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Post by dem bones on Jul 12, 2008 11:02:13 GMT
Robert Bloch - Tales In A Jugular Vein (Sphere, 1970) Sabbatical
Double-Cross
The Past Master
Terror Over Hollywood
A Home Away From Home
Rhyme Never Pays
Night School
Pin-Up Girl
Founding Fathers
The Deadliest ArtTen bloodstained stories of Monsters, Murderers, Magicians and Maniacs The cover is unquestionably a triumph of inspired lunacy but can the stories live up to it? Erm, not often. Includes: Sabbatical: ( Galaxy, Dec. 1959). Don, disillusioned screenwriter, is drunk in a bar off Television City when he meets Prof. Claymore. The white haired old fellow claims to have arrived in the present day via his time machine. He's decided to return to 1925 having learned that, however bad the age you're born in, the future ain't brighter, just different. Not exactly the strongest of openers, it reads like a thinly veiled excuse for Bloch to catalogue his pet hates: " ... rock-'n-roll, Presley, the tail fin car, the lousy ads, the crummy movies. Will Success Spoil Frankenstein's Monster - now I ask you!" Night School: ( Rogue, Aug. 1959). "You find them on the sidestreets of every large city, and you wonder, sometimes , how the proprietors manage to make a living.
There's a basement entrance usually, and a dimly lighted window with USED BOOKS emblazoned on it in speckled lettering ...." Chance would be a fine think. Just about every second hand bookshop I ever hung out in is now a f**king Blockbusters video. Anyhow, young Mr. Abel discovers how the strange people who once ran such worthy enterprises really made their money - by giving lessons in how to commit the ghastliest murders without getting caught. Slight but pleasantly macabre. A Home Away From Home: ( Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, June 1961). Seems to be an early attempt at what would become the lunatics-have-taken-over-the-asylum framing story in Asylum although Dr. Starr isn't name-checked. Natalie Rivers has travelled from Australia to England's West Country to meet her psychiatrist uncle, Dr. Bracegirdle, for the first time. When she telephones uncle at the cottage where he lives and practices, there seems to be some kind of rowdy celebration in progress. Bracegirdle informs her that he's been called out on an urgent case but will send one of his nurses to pick her up at the station. Miss Plummer duly arrives and drives Natalie to the cottage where she's obliged to join the drunken revellers who are by now in worryingly high spirits. She escapes to her uncles study .... and discovers just who's "leaving party" this is .... Pin-Up Girl: ( Shock, july 1960). Knew I'd read this relatively recently and sure enough, it turned up in the wonderful Shock magazine as by 'Will Folke'. Beautiful gold-digger Lani is just setting out on her modelling career when she attracts the attention of Prince Ahmed. Lani's not really up for marrying the ultra-possessive grease-ball but, man, he's one of the world's richest men so when he proposes she sneaks out to inform her photographer, Gibson, about the change in plans. Gibson has news of his own. Those shots he took of her are going to grace the covers of all the high profile fashion and glamour mags. She's gonna be bigger than Monroe, Mansfield, Ekberg ... Lani had best not let the Prince overhear her confession that she's only marrying the schmuck for his money or she really will discover what it's like to be a "pin-up girl"! Double-Cross: ( Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Oct 1959, as Double Tragedy). Our narrator, Wilis T. Millaney is the man who made TV stand up Buzzie Waters of Buzzin' Around fame but now the low down bum has come over all startrippy and is giving him the run around, skipping rehearsals, hitting the sauce and coming on like your regular hell-raiser. Wilis T. Millaney doesn't take that crap from anyone. He pays him a visit at home, the pair engage in fisticuffs, Buzzie hits his head on a table and .... no more hilarious "Bzzzzzzzz-Buzzie" catchphrase from him. Now Millaney must persuade Waters' long suffering stand-in, Joe Traskin, to play the part of the comedian for real .... Terror Over Hollywood: ( Fantastic Universe, June 1957). How come the same stars sit on top of the tree decade in, decade out, while equally talented newcomers barely see out their allotted 15 minutes? Hal Wallis and his Tinseltown secret society are running the show is why, and aspiring actress Kay Kennedy wants in on the exclusive club. But will she be prepared to pay the price? The Deadliest Art: ( Bestseller Mystery, Nov 1958, as The Ungallant Hunter. Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, June 1959, as The Living Bracelet). Three vicious vignettes comprising a snaky deception in the tropics, a junkie who needs his drum-kit re-skinned in a hurry, and the cook who insists on seeing to it that the cops get their annual free barbecue, even though his partner quit for good this afternoon ...
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Post by dem bones on Jan 13, 2020 8:39:58 GMT
Rhyme Never Pays: (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Oct. 1957, as Crime in Rhyme). A whimsical murder mystery? We didn't think it was really possible. Well, here's Mr. Bloch proving us wrong. Meet an extraordinary blend of the White Rabbit and a tough private eye .... Miss Kent answers an advertisement in The Times to apply for the position of secretary to best-selling crime author Dickie Fane. Arriving at his remote cottage, she's ushered inside by a wispy-haired, eccentric looking old duffer, who introduces himself as Archibald Pope, aka .... 'Dickie Fane.'
Miss Kent is flabbergasted. The author looks nothing like the trendy young buck photographed at back of his books. Mr. Pope gleefully informs her that the moody fellow in the portrait is a Greek dishwasher and professional model, hired to sell the product.
"I don't look like a writer, do I? Thanks to the photographs on the back of dust jackets, we all know what a writer looks like today. He is a scowling young Neanderthal with an unshaven chin that bristles nearly as much as his crew-cut. He wears a white T-shirt, and possibly a dog tag nestled against his hairy chest. That's your modern writer, eh?"
Miss Kent, who is singularly knowledgeable and enthusiastic about Fane's work, is duly hired and taken into the author's confidence - which can only help her toward her ultimate goal. Like Pope, the young blonde is not quite what she seems and has an ulterior motive in accepting this golden opportunity: nailing the devious maniac behind a serial murder spree.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 13, 2020 16:07:57 GMT
Finally for Tales in a Jugular Vein, two cautionary tales regarding the folly of time travel, The Past Master being the more interesting - and certainly the gloomier - of the two.
Founding Fathers: (Fantastic Universe, July 1956). If you're determined to change history nothing can equal a time machine. But be warned! You may prematurely whiten your bones!. A four man Philadelphia crime aggregate led by 'Thinker' Tomaszewski steal Professor Cobbett's time machine and travel back to July 4 1776. Their master plan - to rob the treasury while Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson & Co. finalise the declaration of independence.
The Past Master: (The Blue Book, Jan. 1955. Fantastic, June 1962). At the onset of the Cold War, with escalating tensions between Russia and America reaching crisis point, 'John Smith' arrives from the twenty-second century on a mission to retrieve as many art masterpieces as possible before they can be destroyed.
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