Charles L. Grant - Night Terrors

[dem bones]

Charles L. Grant - Night Terrors (Headline, 1989)

Charles L. Grant - Introduction

David Morrell

Black And White And Red All Over
Mumbo Jumbo
Dead Image

Joseph Payne Brennan

Wanderson's Waste
Pick Up
Canavan Calling
Oasis Of Abomination
Starlock Street
The Haunting Of Juniper Hill


Karl Edward Wagner

Shrapnel
Old Loves
Blue Lady, Come Back

Illustrations by Robert W. Lavoie


Used to have an earlier, US paperback edition of this, Night Visions 2: Dead Image, with a neat skeleton on a motorcycle illustration on the cover, but I don't know what happened to it so we'll have to settle for this cover, which isn't quite ruined by that infernal embossed title.

The three David Morrell stories which get things underway are essentially pulp. Grant describes his writing style as "not ornate, somewhat lean" and he's a page-turner into the bargain. I'd really be hard pressed to pick a favourite from these snappy, unpretentious horror stories.

Black And White And Red All Over: Three paperboys have disappeared in a matter of weeks and always when it's snowing. A maniac is on the loose with a claw hammer and our likable young narrator is about to discover which of his customers it is.

Mumbo Jumbo: "But there's the pay off. All these football players date the sexiest girls in school. All those muscles give the cheerleaders the hots." Once Joey has spelled it out to him like that, Danny has no hesitation in shaping up and getting fit for slave-driver Coach Hayes' team at City High. With the kind of dedication shown by this pair to get fit, it's small wonder the team has retained the championship for eight seasons on the spin, though things quickly fall apart after one kid is dropped and his boorish father goes to the newspapers. Father Of High School Football Players Accuses Team Of Devil Worship ....

Dead Image: Aspiring young actor Wes Crane is the double of deceased movie legend 'James Deacon', killed in a car crash before the three films he'd completed were even released and catapulted him to global fame. Screenwriter David Sloane, sick of no-mark directors dumbing down his work, decides to go it alone on Mercenaries after recruiting Wes to play lead. Wes makes a terrific fist of it, but his identification with Deacon is such that he knows he must die in a bike smash on his hero's anniversary, or things will get .... hideous. Sloane manages to get him on set but Wes is on a downward spiral from that day forth ....

[Johnlprobert]

I've got the Berkeley paperback you mention - picked it up for £1-30 this time last year & still haven't read it yet.

And I should, really - David Morrell wrote one of my all-time favourite horror stories, Orange is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity in (I think) Douglas Winter's Prime Evil. And Joseph Payne Brennan has written some pretty decent little economical horror stories in his time - I've got his Arkham house collection Stories of Darkness & Dread which is very good

[dem bones]

I think you owe it to yourself to investigate Karl Wagner's contribution too as he's very much on top of his game in this collection. I've added the notes to the Why Not You And I? thread as Blue Lady, Come Back is something of a sequel to his 'forties pulp pastiche, The Sign Of The Salamander, but it can certainly be enjoyed independent of that story. Old Loves, detailing the rise and fall of Stacey Steele, mini-skirted heroine of 'sixties hit TV show, The Agency - a James Bond rip off set in London at its most Carnaby Street swinging - is an absolute gem.

Under just about any other circumstances I'd have begun with the Brennan stories, but the lure of early Wagner is all-conquering and I was curious if I'd enjoy the Morrell stories as much as I did first time around. Well, six stories in and I'm delighted to have taken this from the shelf. I think you're in for a treat!

[dem bones]

Apr 24, 2008 21:13:34 GMT Johnlprobert said:

I've got the Berkeley paperback you mention - picked it up for £1-30 this time last year & still haven't read it yet.

This is the fellow! Berkley, Sept. 1987. As almost always seems to be the case, the illustrator wasn't deemed important enough to deserve a credit.

[Johnlprobert]

That's it! I can see it as I type this, underneath something called 'My Bones & My Flute - a Guyanese horror novel by Edgar Mittelholzer