julieh
Crab On The Rampage
One-woman butt-kicking army
Posts: 70
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Post by julieh on Jan 4, 2011 20:04:42 GMT
The Praying Mantis Basic scenario:
Professor with wife (who was nurse to his previous [now dead] wife before they married, and also "nursed" his [now dead] son) has a assistant named Christian.
Christian meets a likely girl, Beatrice, in a pub and introduces her to the prof as a new secretary. They hit it off so well, that they have a fling.
Meanwhile Christian falls for Beatrice and proposes marriage. When she agrees, she breaks it off with the prof.
Good so far.
Shortly into the marriage, Bea starts to suspect Christian of having a woman around behind her back, and bugs the apartment - only to catch, on tape, the prof's wife and Christian planning murder.
Turns out the entire thing has been a plot of the wife to get Christian to marry a girl all so he can kill her and the prof "in a fit of jealous insanity" and get off scot free, to live happily ever after once the wife inherits the loot.
And this is just the first act.
Bea, rather than revealing the plot, foils it in part - leaving the professor dead, but saving her own life. She then holds the taped conversation over the heads of the two plotters, torturing them with it - using, among other things, the "if I die, my lawyer releases this to the police" gimmick.
[Best scene in the movie - a tossup between when she serves Christian (Jonathan Pryce) soup full of cassette tapes, and when he gets a summons to her bedside in a distant hospital after "a car accident that will probably kill her before the night is out" only to find her in bed with another man, instead - nyah nyah nyah.]
The interesting thing is the novel is told entirely in correspondence, from various points of view. It's a bit like a car wreck, since no one is very likeable.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 5, 2011 10:57:47 GMT
Ok, so it's not a proper praying mantis blood and guts extravaganza (i'm still fragile) but it still sounds good enough to add to the interminable wants list. Thanks for giving us the dirt on this one, Julie!
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Post by jonathan122 on Jan 5, 2011 11:35:09 GMT
Ok, so it's not a proper praying mantis blood and guts extravaganza (i'm still fragile) but it still sounds good enough to add to the interminable wants list. Thanks for giving us the dirt on this one, Julie! Dem, have you read "In Due Course", in the Wordsworth Andrew Caldecott collection? I can guarantee that that one has actual giant praying mantises in. Well worth checking out.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jan 5, 2011 16:02:47 GMT
Ok, so it's not a proper praying mantis blood and guts extravaganza (i'm still fragile) but it still sounds good enough to add to the interminable wants list. Thanks for giving us the dirt on this one, Julie! Dem, have you read "In Due Course", in the Wordsworth Andrew Caldecott collection? I can guarantee that that one has actual giant praying mantises in. Well worth checking out. The plural of Mantis is a tough word, correctly used by Johnathan here but as it might come up a few times now that we have a new thing of horror to play with: "Praying mantises" or "praying mantes" are acceptable, as is "praying mantids" I had to use the analogy in a novel and took great pains to research the little bastard.
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Post by jonathan122 on Jan 5, 2011 16:48:02 GMT
The plural of Mantis is a tough word, correctly used by Johnathan here. Finally, that expensive education is beginning to pay off!
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Post by dem bones on Jan 5, 2011 18:15:57 GMT
Thanks Jonathan. So glad I resisted the temptation to bulldoze through Not Exactly Ghosts/ Fires Burn Blue when I got hold of a copy as it's been a joy to dip in and out of. Quintet and Authorship Disputed made me burst out laughing and In Due Course is another I'd have expected to find in a 'forgotten tales of terror' anthology before now.
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Post by marksamuels on Jan 6, 2011 1:19:20 GMT
Dem, have you read "In Due Course", in the Wordsworth Andrew Caldecott collection? I can guarantee that that one has actual giant praying mantises in. Well worth checking out. The plural of Mantis is a tough word, correctly used by Johnathan here but as it might come up a few times now that we have a new thing of horror to play with: "Praying mantises" or "praying mantes" are acceptable, as is "praying mantids" I had to use the analogy in a novel and took great pains to research the little bastard. Yay, gotta post this before Aussie lunchtime in the Ashes before I flake out...629-9...etc Mark S.
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Post by jamesdoig on Jan 6, 2011 3:26:03 GMT
Yay, gotta post this before Aussie lunchtime in the Ashes before I flake out...629-9...etc Scoff, guffaw, chortle, as they say in the classics. Highest innings score by an English team in Australia. Let's see if we crumble like granny's undies.
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Post by lemming13 on Jan 6, 2011 12:36:51 GMT
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Post by marksamuels on Jan 7, 2011 1:02:56 GMT
YAY!!!!!!! I've waited 24 years for this!!!!! Mark S.
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Post by jamesdoig on Jan 7, 2011 5:49:22 GMT
YAY!!!!!!! I've waited 24 years for this!!!!! Mark S. That's not a gloat. This is a gloat:
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Post by noman3221 on Oct 7, 2020 0:56:41 GMT
Here are covers for a few James Workman books. He was born in the UK, lived in South Africa for a time before moving permanently to Australia. Horror Tales, 1963. The Creep The Flare Perkins and the Pilot The Flashing Scar Man on the Run Fattened Calf Shock Stories, 1962 The Dead Man's Heart The Castaway Possession Spendrift Trade-In Bodies The Spell The Fungus and the Flower
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