Petrina Crawford - Seeds Of Evil (Five Star, 1972, Lancer 1967)
"The evil that men do lives after them..." Joanna Bruce had heard those words, of course, but she had no idea how true they were-or how the truth could change the course of her life. She had no idea of the depths of evil to which man could sink, nor of the dangerous heritages one can leave behind him... But she was to learn. Hired abruptly as companion to warped, bitter old Martin Crask, Joanna was thrust into a new and alien environment. The old Cornish mansion was a veritable lair of evil...and Joanna gradually became aware of its nefarious secrets. But could she learn the ultimate secret in time to escape with her sanity...and her life? It begins with the Captain burst in on his woman and a soldier (or is it an artist?) romping on his four poster with predictably dire consequences for the lovers.
Next we're at Kilburn Park tube station in the present day, and young Joanna Bruce is buying a ticket to Slough when she encounters an irascible old man in a wheelchair blasting out his nurse who quits on the spot. Jo, being a kind girl, calms him down and he offers her a job as his full time companion on his Cornish estate. He is Martin Crask, a big noise in the tin industry, and despite her misgivings, Jo needs the money. But for her Aunt Rose and Paul Dickson, her author boyfriend, she is alone in the world and impoverished especially as she's keeping Paul while he writes his novel. Aunt Rose doesn't think much of his layabout ways or his talent:
"Now if he wrote for the telly like Coronation Street, that'd be different .... or Emergency Ward 10. Or even radio like the Archers - about real people." So Jo takes the job and moves to Penzance. All goes reasonably well at first: Crask keeps his temper in check but still she feels .... uncomfortable. First Joanne hears herself being discussed by Rogers, the manservant and housekeeper Mrs. Hobart.
"Why not let him have his fun? He pays for it after all, and she's nothing to us."
"I haven't seen him like this before", said Mrs. Hobart. "There's something we don't know about, you mark my words well. Then Mrs. Hobart explains to Jo that she has the run of the grounds, but not to stray beyond the barbed wire fence as they don't want any more "accidents" ....
Jo is becoming more uneasy with each development. Mrs. Hobart has informed her that certain rooms are out of bounds to everyone but Mr. Crask and her natural curiosity is playing her up. As yet her employer hasn't shown any indication that he's about to chase her around the bedroom in his wheelchair, but he has asked her to alter her appearance as her skirt is too short; "It may not be extreme in London, but it is here, for me." And he'd prefer her to wear a blonde wig.
When a mysterious American visitor calls with a proposal for the old boy, Crask flies into one of his rages and bars him from the estate. Then he insists Jo takes him over to what's left of the burnt wing of the house. She asks him how long ago the fire was:
"A very long time. At the end of my life."
Jo's costume crisis is eventually resolved - through a potent mixture of spiked food and wine, she's completely made-over as "Mrs. Helen Crask". And Martin Crask miraculously regains the ability to walk ...
End Of Year Spoiler Special
Probably the last book I'll read this year and what a bizarre and hugely entertaining one to bow out on. Gothic Romance? You know you've left Barbara Cartland territory way behind you even before you hit the incongruous reference to the Moors Murders. The undercurrent of sexual perversion, never far from the surface (all that kinky dressing up), suddenly moves stage centre with Jo's discovery of a two-way mirror looking into her bathroom - Crask has been having a voyeuristic ogle at her all along! Throw madness and multiple murders into the mix and it's like a low-rent
Psycho, minus the transvestism but plus drugs. As Constable Turpin surmises when he pays a call on the rancid old duffer and demands to see Miss Bruce, "Gawd! She must be stoned out of her mind!"
Chanter, set on reviving the tin-mines, teams up with retired cop Tregarn who has always had his suspicions about how the real Helen Crask met her death and confides to the American that he believes the widower to be responsible for a whole series of unexplained disappearances and fatal "accidents" since the Great War. Together they break into the mine beneath the burnt wing where they make a grim discovery:
In the brilliant light of the torches the faces grinned at him without mirth. They were in different stages of dissolution. Some shreds of skin and flesh still clung to the bones, but the eyes had gone, rotted or eaten away. What was left was white or shiny green, not dusty death, slimy death. And now that Crask has decided our Jo is an "adulteress", she must die too ...
To cap it all, the author has even thrown in a magnificent
bash "the Smoke" moment! After Crask's cleaners hear a scream from an upstairs window, Mrs. Tebbett is all for informing P.C. Turpin, but Mrs. Griggs laughs in her face: "She's no concern of ours ... you know what those Lunnon girls are like - no skirts and no morals. No better than they should be - else why is she living with old Crask?"
Mrs. Tebbett isn't convinced. What if she's being held prisoner?
"You've been watching the telly too much. Things like that happen in Lunnon but they don't happen here."
Has anybody got
Lovers Mist?
pulphackyeah, but dem, don't you always ask them to wear a blonde wig? i know i do... (gets coat)
this sounds a cracker, and being five star any indication that it might be from the bill baker stable? i've never come across that name before, but anything is possible in bakerworld.
tell you one thing, though, aunt rose is still a spot-on characterisation... i do four hours teaching a week cos i like the students, but to all my relations that's the PROPER job, even though it nets next to nothing...
demonik I don't want to do Petrina Crawford a disservice, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be the work of one of the 'Peter Saxon' clan. It seems that this was first published by Lancer in 1967, and I've swiped this scan from the excellent
Pandora Books - I hope they won't mind. As you can see, its an improvement ...
