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Post by nightreader on Apr 23, 2008 18:45:09 GMT
The Devil's Kiss by John Hyde (NEL 1984) The story begins in 1943, in a wintry Nissan hut laboratory somewhere in the English countryside. A scientist anxiously awaits the decision of the War Cabinet on the use of a deadly virus – any one of the Four Horsemen as they’ve nicknamed the toxins could defeat the Nazis. Word arrives that Churchill has forbidden the use of any biological weapon unless the Allies are in certain defeat… Forty years later Arthur and Tony are at work deep in the sewers beneath London searching for a blockage somewhere beneath the city. They find instead an old bunker and an unexploded bomb from WWII. A collapse in an old sewer wall has set the bomb off ticking. And Tony has found a small glass phial in a desk drawer in the bunker, then he drops it. Then the bomb goes off, causing the tunnels of the nearby Underground to cave in just as the train approaches Moorgate station. On the train is Detective Sergeant Andy Wise who leads the survivors in his carriage to safety. Over the coming days Londoners begin to commit irrational acts of violence and then have no memory of doing so. Others break out in skin rashes and seeping sores. Andy Wise starts to piece together a Government cover up. He traces the survivors of the Tube cave in but finds them missing and their houses inexplicably burned down. He learns that others are being taken away in secret to an army base in the country… It turns out the scientist during the War had developed a strain of the anthrax virus, of the four cultures created Diabolus was the most virulent and dangerous which was why it was never used. When Churchill vetoed it’s use the scientist absconded with one of the phials, went to the bunker in London just as a German bomb dropped on it. Where it lay until the sewer workers found it. This was quite an entertaining read, quite pacy over it’s 155 pages – this must have been just before most books were given that weird growth hormone that packs them out to 500 plus pages… Anyway all the better for this. I liked the way it turned the WWII conflict around, usually it’s the evil Nazis cooking up some horror to defeat the Allies but here of course it’s the other way around. And throw a good Government conspiracy into the mix adds to the fun. (No artist credited for the cover - wondered if this was a Les Edwards? Pretty good I thought...)
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Post by dem bones on Apr 23, 2008 21:04:57 GMT
Wonderful find, nightie! I thought the days of the 150 page NEL were long gone by 1984. From your synopsis, it even sounds like the kind of evil faceless scientist intrigue they were peddling a decade earlier.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Apr 24, 2008 7:34:55 GMT
"Over the coming days Londoners begin to commit irrational acts of violence and then have no memory of doing so. Others break out in skin rashes and seeping sores."
Huzzah!
What Dem said. You just can't tell what's out there.
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Post by nightreader on Apr 24, 2008 19:11:01 GMT
Remember we tried listing the 80's NEL's once? Think we might have missed a few...
