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Post by killercrab on Jun 9, 2008 16:02:01 GMT
What's the consensus on David Case's THE HUNTER? Read it a week back - it's practically as long as a Nel paperback. The story twist or reveal - whatever you call it - was a tad disappointing - but otherwise I loved the big game hunter aspect!
ade
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Post by dem bones on Jun 9, 2008 18:11:55 GMT
Personally, I love The Hunter, it's just the rest of the book I'm not sure about .... Herbert Van Thal (ed.) - 12th Pan Book Of Horror Stories (1971) David Case -The Hunter David Learmont Aitken - The Instant Divorce Barry Martin - In Mother's Loving Memory Alan Hillery - Ashes To Ashes Patricia Highsmith - The Terrapin Norman Kaufman - Sergeant Lacey Demonstrates James Jauncey - Borderline Robert Ashley - Pieces Of Mary Frank Neate - Miss Fletcher's Plum Tree Martin Ricketts - The Nursery Club Barry Martin - Laura Rachel Kemper - The Dancing Shoes Rosemary Timperley - The Peg-Doll T. H. McCormick - Man With A Knife
Includes: David Case - The Hunter: Detective Inspector Justin Bell persuades retired big game hunter John Wetherby to help him investigate a brutal murder on Dartmoor. The victim's body has been torn and his head removed "as clean as a knife or guillotine." Wetherby's former colleague Byron - who lives near to the scene of the crime - is likewise approached but finds it all too trivial and amusing to waste time on. Byron is an adrenalin junkie who is only content when gambling with his life. As more brutal murders occur, the scandal sheets scream of a werewolf killer and Wetherby comes to doubt his ability to track the beast. Could sensationalist journalist Aaron Ross have stumbled upon the truth after all? I must admit, it doesn't sound like much from that dreadful synopsis, but it's a classic and at just over 90 pages it reads like an incredibly fast paced novel. The characters are well drawn (Byron is especially memorable) , there's a pub called The King's Torso and Case even finds room for some pitch black humour. For all I know #12 might be somebody else's favourite from the series, but I think 'competent' is the word I'd use to describe much of the content. Anyhow, here are yet more notes. The Alan Hillary and Robert Ashley shockers benefit from being memorably unpleasant. Norman Kaufman - Sergeant Lacey Demonstrates: The bullying Lacey receives his comeuppance on a training exercise with the minimum of fuss and - surprisingly for Kaufman - absence of gore. Rachel Kemper - The Dancing Shoes: All her life she had wanted to be a Ballerina. Then she met the Billy Elliot with the purple eyes. James Jauncey - Borderline: Sewage worker "Harry the Stump" (so named after his withered arm), gets his good hand trapped in a metal grid just as the sluice gates are due to open. Lucky for him there are plenty of hungry rats around down there ... Rosemary Timperley - The Peg-Doll: Alan finds it on site when the old orphanage is being demolished. He takes it home for his seven year old daughter, Alma, and the peg-doll becomes her constant companion. It is a receptacle for all the misery suffered by the kids when widow Grace Webb was in charge and several of their number starved to death. Alan Hillary - Ashes To Ashes: Dr. Morrow suspects his young wife Melanie of being unfaithful. He decides to have her cremated - alive. Then he learns that his fears were groundless and it's all been a silly mistake. Robert Ashley - Pieces Of Mary: Little Mary's mother won't let her knock around with girls of her own age, fearing them to be a bad influence, but she is allowed to play with the quiet boys next door, John and David, who have a morbid interest in dissection.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jun 9, 2008 18:24:06 GMT
I remember Pieces of Mary as being distinctly horrific. But I haven't reread this collection for years.
Its also only occurred to me now why that cover doesn't work. If somebody stuck a long dead skull in a snowman it wouldn't really be scary. If someone died inside the snowman presumably the snow would melt long before they were reduced to a bones.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 9, 2008 21:34:48 GMT
Some previous comments .....
Franklin Marsh
Barry Martin's story is an appalling exercise in sadism - somewhat alleviated by the line "Killing somebody with a tin opener isn't very easy."
