Russell Rhodes - Tricycle

[H_P_Saucecraft]

Russell Rhodes - Tricycle (Hamlyn 1985)

Been after this one for some time, hope it's as good as it souunds:

[dem]

Thanks for posting these, Dave. Always been fascinated by The Tricycle, as in how can it possibly live up to the superb blurb? "The squeak of its wheels was the chilling music of death!" - they should have used that on the cover of The Omen novelisation.

[humgoo]

Talbot Academy for boys, Connecticut. Sixteen-year-old Alan Rivkin was burned to death in a tobacco barn. Another fire! Just last year a pupil had got killed after setting fire accidentally to his own room while cooking covertly. What the hell was that Alan boy doing in a derelict barn anyway? Must have snuck there to smoke cigs.

But if you happened to be outside the barn where the tragedy occurred, you would have heard the groans and moans of Mrs. Catterby, and you would have seen her leave some minutes later, wearing a satisfied smile on her face. You would also have seen five-year-old Simon seated on his red tricycle, peeping, match gun in hand.

There's nothing wrong with Karen, 34 years old and wife of English Department head Arthur Catterby, preying upon the young and hot bodies she sees walking round all the time on the campus. No one will get hurt. Not unless Simon, known as Simple Simon by the other kids, knows.

A car accident having cost his eyesight as well as his Ivy League scholarly future, Christopher Hennick returns to his alma mater to become an English master, accompanied by his estranged girlfriend Susanne and his guide dog Milton. Talbot is his safety net, where he used to shine at both books and games. A visit to the Catterbys is in order, and the three duly arrive one fine evening. Karen is shocked when she sets eyes on Christopher, while intense hatred emanates from Simon. That man looks exactly like the one in that photo which Mommy keeps in her drawer and she always cries looking at it, Simon thinks.

The visitors can feel the tensions between Arthur and Karen. Turns out Karen is German, and she met Arthur when the latter was doing research on the Faust legend in Heidelberg. Apparently she found him an insufferable bore but married him anyway.

After seeing off Susanne, Christopher returns to the campus to adapt to his new life, while Simon is burning to remove his new enemy.

[TBC]

[humgoo]

Chris's first night as an English master on the campus didn't go uneventful. Nightmares of his car accident still haunted him, and he was woken up by (really, can't you guess?) a fire in the wastebasket. Must be more careful next time! Actually he quit smoking from that night on. But what's that strange noise? "It was sort of a rhythmic squeaking sound, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, getting fainter and fainter as if something were moving away down the long, empty corridor outside."

Anyway, he wins over the freshmen easily with his natural charm and non-stuffy way of teaching, but the juniors prove much more difficult nuts to crack. How can they treat a guy who's only a few years older than them seriously? It doesn't help that Chris insists on the pupils sitting alphabetically so he can know where to look at when they talk to him, eye contact and all, as if he were a seeing person. Yup, the thing is he still can't quite accept the fact that he's really and truly blind. And the lesson ends disastrously.

He looks for Arthur for some advice and solace. Inevitably Arthur is not home, and Karen Catterby opens the door. Seeing the state he's in, Karen (who's been deliberately avoiding speaking to Chris after hearing of the wastebasket fire, fearing for the young man's as well as his own son's safety) insists on taking a walk together. Turns out Karen is a persuasive woman, as she helps Chris see where the crux of the problem lies while reducing him to tears. She also holds onto his arms, and an affair is now inevitable.

Anyway, campus life certainly has its fair share of danger, as one accident follows another, including a minor when-animals-attack classic:

THE RATTLERS ARE ON THE LOOSE!

Guess what, the school has a snake farm, where the seniors milk the venom and sell it to a hospital research centre! What an initiative. But one of the boys in charge must have forgotten to lock the biology lab where the snakes are kept. As Chris is sitting in an empty classroom which happens to be just beside the lab, all smug thanks to another of his successful lessons, the rattlers have come to besiege him: "Every cramped muscle in his body screamed in agony, but Christopher still sat motionless. Once, perhaps thirty minutes ago, he had felt one of those disgusting things slither over his foot – his foot! It has taken every ounce of control he possessed not to shriek and jump for the door. He was obsessed with the picture of his body, bloated and blue, lying on the floor covered by a mass of writhing serpents."

[TBC]

[humgoo]

Chris survives the above and other freak accidents. Frank Cannel is not so lucky. For one of her (now regular) rendezvous with Chris in the boathouse, Karen arrives early and is surprised to find that someone's already there – Frank, one of her former pupil lovers. Seeing no reason why they shouldn't rekindle their former passion, Frank insists on having his way with Karen, despite the latter's reluctance. Hearing Karen's groans and moans outside the boathouse upon his arrival and suitably angered (the cuckolder gets cuckolded etc), Chris just leaves without walking in on them. Frank leaves satisfied, but not for long, as he's stabbed to death by steel darts by someone before falling into the icy water.

The death toll now having hit three, obtuse as he is, the penny finally drops for Chris. Yeah, turns out the victims are all of the same type: blond, handsome and athletic (this is how Karen's late twin brother-cum-lover was like, and understandably she's always been looking for someone who resembles her late twin brother-cum-lover, thus the affairs, see? Because how can you ever forget your late twin brother-cum-lover?), and Chris is going to be the next.

The final scene is not half-bad, as the killer pursues the blind teacher on the now severely flooded and empty campus. It has a sort of happy ending, though. You just can't have everything.

The cover of the American edition (Pocket Books, 1983), featuring in Paperbacks from Hell, is by Lisa Falkenstern.