An Experiment With H
20 by Norman Kaufman
The Evil Innocent by Maureen O'Hara
Diary of the Damned by David Lewis
Morning Echo by Giles Gordon
The Tunisian Talking Ferret by Harry E Turner
The Municipal Gardener by Christopher Bray
Jump To It by Dulcie Gray
Debt Paid by Charles Thornton
The Chicken-Switch by Elleston Trevor
Virgin Territory by Roger F Dunkley
On the Eve of the Wedding by Maureen O'Hara
Revolt of the Ant People by Lavan E Coberley
The Time Room by Raymond Miller
The Bushmaster by Conrad Hill
The
delicious cover illustrates Norman Kaufman's story about some scientists exacting their revenge on the murderer of their colleague.
I met Conrad Hill once when he came into a second-hand bookshop where I was working, trying to find copies of the Pan books his stories were published in. He got a bit cross when I said I wouldn't sell my own collection. I'm so mean at times! ;D His story
The Bushmaster is about a wife who has an unhealthy obsession with cleanliness, and it's good of its type.
The book shop where I met Hill was The Belfry Bookshop, which a friend once ran, just off Redruth's main street. I'm afraid it's now shut down like most places in this town. I've not seen Conrad Hill before or since. He was pleased because apparently a Times article had mentioned his Pan stories as examples of great black humour. I remember enjoying his
Amanda Excrescens in PH 15, but I prefer to forget
Wally in the same book! Jealousy among writers is a terrible thing, etc. ;D
Revolt of the Ant People is a kind of Son of Lenningen Versus the Ants, I guess. The Harry Turner story,
The Tunisian Talking Ferret, suggests some imagination and humour at work. I think I remember him as one of the reliable Pan authors. It's years since I read this book, so to be fair, I really shouldn't write any more until after some re-reading.
I read 4 stories in PH 16 since putting the list up, and surprisingly they were all good, if oddly
bloodless horrors.
Morning Echo by Giles Gordon has a convincing small-town English atmosphere, and centres on Mrs Rutherford's interest in her local daily newspaper. I worried briefly that this was one of those 'time loop' stories that we all got bored with before we got out of puberty, but no. It has a really last minute punchline which is completely pointless and almost makes a nonsense of the story, but the story has already worked without it.
The Municipal Gardener by Christopher Bray is set in some revolution-torn South American country, where the gardener of the title gets himself shot, but leaves a message that he'll be back, and he'll send a postcard to let them know it. This one is well-written and kinda funny. I liked it.
The Tunisian Talking Ferret by Harry E Turner comes closest to the Pan Horror stories we all know, but is weaker as a story, as a TV showman hunts the ferret down in typical Middle East Turner country. Suffice to say that we are entering Basset Morgan/Laocoon country, too.
Maureen O'Hara's
The Evil Innocent hooked me. Her style here is Womens Romance meets The Brothers Grimm. Kip is cursed by his friends as he watches them drown, then unwisely adopts a baby found on the seashore. Later the child tells a strange story of a couple "...left to die in the sea, who had not really died...bodies changing slowly every day...until they were freed by one act of monstrous and wicked evil..."
Diary of the Damned by David Lewis A diary written in cipher tells the story of the survivors of a ship wreck, whose water supply is exhausted and their best hope in Satanist Lucien Caines. Readable, but that’s about all there is to say for it.
Jump to It by Dulcie Gray Gerald’s life has been a success, sometimes as a result of exploiting others’ skills and ingenuity. Others like Paul, who has never benefited from his own inventions. Since childhood it has been a joke between the two men that when Gerald tells Paul to ‘Jump to it’, Paul will do just that. It will come as no surprise to readers of Pan horror books, then, that Paul has an unpleasant surprise in store for Gerald.
The only problem I had with this story was visualizing Paul’s vengeful invention, which – including a clothes horse, a woman’s lace boudoir cap and some electric irons – had a touch of the Heath-Robinson about it. But trying to picture it was fun!
Debt Paid by Charles Thornton A man waits for his execution in this two-pager.
The Chicken Switch by Elleston Trevor The most serious barrier working against the cosmonaut is comparable to the shock undergone by every infant at the moment of birth, the loss of contact with ‘mother earth’. The idea seems pretty old, and Elleston Trevor has been writing a long time, but there’s no previous printing history for this one. Well enough written, but a curious choice for van Thal.
Virgin Territory by Roger F Dunkley Eve insists on counting the standing stones again, even though Andy reminds her of a local superstition, warning against doing just that.
On the Eve of the Wedding by Maureen O’Hara Anthea could bring herself to forgive Josephine, but she could never forgive Josephine’s lying tongue that spread such wicked slander about Anthea’s soon-to-be husband ,Benjamin.
Maureen O’Hara steals the show with her two stories in this volume. On the Eve of the Wedding is typically bloody and sadistic, and I really liked the black comic ending, with Anthea happily anticipating a long and happy marriage with her equally crazed husband - at the local asylum.
The Time Room by Raymond Miller Hayman has succeeded in stopping time. Accidentally, he learns how to move backward through it. Then he thinks of an alternative to divorcing his wife.
The Bushmaster by Conrad Hill Roger Cannington buys the Bushmaster at Ngomo’s corner shop, as a present for his wife Minerva. Ngomo explains that the Bushmaster is a sort of tribal vacuum cleaner; all Roger has to do is see that it ingests rubbish regularly and doesn’t get blocked up. For Minerva, obsessed with house hygiene, the Bushmaster will be a blessing, especially as her present cleaner, the Vibra Glide is at the repair shop.
Conrad Hill clearly enjoyed himself writing his dubious epics for the Pan books. I liked his comments on local government and the Bushmaster’s transformation of a rubbish dump into a paradise of woods and wild glades, to the dismay of the local planners. The end of this particular story didn’t quite work for me, but maybe it will for you, and it’s certainly an entertaining 50 pages.
This collection is not one of the better ones. There are enjoyable pieces by Maureen O’Hara, Dulcie Gray, Giles Gordon, Christopher Bray, Raymond Miller and Conrad Hill; but nothing to match Our Feathered Friends in the 2nd volume, or Rasberry Jam in the first.
. I think I saw a VibraGlide in an ad on tv these days, it was just not for cleaning. Sadly the ending didn't work for me. The introduction of yet another supernatural element out of the blue was just too much, again.