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Post by dem bones on Apr 18, 2020 18:06:31 GMT
John Hyde - The Devil's Kiss (NEL, 1984) Blurb: It was the end of a wartime experiment . Just a two-inch-high glass phial, securely stoppered and sealed, unlabelled and inert. The end of an experiment that had been vetoed by orders that came from the very top. Equipment and laboratory had been dismantled; the scientists moved to other work; their calculations and papers taken and embargoed under the Official Secrets Act: the lethal first production batch destroyed. Yet in the frantic fog and chaos of war, somehow, somewhere, this one tiny bottle of liquid death had survived, deep underground, silently potent, waiting. Waiting for the accident that might never happen. The accident that could shatter and release a tiny cold splash of annihilation. Let loose a new plague on a busy unsuspecting city. Forty years later, under the ceaseless vibration of the traffic, an under-maintained Victorian brick sewer ruptured suddenly. Ruptured and spewed out its filthy torrent into a long-sealed off cellar .....March 13 1983. Tony and his foreman, Arthur Smith, are investigating a blockage in the sewer beneath City Road when a tunnel collapse exposes the entrance to a subterranean wartime laboratory. As if guarding the premises, a cobweb-strewn mummified corpse sits slumped in a chair, gun resting in what's left of his hand. A clear case of suicide, but what drove him to such desperate lengths? Tony breaks open the locked drawer of a cabinet to find a pistol and a tiny glass bottle. He removes the stopper and takes a good sniff. Surprised by Arthur's "What the bloody hell are you doin'?," he drops the phial which smashes, splattering his face with evil-tasting liquid. Smith, meanwhile, has made a further unwelcome discovery beneath the rubble - an unexploded German bomb. He hands Tony the torch, instructs him to get his arse out of there and raise the alarm ... Detective Sergeant Andy Wise, forty, is aboard the Northern Line train approaching Moorgate station during the afternoon rush hour when the blast brings down the roof of the tunnel. A crevice opens in the street near Bunhill Fields, sucking down cars and two buses whose fuel tanks ignite. Several commuters die horribly. Andy and a long-haired youth, Robin Black, lead the surviving tube passengers to safety. A week later. North Weald, Bodmin. Enid Newton serves soup to her supposedly bedridden mother, a phony "invalid" who has selfishly denied the woman a life of her own. It is only in recent years that Enid has developed a rebellious streak, insisting on a weekly day out in London to relieve the thankless monotony of a carer's lot. Even last week's tube disaster - Enid emerged from the train wreck physically unscathed - cannot deter her. Needs must in a crisis. Mother takes an almighty dump in the bed to win Enid's pity. "Oh, mother. You poor darling!" It never fails. Except this time Enid throttles the old bat and stuffs her corpse in a wicker basket. Trouble is, the legs hang over the side. Never mind, it's not like Dad didn't leave behind a tool-box. Another Friday jaunt to the capital for Enid! Brixton, S.E. London. As Tony Mancussio examines himself in the mirror, the inflamed swelling on his chest violently explodes, spraying the mirror in lovely hot pus. Must be that American bird he picked up at the disco. Damned bitch has given him a dose ..... Hays Mews. Major Anthony Tewkes-Devonshire (it doesn't pay to be a Tony in this novel) brutally rapes his cleaning lady. Two cups of Earl Grey later, he has no memory of the attack, but Mrs. Martin does. She claws his face off. To be continued .... Agree with Nightreader, this is terrific, very James Herbert when he was at the top of his game (i.e., The Rats, The Fog and Lair). Fans of GNS masterpiece The Festering (which it predates by five years) likely to appreciate, too. Pop culture references - which suggest that, like Andy Wise, author was attempting to quit smoking - include; Senior Service, Rothmans, Old Holborn, Haig, Marks & Spencers, the Nolan Sisters, and a John Travolta poster ....
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Post by helrunar on Apr 18, 2020 19:06:31 GMT
Thanks for this, Kev. A nice late-lunchtime read for me. You always manage to lace apocalyptic outbreaks of nightmarish, lethal plague, murder, carnage and destruction such with such delectably acid wit.
cheers, Steve
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Post by dem bones on Apr 20, 2020 18:09:08 GMT
The chief commissioner tasks Andy with locating those he shared a carriage with on that fateful afternoon. "The Major" (i.e., Tewkes-Devonshire), "Wedding Ring," "Miss Prim," (Enid Newton)"Old Holborn," "The Hippy" (Robin Black) and the furtive "Brown Coat." Wise knows he should recognise the latter, but can't quite place .... of course! The witness statements in connection with the recent "Butcher" murders describe him to a T!
Harrow. Dr. Rashid Patel calls on problem patient Barbara West at her home address. He's greeted by the revolting sight of a bloated, spectacularly fly-blown corpse. Her husband's dead, too, sprawled out before his model railway, though, mercifully, he's in less revolting shape than his other half. It now transpires that each of Andy's fellow commuters have suffered subsequent violent episodes. Bar Brown Coat, who has gone to ground, they are either dead, quarantined or incarcerated. Reginald Davis, a Camden-based mail room assistant, is caught by a group of workmen as he molests a little girl on a patch of waste ground. Unfortunately for his penis, the girl's father is among them. And he has a knife.
