John Halkin - Squelch

[H_P_Saucecraft]

John Halkin - Squelch (Hamlyn 1985)

I've Only read Halkin's Slither, so far, but this one sounds great (Killer Caterpillars ahoy!). I also have Halkin's The Unholy, on the way, so I'll do a thread for that, once I get it.

& here's the cover:

[erebus]

Love that cover. Always makes me chuckle. I have not read this for years. I recall the Moths getting involved at some point ...or am I just being dilusional ? Things dropping from trees springs to mind I think at a Fete or something. Thats all I recall.

[dem bones]

"in diameter it matched one of those new pound coins that everyone hated"

After the underwhelming revelations of The Pyx, the squirm-fest that is Beyond The Threshold and the sub-Laymon minimalism of Return Of The Living Dead, its back on tried and trusted ground with the incomparable John Halkin. Approaching p. 100 (of 250) and with what looks like a sequence of vignettes on the horizon, i thought it best to take a breather and hack out some notes.

Twelve year old small-fry Kit breaks into the Lingford Research Institute to improve his standing in Lenny's gang. As proof of his escapade, he pockets a six-inch caterpillar, upsetting its glass tank in the process. This is the cue for Baggy, the lab cat, to freak out and smash more of the priceless equipment. Kit scarpers into the trees where he discovers that, not only has he liberated King caterpillar, but two stowaways have attached themselves to his clothing and are even now burrowing into his skin ....

Kit's Mum reports his disappearance to the police, but they point out this isn't the first time he's run away from home and they've better things to do with the tax-payers money. He rots.

Back at the Institute, the vandalism is blamed on Baggy (eaten alive, you'll be pleased to learn). In all, six of the man-eating caterpillars are missing. Dr. Sophie 'Lady MacBeth' Greenberg is particularly distraught. She was pinning her hopes on them landing the Nobel prize.

Ginny Andrewes, 26, has split from Jack, her live-in lover of three years, quit her job as the producer of a successful and monumentally tedious TV soap, and left London for a cottage in the (Kent?) countryside. Jack, who still loves her, helps with the removal and, driving back to Chiswick, is attacked by a moth kamikaze squadron. He's lucky to escape with just a few dents to the van. These same moths "the size of bats" congregate in the trees of Ginny's garden. She accepts them - at first - as a beautiful welcome committee. They even inspire her to begin scripting a sure-fire hit, a six part drama series "with top casting ... centered on a village where, on certain evenings, the dead rise from the churchyard in the form of giant moths, not to haunt, but actually to take over from the living". Good luck with that one, Ms. Andrewes.

Ginny's sister, Leslie, lives in the same village, and is married to her old medical school sweetheart Bernell Rendell, the local G.P. With Ginny obsessing about moths all the time, Leslie refers her to Reverend Davidson, the randy vicar of St. Botolph's who just happens to be a shit-hot lepidopterist. The outsize, squeaking variant Ginny describes are a new one on him but there's a local woman, Liz Kinley, hospitalised with a broken leg, who swears she was knocked off her bicycle by a swarm of the rotters, though, as everyone knows, old Liz is partial to a drink ....

Ginny sunbathing topless in the garden. She feels something ticklish against the skin of her abdomen just above her bikini briefs. looks down, spots a caterpillar the size of a "big green sausage" working its way toward her naval.

Leslie arrives just in time to pluck it from Ginny's belly, immediately regrets her interference as the monster sinks its fangs into her toe and bores its way on in! Blood f**king everywhere! Ginny manages to yank most of it out with a tweezers and then a mercy dash to the hospital with the patient in a fever and bleeding profusely.

Meanwhile, old Liz Kinley, finally discharged from hospital, is getting in a session at The Bull, cheerfully exchanging raunchy banter with Harry Smith, a good-natured lecher she's known since they were at school. There's a rumour going around that some local farmhand has bled to death after his jugular was severed by a caterpillar but as if anyone would be stupid enough to believe that. Liz hobbles out to the beer garden with her Guinness, takes a seat just under the apple tree ...

Something drops from a branch ...

To be continued ...

