Daniel Farson - Transplant

[dem bones]

Daniel Farson - Transplant (Hamlyn, 1981)

It began with an operation in a major London hospital. Dick Manley, cold and ruthless television personality, was near to dying when the chance off a heart transplant offered him new life.

The unknown donor was Tom Claymore, a quiet ex-soldier battered almost to death in Highgate Cemetery. It was there his mutilated corpse was laid to rest.

But a gang of amateur occultists start to practice their evil arts .... and the victim rises from his grave.

Trapped in decomposing flesh, Claymore is doomed to the hopeless fate of the walking dead ... unless he can track down and destroy the man who now has his heart.

It is then that the gruesome killings begin

'Dick Manley'? Talk about tempted to change my user-name.

As is evident from that gargantuan spoiler masquerading as a blurb, Dick is the obnoxious host of tasteless prime time chat show Meeting Manley, and he's just overstepped the mark by insulting guest Henry Craig, "the David Frost of Cardiac surgery". Earlier in the day he'd learned of the death of his one time friend, Peter Hanley, the man he stabbed in the back to further his career, Unused to be slated by his bosses - or anyone else, come to that - he goes on a pub crawl around Soho where Shirley Bassey is on every jukebox. By the end of the night he's been robbed and suffered a stroke in kinky new gay club The Hercules, lousy for him but manna to the press photographers. All those years of rumour and angry denial to be so spectacularly outed, "kissed by a poof in white knickers" so the story goes. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bloke.

Contrast his behaviour with that of nice Tom Claymore, family man and diligent cemetery attendant. The old burial ground has attracted the unwelcome attentions of Satanic vampire hunter Tony Stoker, better known to the locals as 'The Creep'. On the morning of Midsummer's Eve, Tom receives a mutilated doll in the post and later, talking to his friend the Rev. Curl-Wigeon in The Flask, he learns that there's been a break-in at St. Michael's. Some rotter's stolen all the vestments!

Tom suspects the Creep and decides upon a nocturnal stake out of the burial ground to see if he can catch him in the act. It's fair to say he doesn't care for the man one bit. "He looks pleasant enough, that's the sinister thing. Young, thin, wide blue eyes, fair hair - short back and sides ... Very pale. Unnaturally pale. As if he masturbates a lot. I expect he does." Farson directs so much bile at this character you could be forgiven for thinking he was drawn from life! But that way is madness. Silly of me to mention it, really!

Anyway, Tom, concealed in a vault, has a right result when the Creep recites his necromantic mumbo jumbo and his disciples, six of each, strip starkers and start shagging "even though his ritual was rubbish". Distracted by wobbling tits, the attendant gives away his hiding place and the Creep, taking him for a peeping tom, batters him senseless, his faithful dog Harris similar. Murdering bogus vampire-hunting swine!

Eighty pages in and this is already making up for the relative disappointment of The Man With Mad Eyes. My thanks to Mark for putting a copy my way.

To be continued!

[dem bones]

The policeman picked up a black cane with a heavy silver top and tried to decipher the faded inscription: 'Presented to Bram Stoker Esq. by the crew of USS Chicago 1892.'

'I bought it at an auction', the Creep volunteered.

As the Inspector discovered later, this was a lie. Both the silver-topped cane and the photograph had been stolen during a dinner given by the Dracula Society for Stoker's grand-nephew ..... He turned to the line of books arranged carefully on top of the table: Colin Wilson's large green paperback, The Occult; the hardback on Jack The Ripper; The Black Arts by Cavendish. Peter Underwood's Dictionary of the Occult and Supernatural; and Psychic Self-Defence by Dion Fortune.

Dick has had his transplant - his own heart being stuffed inside Tom Claymore in a student exercise - and is much changed for the better. he's determined to turn his back on the vacuous world of Television having seen the industry for the monster it truly is. Yes, along with Tom's heart he's taken on much of his personality.

The Creep is still creepy, boning up on his Montague Summers in preparation for a big Halloween shindig in the cemetery. The police, pissed that they couldn't pin Tom's murder on him, have been hassling the vampire hunting coven and one by one his disciples cry off until only grubby Louise is left. Needs must so he promotes her to High Priestess for the occasion. After digging up Tom's coffin they indulge in some hanky panky in his grave when suddenly ... Old Bill! You'd think his psychic intuition might have warned him the bumbling Inspector Morrison and his men would be keeping watch here on this of all nights! The Creep gallantly legs it naked into the undergrowth leaving Louise to take the flack. But for once his Black Sorcery has done the trick. Tom Claymore has risen from the grave and London had best prepare itself for 'The Highgate Heart-Snatcher'.

And that, as the blurb warned us, is when the reign of terror really begins.

This is a brilliant, gory speed-read with a queasy description of the surgical wizardry and plenty of mindless butchery to keep you going until the (too) abrupt ending.

Claymore sure does a lot of drinking for a dead man. From Highgate to Soho and back, unlife is just one long pub crawl punctuated by the regular murder as he attempts to find Manley and get his heart back. No matter how smelly he gets due to his decomposing body, complete strangers fall over themselves to buy him a pint and even a pair of friendly metho's bung him £3 to see him alright. According to Rev. Curl-Wigeon, there are more animated corpses around than you'd think, but Claymore is lucky because he's a victim and therefore not damned. Unlike Curl-Wigeon. He admits to being an incarnation of Montague Druitt in a dead man's body(although as Druitt is just about the most disproved Ripper suspect ever, I'm not sure what he's beating himself up about).

And what happens to the Creep? No, that really would be one spoiler too many.

[franklinmarsh]

Good find Dem. Sounds great. I think I've got Farson's other novel Curse somewhere but haven't read it.
Am I right in thinking that Daniel Farson was Bram Stoker's great-nephew, wrote a book on Jack The Ripper (his nominee - Montague Druitt), and was also a hard-drinking journo - one of the Soho set along with the painter Francis Bacon and Jeffrey Bernard?

[dem bones]

You most certainly are on all counts, and late in his life he was the landlord of The Waterman's Arms on the Isle of Dogs, as blown up by the IRA in The Long Good Friday.

His obsessions are all over Transplant. Note the references to "Both the silver-topped cane and the photograph had been stolen during a dinner given by the Dracula Society for Stoker's grand-nephew ....." , "the hardback on Jack The Ripper " at the Creep's place and Rev Curl-Wigeon being all damned because he was Druitt in a former life!

I didn't find this. It was Mark who put me onto it and finally gave me a copy when my whining and begging got too much for him to bear!

You jammy git! According to Hal Astell, Transplant is actually a disappointment after Curse!

[erebus]

Whilst I'm at work I tell the missus to keep an eye out for books on the stalls when shes in town. Today she came back and mentioned something called TRANSPLANT. I grilled her and she started getting muddled ( not to difficult ) I let the matter go.
So I log onto this board. Have a search through old posts and lo and behold. I discover this here thread.

So now I feel a plonker and will now have to wonder now if the book is still there tomorrow as reading this it sounds a good read. Hope be with me.

[erebus]

Thankfully it was still there. £1 as well a bargain.

[killercrab]

Picked this up myself last year - still languishing on the the to read pile of course - but I couldn't resist. I also picked up Halkin's SLITHER and Lewis' NIGHT KILLERS at the same time. A good trashy haul I'd say!

KC

[erebus]

That is indeed a great trashy haul. Night Killers is a gem. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.