Kindly old Ethel ("Miss Prim") goes berserk with a hat pin at the cinema during a Vincent Price movie.
An luckless ambulance driver reprises Tony's squelchy demise.
Andy Wise hooks up with old army colleague, Charles Benning, in The Nag's Head, Belgravia. Charles is now a successful author and investigative journalist - just the man Wise needs to pry into what is fast looking to be a Whitehall cover up with all press copy regarding the Bunhill Fields disaster must be submitted pre-publication for Home Office approval. Charles travels to Bodmin only to discover the Newton's house was burned down shortly after the discovery of the mother's corpse. Someone has decided he's asking too many questions ....
Tony Mancussio's Brixton flat has been razed to the ground. As has the West's semi. And Dr. Patel has been replaced at his home address by an imposter.
Have now reached p.96 (of 160). Author has a flair for the ghastly vignette and this Sir James 'Bunter' Stafford character is great as the devious fat-arsed Home Secretery.
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Post by ripper on Apr 20, 2020 18:26:01 GMT
I received a copy as a Christmas present from an aunt in 1984 and read it very quickly during the holiday. Though the details elude me after 35+ years, I do think I had a pretty fine old time with it. After it was given away circa 1992, it was only quite recently I got another copy, though I have yet to re-read it. The only things I recall are the discovery of the mummified corpse after the sewer collapse and the assault on the cleaning lady.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 21, 2020 18:44:18 GMT
"Prime Minister, you must understand that there simply is no hope of recovery. Each person who has been contaminated is a walking time-bomb! I'm afraid the only solution is death, and supervised cremation to be sure of destroying the Diabolus virus."
Told you the Home Sec. was a wrong 'un. The Devil's Kiss right cheered me up. It's brisk as the NEL horror's of a decade earlier and no let up in the grisly set pieces right through to the all-important epilogue. If anything, the novel gets progressively nastier as the Government and MI6 adopt increasingly desperate and illegal measures to contain the virus, culminating in the cold blooded mass murder of "expendables" and the razing of a detention centre in "the national interest." Sub-plot involving Jack the Ripper tribute act 'the Butcher' also comes to fore in the final third.
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Post by kooshmeister on Mar 15, 2021 13:05:15 GMT
This one's next on my list of books to get. The premise sounds very interesting to me. I especially love how the S's in "Kiss" are formed out of SS "lightning bolt" runes. An odd choice (given that the disease was invented by the British, not the Nazis), but a cool visual aesthetic nevertheless which really hammers home the World War II connection.
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Post by ripper on Feb 19, 2022 10:35:19 GMT
Finally gotten around to re-reading this one. Yes, enjoyed it quite a bit. I put it in the 'Rivals of The Fog' category i.e. something happens to turn the population, or some sub-group thereof, into homicidal maniacs. Other examples would be Childmare by Nick Sharman, Plague Pit by Mark Ronson, and Ladies' Night by Jack Ketchum. The Devil's Kiss is a breezy read, nicely paced, doesn't overstay its welcome, and you don't need muscles like Garth to pick it up--how I miss the 120-160 page paperbacks of the 70s and 80s. Actually, reading Devil's Kiss has given me a hankering for a re-match with the original The Fog by James Herbert.
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Post by kooshmeister on Nov 25, 2023 3:42:49 GMT
I put it in the 'Rivals of The Fog' category i.e. something happens to turn the population, or some sub-group thereof, into homicidal maniacs. Other examples would be Childmare by Nick Sharman, Plague Pit by Mark Ronson, and Ladies' Night by Jack Ketchum. The Brain Eaters by Gary Brandner is another. The people afflicted by the parasites in that go nutso.
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