Absolutely top-notch stuff with the massacre in the beer-garden (and it's equally horrible sequel at the morgue) a highlight of highlights. That bit in the blurb about "And their first victim was Ginny's own sister ... etc, is well off, mind. Last we heard, luckless Leslie was still recuperating in Lingford Hospital - we've had at least four fatalities in the interim. It also looks as if her husband and Ginny are getting fond of one another if you get my drift.

[dem bones]

"Maggie Thatcher, what a mess!" He swore.

That's pilot and all-action international man of mystery Jeff Pringle's reaction on discovering the parked van where local Lothario Pete Wright and green-haired punkette Mo enjoyed their last tender moments of bad sex (she's only fourteen) before the caterpillars struck.

My guess at a Kent countryside was only slightly out. All of the attacks mentioned to date took place in Surrey, but the menace has spread to Sussex, Kent and the leafy suburbs of Greater London while there are isolated incidents up and down the country. The caterpillars are growing brainier. Their ambush of the All Saints Spring Fete is conducted with military precision and barely have the emergency services had time to clear the corpses from the battlefield than the hairy horrors launch another attack on a church congregation. "This time the moths hit first, blinding people [with their deadly saliva]. Then the caterpillars moved in" By now the media have got hold of the story ("FOREIGN CATTIES EAT OUR KIDS") and it seems even the dream team of Ginny-Dr. Rendell-Jeff Pringle won't be enough to save us.

But then, in the minutes before he's eaten in his deckchair, Rev. Davidson makes a startling discovery ...

Who couldn't love a novel which takes it's title from the sound a flesh-eating caterpillar makes when you stomp on it 'til it bursts? Admittedly, the ending is not altogether convincing but then that's a tradition of the Hamlyn nasty and you don't read 'em expecting too much logic. Of roughly equal concern to the 'who will stop these jumped-up slugs?' theme is the 'who will get to shag Ginny?' sub-plot, which - once 70 year old Rev. Davidson goes to his maker - narrows down to a two horse race between brother-in-law Bernie and dynamic Jeff Pringle, an anti-hero from the James Herbert school whose expletive for all occasions, "Maggie Thatcher!", seems terrifyingly apt in light of Cameron-Clegg horrors to come.

[fritzmaitland]

Spot on, Dem. These were becoming so self-reflexive by this time, that they bordered on parody - and were in fact better than parody. (I still think we should all write one - and publish them all under the Richard Stains byline. I bagsy Woodlouse!)
I've only read Slither (which I recently re-acquired) and the glorious Slime (killer jellyfish ahoy!), but Squelch seems equal if not superior to both - that cover alone is worth a cheer.

[dem bones]

May 14, 2010 11:33:24 GMT fritzmaitland said:

I still think we should all write one - and publish them all under the Richard Stains byline. I bagsy Woodlouse!

i'd read it!

if anybody's up to write a Piranha for perverts, check out the disgusting potential of the Candiru, a long, thin, translucent, bloodsucking catfish "capable of forcing its way into the body's passageways". It seems they've never ventured beyond the Amazon, but that's no obstacle to, say, the vengeful father of a maimed athlete who introduces them to the capital's reservoirs, swimming pools, saunas, etc., on the eve of the 2012 Olympics ....

i'm thinking John Halkin is a perfect candidate for one of Justin's Fanatic interrogations. Now that the country's been hurtled back into the eighties, perhaps we'll see a return to the anger, violence, and sheer bloody-minded nihilism of the nasties - or maybe that's just me desperately looking for a bright side.

[manitoudoll]

I second Halkin for a Justin 'Paperback Fanatic" investigation and interview.

Until Pierce Nace shows his mantis-ridden face...

[slurpingterror]

I need to read this glorious journey into madness, having re-read Slime after some 15 years.

[erebus]

Anybody catch page 32 of todays Sun newspaper ?
It seems Halkin's prophecy is coming true .

[noose]

I'm in touch with John Halkin at the moment through email and hoping to get an interview with him.

[erebus]

Thats great news. Hope you get the interview.

