David Holman & Larry Price - Fleshbait

[dem bones]

David Holman & Larry Price - Fleshbait (NEL, July, 1979)

Blurb
A young girl overwhelmed and drowned - by fish
A paddling child swept out to sea - by fish
Boats smashed and sunk - by fish.
As the horror spreads along the holiday beaches, so do the questions. Has chemical pollution affected the sea creatures, turning them into savage, motiveless killers? Or have the fish, so long hunted and killed for sport, turned against their tormentors?
Is this the final, apocalyptic revenge of a species?

Another I will have to come back to. Inspired by Jaws, possibly even madder than Piranhas. A leak from a nuclear power plant sees the Cornish coast (and an express train) come under attack from mutant marine life. Need I say more? Yes, is the answer to that one. 160 pages that flies by at the speed of flash fiction. Words cannot express my loathing of Bobby the fucking friendly dolphin. The fishes' macabre underwater tableaux at 'the slab' will stay with me beyond the grave.

[dem bones]

Mark Neilson, a professor of Zoology in his early thirties, is brooding over the senseless death of his best pal, Mike, recently drowned. Why was his body covered in sucker-like love bites, as if a shoal of tiddlers had kissed him to death? It is a tragedy which so consumes his every waking hour that he hardly notices Kathy Wilding, his buxom marine biologist colleague and on-off girlfriend, even in her tight t-shirt and denims. And then - more fishy business. A young woman is horribly drowned in a tank of cod: an angler is strangled by a conger eel. Best of all, an infant is swept away to the fishes base of operations below the sea. Seems the boys at the local nuclear plant have been cavalier in their disposal of toxic waste and the fast-mutating denizens of the deep have had enough. Even the basking sharks are up for it. Naturally, this being the holiday season, it takes a few thousand deaths before the authorities acknowledge there is anything wrong, by which time the good people of Cornwall are facing Armageddon by herring.

On the face of it, this might be the most ABC 'when animal attacks' ever - just another Rats clone, light on sleaze and violence, but somehow, utterly compelling (give-or-take the occasional far out innovation like Worms, they all pretty much conform to the Herbert blueprint). Though the bad sex content is non-existent - just a yawn and you'll miss it non-kinky clinch between the male and female lead - that Holman & Price dare allude to man-love in a non-sniggering way surely qualifies Fleshbait as the sub-genre's Brokeback Mountain.

[severance]

Ah, "Fleshbait," I remember reading this a few years ago - in fact I'm certain I created a thread for it, must be at the old place. Absolutely hated it, to be honest, but Dem makes it all sound so much more entertaining than I remember. Good to see a few NEL's being read, must have a crack at some more of Brian Balls' work.

[dem bones]

Here you go, Sev: from the old place, Oct. 11 2006 (!!!)

severance said:

Fleshbait by David Holman and Larry Pryce - NEL, 1979

Just finished this, and if anyone hasn't yet read this, or is thinking of doing so soon - don't bother, it's lousy, uninspired, one-dimensional and is several hours of reading time that I'd like back!!

For god's sake the bloody fish aren't even interested in devouring humanity, which would have given us some decent death scenes at least, all they do is drown - with the authors impying that with their new-found intelligence the fish just want to get their own back!

How on earth did this take two people to write

Am I being too hard on this? Did anyone else enjoy it??

It was the first in a 4 book animal rampage read I'm embarking on, the others being Linaker's Scorpion: Second Generation, Sharman's The Cats and Herbert's Lair - I sincerely hope its the lowpoint!!!!!


edit - plus there's no sex, no descriptions of female breasts - the authors surely had no clue of what's expected!!

[erebus]

A bloke strangled by a Conger eel, Well that sold it to me straight away. Going to have to get this one. I thought it was a basic Piranha attacks book, I didn't know all the other fish got involved.
Care to elaborate on this underwater tableaux at the slab Dem !

[dem bones]

Mar 22, 2014 14:10:54 GMT erebus said:

A bloke strangled by a Conger eel, Well that sold it to me straight away. Going to have to get this one. I thought it was a basic Piranha attacks book, I didn't know all the other fish got involved.
Care to elaborate on this underwater tableaux at the slab Dem !

Hi, Mr. E. Not to give too much away, the nuclear waste liberates the creative talents of the ocean dwellers and the results .... well, that particular sequence belongs in a more accomplished novel. To be honest, Sev's assessment is likely the more accurate: I came to Fleshbait off the back of Orgy Of Bubastis so just about anything easy on the brain would have seen me alright. But if you're in this game for the sex and gore, it might be better to seek your kicks elsewhere. Much as I enjoyed it, ain't nothing in Fleshbait to frighten the horses.

[erebus]

Ah, Gotcha. Well although I am titled Erebus here ( only thing unique that popped into my head when I was registering ) I don't tend to go for the books purely that have the gore. In fact I've waded through some proper clunkers in the past. And I do like my nature strikes back novels, also I consider it a badge of honor if Ive completed a got through a bad novel so I'm still going to put it on the wants Dem.

[kooshmeister]

Great, another one to add to my list.

"Shit! You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads! Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that can't be done. Would you remind me what I pay you people for? Honestly? Throw me a bone here! What do we have?"
"Sea bass."
"Riiiight..."
"They are mutated sea bass."
"Really? Are they ill-tempered?"
"Absolutely."