I made a mistake up top - the Five Star edition is definitely 1972. They also published the same author's
Lovers Mist.
I'm still only up to page 80 (of 125) but the will she-won't she? saga over the fancy dress is definitely one of the highlights. I'll list all 15 titles in the Five Star romance series here - if
Seeds ... is an indication, they're worth looking out for.
Julie Wellsley - Climb The Dark Mountain
Kathlees Ross - The Wounded Heart
Julie Wellsley - Chateau Of Secrets
Julie Wellsley - The Fatal Tide
Julie Wellsley - Tall Dark Stranger
Marion Lang - To Love But Not Honour
Conrad Quintin - Quest For Dr. Mallory
Conrad Quintin - Young Dr. Mallory
Petrina Crawford - Seeds Of Evil
Petrina Crawford - Lovers Mist
Josephine Lindsay - A House Is Just A House
Barbara Perkins - A Time For Healing
Liela McKinley - Mists Of The Moor
Liela McKinley - False Relations
Laura Whetter - Eyes Without Eden
ColinSome fascinating cover-images in that Pandora site: terrified woman on the run with back-drop of Gothic mansion. I wonder how feminists would account for this in a genre written (mostly) by women for (mostly) other women? Colin (banging nail into feminist coffin).
pulphackHey, Col - interesting point about how a lot of gothic romance is women being threatened... not one for the revisionists, that's for sure. face it, most birds like a bit of a threat, just like us blokes like being dominated... alright, i wasn't being entirely serious the way i phrased it, but there is some truth there - like all stereotypes, they start out as having grains of truth that lead to them being built up and ... sorry, i started getting serious there!anyway, it's not something old skool feminists like to admit, but a lot of women's fiction has a 'woman in peril' theme, at least in part.
on a more facile level, i bet it IS a Baker stable novel! i base that on a) the very MacNeilly type settings - London and Cornwall; b) the fact it was published first as a Lancer, and Press Ed sold a lot of work to Lancer; c) and this is stretching it - Julie Wellsley, one of the other Five Star romance names, is a Baker name. i'm sure i've read it in a Steve Holland column somewhere, but i'm buggered if a quick look has turned up the refernce. i shall keep looking for it...
demonikSome fascinating cover-images in that Pandora site: terrified woman on the run with back-drop of Gothic mansion. I wonder how feminists would account for this in a genre written (mostly) by women for (mostly) other women? Colin (banging nail into feminist coffin).
Ah, but
were they (all) written by women?
Perhaps we should have a chaste women chased thread in the covers section - there were certainly plenty although the trend seems to have passed and unbelievably, most modern romance covers I come across (so to speak) seem to have been designed to actually appeal to women - "she was helpless in his masculine embrace" - you know the stuff. I always thought these
Lori Herter covers were fetching.
on a more facile level, i bet it IS a Baker stable novel! i base that on a) the very MacNeilly type settings - London and Cornwall; b) the fact it was published first as a Lancer, and Press Ed sold a lot of work to Lancer; c) and this is stretching it - Julie Wellsley, one of the other Five Star romance names, is a Baker name. i'm sure i've read it in a Steve Holland column somewhere, but i'm buggered if a quick look has turned up the refernce. i shall keep looking for it...
I'm inclined to agree with you, Andy: there's a kind of
The Torturers feel to the writing.
This probably doesn't really affect too many of our readers, but I think we could maybe extend the Peter Saxon section to include W. Howard Baker, W. A. Ballinger, Wilfred McNeilly, all things Five Star and the 'Sexton Blake' books, etc? I'm going to revamp the board over the next few weeks: I've given up any hope of making it easy to navigate, but I think all the R. Chetwynd-Hayes stuff could also be merged into the Fontana section without causing undue distress.
Any other suggestions gratefully received.
severanceand this is stretching it - Julie Wellsley, one of the other Five Star romance names, is a Baker name. i'm sure i've read it in a Steve Holland column somewhere, but i'm buggered if a quick look has turned up the refernce. i shall keep looking for it...
You're quite right Pulphack - Julie Wellsley was Richard Quintain's secretary/assistant in the W.A. Ballinger horror
Drums of the Dark Gods and in the W. Howard Baker murder mystery
The Girl in Asses' Milk.
And your re-organisation of the Peter Saxon section sounds good to me, Dem.
demonik Ah, a very timely intervention, Sev, especially as it was you we have to thank for the Saxon section (sexion?) in the first place. What do you reckon - should I extend it to stick all the Baker/ Ballinger/ SB and 5 Stars in there, or what?
pulphackThree quick things before I have to try and start work again...
1. Excellent notion to merge the whole Baker/Blake thing into Saxon, as they're entwined in such a way as to make them inseperable. I also think you should keep going back to that stall, Dem, as any Mayflower Blake or title that runs 4th series from 356 (about 1956) on is well worth the cash.
2. Julie Wellsley!! Richard Quintain!! Dammit, THAT'S where I knew it from! Good chap, Sev - I've read the titles you've mentioned, some more than once, and it must be age that stopped me making the connection coherently. Wellsley the character is a re-written Paul Dane, Blake's secreatry in the later books and a sort-of love interest.
3. We all know about London girls, but I live in essesx, and being Mrs Tebbit she should have known better... damn, that sounds like a cracking read...
demonik Different strokes and all that, but yes, I'm almost certain you'd enjoy it, Andy. It's maybe the most pleasant surprise I've had since I encountered the masterpiece that is James Montague's
Worms.