[bluetomb]

My third adventure in Halkin land:



The man sure has a knack with a brisk, businesslike opening. Kit is small but he wants to be cool so he breaks into a research facility and steals a caterpillar, Unfortunately in doing so he manages to bring a whole cage down on top of him, and though he escapes without injury from the broken glass, a couple of critters escape on his person. He does not end well. Scientist Sophie Greenberg seems to know that her caterpillars aren't exactly friendly, but the incident is let to slide. I suppose it's because it’s part of research that she thinks will earn her a Nobel Prize. Even when a little more is explained about the research, much later on, I still wasn't convinced by the rationale of breeding deadly caterpillars as a step on the road to a Nobel Prize, but then this sort of thinking is probably why I'm a librarian and not a Nobel Prize winner. Scientists are always getting up to crazy schemes after all, like that time researchers into organ regeneration made a sabre tooth tiger and it ate a bunch of people...



Anyhoo, things slow down quite a bit after the prologue. Ginny Andrewes has just bought a lovely old cottage and is looking forward to some alone time, when she encounters a whole bunch of mysteriously giant moths she takes them for some kind of welcoming committee. Only when a caterpillar tried to burrow into her sisters ankle does she realise things may be amiss. Slowly but sure they keep going more amiss, but for a lot of the time this is as much a character piece as a monster shocker. Surprisingly enough, it even works. Ginny is an interesting sort of logical progression from Matt Parker and Tim Ewing, the former was frustrated trying to break into television success, the latter was frustrated by television success, Ginny had television success, was frustrated, gave it up and now has that decision to deal with. And while Matt had some romantic issues and Tim had trickier ones but neither got into much strife over them, Ginny is genuinely conflicted over her feelings and isn't treated as someone innately charming that can do what they want with no consequences.



There's a bit more of this than there is caterpillar action so its lucky that when the caterpillars (and later moths) do attack, they attack hard. There are a few warm ups, but Halkin really lets rip in a high fatality village fete attack, it has build up, a shock spiralling out control start, a passage of straight carnage, doomed heroism, successful heroism and even a sort of foreshadowing fade out to let go some but not all of the tension. It's spread over about 20 pages and I can see it being a highlight of this whole genre for me. Alas the book never quite reaches the same heights again, there's more blood, one more memorably mean death and for me Halkin sticks the ending here even though it goes similarly to Slime (which slightly disappointed in that area), but I suspect the fete scene may be the best he has in him.



I found in general that this a bit missed the pace of Slime and just general regularity of tense or deadly scenes of that and Slither. It feels more measured, more thought out, more serious even, and while I have no general objection to this it does have me wanting higher (or weirder) peaks when they do come. Though never actually dull or offputting there were moments in the second half in which my interest definitely waned. Mind you, this may just be a result of being my third Halkin nature nasty in a row. And anyway, little misgiving aside this is a solid romp for genre fans. Not the greatest, but you should still definitely check it out.

Looking forward to Bloodworm but it won't be for a little while, think the supernatural will do for the next few of my Hamlyn quest. Couple of Lewis Mallory, maybe a Guy N. Smith or two.

[dem bones]

Feb 18, 2015 13:26:19 GMT bluetomb said:

Mind you, this may just be a result of being my third Halkin nature nasty in a row.

I think you may be onto something there, Mr. Tomb. I loved Slither and Squelch but for some inexplicable reason, didn't get quite the same kick from Slime - and when you're not getting off on a killer jellyfish nasty you know there's something wrong. It's not that I didn't enjoy it, just not as much. Could be with the Slime-Slither-Squelch trilogy that favourite-least favourite comes down to the order you read them in?

[bluetomb]

Feb 18, 2015 16:57:42 GMT dem bones said:

Feb 18, 2015 13:26:19 GMT bluetomb said:

Mind you, this may just be a result of being my third Halkin nature nasty in a row.

 Could be with the Slime-Slither-Squelch trilogy that favourite-least favourite comes down to the order you read them in?

This makes sense. Presumably a matter of how the order you read them establishes slightly different tropes (or understanding of tropes) and expectations. I wouldn't be at all surprised if its a generalisable principle to all formulaic pulp, I certainly find the same for formulaic cinema. At any rate I've learned my lesson. When I get around to Richard Lewis I'll take him two at a time with gaps for unrelated stuff. 

[dem bones]

Feb 19, 2015 13:25:48 GMT bluetomb said:

When I get around to Richard Lewis I'll take him two at a time with gaps for unrelated stuff. 

I made a mistake with him, too. I adore The Web but have a feeling I'd have a higher opinion of Spidersif I'd only read it first!