origins, Growth and Commercial Exploitation of Crypto-Sadism & the Killtest Phenomenon, a "memoir and compilation by Ludovic Bernard assisted by Samuel Humbert." It is clear that CIA involvement extends far beyond Oppenheimer, and the FBI advise that MI6 feed them misinformation throughout their investigation .....

[dem bones]

Got this and Chetwynd-Hayes' The Psychic Detective on the go just now, and, against expectation, am enjoying Killtest far above Ronald's romp.

Special Branch's Anti-Crypto Sadism Unit - comprising Kippy, trench-coat man Sam Hubert, computer wizard Ellis Haversham, team leader Stan Pringle and frosty tea-lady Angela Hotchkiss - operate from the offices of SunFun Holidays Ltd in the Haymarket. Unbeknown to them, the Universal Personnel Improvement Institute around the corner in Leicester Square, is Britain's Killtest recruitment centre where Jay Simak and his business partner, Winnie 'Miss Whiplash' Brodie, a former brothel Madame likely based on Cynthia 'Luncheon Vouchers' Payne, lure the desperate and gullible into a glam life in the movies. Sado fans have proved more discerning than anyone gave them credit for, and Simak is under instruction from Oppenheimer to provide less brawn, more tits and teeth for the forthcoming Grand Canaria games - preferably busty Amazonian types like Patsy Kemper and Rusty Fender, the undisputed stars of the eighth world series. Winnie suggests Susan Brooke, a strikingly beautiful young woman but for an alarming deformed nose, who is prepared to do anything if only it will pay for a name plastic surgeon. When Susan is beaten up by her boyfriend, she tells all to the police. Pringle recruits agent Hilary Brooke to impersonate Susan (she gamely agrees to an unflattering nose implant) while Sam and Kippy are sent to the Canaries to keep her from harm. Unfortunately, Sam is attacked by Triads and stuffed in a morgue drawer - Kippy arrives just in time to save him - and Hilary is left alone to prepare for her Gladiatorial battle with June Harrison, a frighteningly deranged misanthrope ...

[dem bones]

Eighty pages to go, and am very pleased with Killtest up to now. Much as I liked Gary K. Wolf's Killerbowl, this is far the more imaginative novel of the two and King's imaginary pain mags and pseudo-history of extreme S&M via the late Ludovic Bernard's dossier add an air of "authenticity." I bet he enjoyed writing it.

The Grand Canaria Games are a riot. After the warm up acts - Frisbee (the combatants are given a stack of razor-tipped discs to launch at one another) and Gallows (object of exercise: lynch your opponent) - undercover agent Hilary and a drugged up June Harrison engage in a vicious grapple which will see one of them boiled alive in plastic, unless ... Armed only with a Immobilisation-B Needle Gun straight from the Lionel Fanthorpe improbable gadget armoury, Kippy Leering, who has suddenly metamorphosised into James Bond, saves the day by stunning both women with darts then exhorting the cheated crowd to demand their money back. By the time order is restored, Leering has made off with the ladies. Heads will roll among the Killtest security forces over this very public humiliation! But thwarting one Gladiatorial bout and gathering much incriminating documentation isn't going to put the sultans of snuff out of business overnight, and a new strategy is called for. What if the Anti-Crypto Sadism Unit were to launch a rival enterprise?

[dem bones]

With Hilary Brooke on the critical list after taking six direct hits from Kippy's Immobilisation-B gun, Stan Pringle belatedly decides he really must set the boys in the lab to finding an antidote. The strain of too many years working at espionage is clearly beginning to tell on the anti crypto-sadism unit, their leader in particular. To bring Killtest to its knees, Pringle and Sir Finlay Watkins - a chap from his club, and, according to Leering, "the man who brought TV down to the level it is today" - hatch a hare-brained scheme to launch a rival games, Death Blow, operating from Mexico and fronted by Martin Bormann! Oppenheimer suspects a feeble FBI attempt at penetrating the Ring (codename for the Killtest inner circle) and rooting out the major players in his superior organisation, but Bormann - can he really be who he claims? - has made it clear he would rather amalgamate with Killtest than compete against them. When Frank McSwiggan, Killtest chief of security, suffers the embarrassment of having his phone tapped, Oppenheimer is forced to concede that Lethnal's supposed fellow Nazi war criminal has his act together and poses a threat which must be eliminated. He enters into negotiations, confident that he'll easily double-cross Bormann, or whoever he is, when the need arises.

A South American conference is held at "a down town office used seven years before by British soccer officials in Mexico Cith for the 1970 World Cup finals." The actor provided by Sir Finlay Watson is so convincing that even Lethnal, who'd known Bormann thirty years earlier, is convinced that his old colleague has cheated death. Oppenheimer isn't so sure, even when the fingerprints check out (the anonymous actor - who would later refuse an OBE for his part in bringing down Killtest in favour of retaining anonymity - wears customised flesh-coloured latex gloves). The renegade CIA man is losing confidence in his colleagues. Three of McSwiggan's crack security team have been kidnapped by Death Blow as has Killtest Games champion Huw Gwent, Mrabet has run out of decent ideas, and, of the girls provided by Simak provided for the Grand Canaria debacle, one had no tits and both evidently suffered heart attacks before getting properly to grips. His empire is crumbling and neither the Mafia or the Triads are tolerant of failure. Maybe a merger with this sharp Nazi guy might be the way forward? The net tightens.

[dem bones]

All finished now.

Kippy and Sam Hubert recruit a Limehouse junkie to lure the Triad into the clutches of the police. The addict lets it be known that he's a dossier on Martin Bormann: The Wilderness Years which he'll trade for a months supply of heroin. A rendezvous is arranged in Charlie Brown's (a perennially seedy pub on the West India Dock Road, seating arrangements: two park benches. Sadly, it's since fallen victim to bastard "regeneration" of the area). Three Chinese are taken, a fourth escaping with a stash of spurious documents as intended. But it's not all good news. Lao Man has kidnapped the desperately ill Hilary from her hospital bed as collateral against the special forces pulling a fast one at forthcoming Killtest Games masterminded by Bormann. These will be staged aboard a super-tanker, The Gudrun Atlas, moored off the Scottish coast. Killtest Inc are be now so paranoid, McSwiggan has the ship mined and primed to explode at the first sign of funny business. The Games begin. The first, brilliantly faked by another two from Sir Finlay's stable, is a full-on chainsaw battle to the "death". Even the Killtest hardcore are moved to puke their appreciation. Nothing fake about 'Acid Pie' as this is one of Mrabet's sickest snuff fantasies made flesh. Four clowns, six custard pies each, one in every box top-layered with vitriol. We never get to find out what was planned for the Huw Gwent versus four babes orgy as by then Bormann has strayed off part, the ruse is rumbled and all aboard get to participate in their very own death conflict ....

Was quietly hopeful for Killtest and it didn't disappoint. Plenty of horror content sprinkled throughout, and the (decent) ending came as a surprise. File under: Rollerball for the terminally kinky.