'Errol Lecale' - Blood Of My Blood

[dem bones]

Errol Lecale - Blood Of My Blood: Specialist #6 (Nel, July 1975).

The Specialist meets his most deadly enemy yet - the devil within himself

Must the Specialist, Eli Podgram, destroy himself to free the world from its most deadly peril — the powers of darkness?

Never had Eli Podgram expected to return to that dank, decaying castle in vampire-ridden Transylvania which held the dark secrets of his heritage. But the call came, a call from the simple and kindly people of his ancestral estates who had reared and protected him in his youth. It was their plea the Specialist could not ignore.

He could not know that the Twilight World had massed its powers to lure him back to the one place in the world where he was most vulnerable to their powers - the home of the werewolf, the vampire, the part-woman part-cat who was evil incarnate. All these were ready to meet and overpower Eli Podgram on his return home.

How was he to combat the last and most fiendish weapon of all? How could he conquer his own blood?

"Mad, they have all gone mad, all the village .... All my people ... fighting, killing, raping ..."

The final book in the series sees the Specialist saddled with upper class twit Prof. 'Pomp and Circumstance' Imrie and his alleged niece, Anthea Gwen-Jones on a trek to Castle Podgram in the old country where some fool has opened the iron door, unleashing what may prove to be the vampire that caused so much grief way back before even The Tiger Of Terrahpuh! Of course, it's nowhere near as simple as that, and the vampire is arguably the least of his worries as at least he's had plenty of previous with the undead. How about a were-cat so single-minded and evil she'd soon have the snooty, similarly gifted/ cursed Ktara from Robert Lory's Dracula Returns series minding her 'P's and 'Q's!

This is not the best of Mr. "Lecale"'s 128 pagers to begin on, but only because it's an attempt at tying up the loose ends from the previous five. Other than that, it's a barnstormer of a thing, so much so that I'll need another crack at it to make sure I didn't miss loads- and I only re-read it last week! Will Mara retain the power of speech? how will she react to Eli if and when she recalls what really happened between them when she was a happy little peasant girl singing and frolicking in the fields? Will the forces of nastiness finally succeed in giving her a shag, thus depriving her of her powers? What happened to that dying Priest Podgram swopped blood with way back when? Can Hugo possibly go an entire chapter without pawing a French maid? Will the ending be as piss-poor as we've come to expect?

The answers of some of these questions and so much more await you in the triumphant Blood Of My Blood!