Funkdooby
One thing that always irritates me with Pan 12 (my copy - 8th printing, 1978, anyway) is that on the Acknowledgements page, David Case is referred to as 'David Cass.' For feck's sake, arguably the Pan series' best writer and they couldn't spell his name right
John L. Probert
Ah, Volume 12 and more terrific memories. I rewrote 'Pieces of Mary' for an English homework assignment when I was eleven, much to the horror of the rather delicate young chap who was teaching us at the time. The last line of 'Man With a Knife' still resonates, and of course there's 'Ashes to Ashes' which coupled an unnecessarily detailed description of a woman burning alive with a twist ending. All this, a crap poem, and David Case too. What more could one ask for?
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Post by killercrab on Jun 10, 2008 2:21:52 GMT
Personally, I love The Hunter >>
Well I enjoyed it to and my only gripe is something I can't talk about without a massive spoiler attached. Incidently James Ellroy employed a similar idea in BLACK DAHLIA. All I'll say I was expecting a solid supernatural piece and I didn't get it - though the scenes at the Gentlemens Club were excellent!
ade
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jun 10, 2008 8:01:47 GMT
Nothing quite as cheering as an 'appalling exercise in sadism' Dem.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Jun 10, 2008 9:45:06 GMT
The Barry Martin is nasty. I also liked 'The Nursery Club' with the final scene at the spiked iron gates. James Jauncey's Borderline is the one where the guy has to get rats to eat his hand off because it's stuck in a sewer grating. 'Mrs Fletcher's Plum Tree' is another that confirms one's suspicions that old ladies can be extremely unpleasant
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Post by Dr Terror on Jun 10, 2008 22:58:12 GMT
From The Hunter:
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Post by lukemorningstar on Sept 2, 2008 12:13:40 GMT
This is my first post on one of these threads - Hello All from Colin - Mrs Fletcher's Plum Tree from Vol 12 is one of my favourite 'Pan' stories of them all - it has that kind of 'Misery' like helplessness (like when the poor kid can hear his Mum upstairs talking to the old lady but can do nothing about it) and even worse, nobody comes along and saves the day. Very unsettling and a disturbing, bleak ending too....
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Post by dem bones on Sept 2, 2008 12:46:38 GMT
Hi Colin
I absolutely loathed old Mrs. Fletcher and her rotten plum tree on first read, but that was ages ago and I'd probably been stuck behind one of her sisters in the Post Office for a few weeks beforehand. Reading your comments I'm tempted to give her another go.
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Post by lukemorningstar on Sept 2, 2008 14:35:07 GMT
You should do - considering it is basically a tale of Alzheimer's and Child Abuse it would probably cause a right old stir if it was published in these very P.C. times - mind you, wouldn't most of the 'Pan' stories? I am still amazed that we, as young kids, could buy these books so easily from newsagents and bookshops!
Thanks for your reply - I'm looking forward to some good chats on this fine site
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Post by Johnlprobert on Sept 2, 2008 15:22:45 GMT
Mrs Fletcher & her Plum Tree scared me silly when I was 11.
And I have such fond memories of buying these from bookshops and Woolworths!
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tjon
New Face In Hell
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Post by tjon on Sept 18, 2008 20:52:36 GMT
Yes Miss Fletcher was a good story - the early section really builds the tension. One inconsistency I thought was that she collected the cane as an after thought - surely not? What had been her intention? I re wrote it in my mind a couple of times with school mistresses in mind. Corporal punishment in any other stories?
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Post by dem bones on Sept 18, 2008 21:51:44 GMT
Corporal punishment in any other stories? Hi tjon. Well, I can only go on what people have told me of course, but there's a fair old bit of CP in the Web Terror Stories pulps from the 'sixties. Titles like Victim Wanted - Female, Orbit Of The Pain Masters and The Girl In The Iron Collar kind of tell their own story. Between the wars, the distressingly underrated L. A. Lewis wrote the innocuous sounding The Author's Tale. That one's pretty swish. Sometimes i'm too terrified to look in our Filthy Creations dept for fear of what i'll find, but i seem to recall a little something by redbrain - Of Bondlings & Blesh by name - that should keep you going for a time. And very recently, there's the vignette featuring James Waddicot in Franklin Marsh's The Late Bus. Apparently.
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tjon
New Face In Hell
Posts: 2
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Post by tjon on Sept 19, 2008 7:40:28 GMT
Thanks for that - a prostitute gets a strapped bottom before being murdered in another story but its not very formal.
Interesting variations on Miss Fletcher might have been:
If she were a younger spinster or If the boy had been a girl!
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