David Gurney - The Evil Under The Water

[dem bones]

David Gurney - The Evil Under The Water (New English Library, July 1977)

Blurb:

A mysterious party had been held one Friday night, and all the signs pointed towards a horrific satanic ritual having taken place.

And then Julie Jordan was found to be missing, which to her boyfriend, Mike Benson, spelt disaster - for he knew about devil worship and the importance of virgin sacrifice, and Julie had been a virgin…

Then when Sergeant Willis was struck down by some strange force, the world’s leading organisations for the control of occultism were called in - but what could even they hope to do against the powers of the devil and the Evil Under the Water?

Picked this up earlier today from the mighty Interzone stall and, only ten pages in, it's looking like this will be the one to kick me up the arse and make me stick with a novel through to the end for the first time in ..... I don't know, but it's like I've forgotten how to do it. In PF #7, Justin refers to 'David Gurney'/ Patrick Bair as "Nel's answer to Dennis Wheatley," while Andy's review of The Devil in the Atlas is certainly not lacking in enthusiasm. This one is set in Friars Hill, an affluent Surrey suburb, built on the ruins of a monastery so corrupt, it was destroyed in 1537 by order of the Earl of Essex. But the evil lingers to the present day with the hair stylist, the baker, librarian, proprietor of Helen's Gowns, the chairman of the local Conservatives, virtually the entire community congregating at the old house on Monastery Road at dead of night for virgin sacrifice capers .....

[andydecker]

Tsk, this is a nicer cover than the edition I got! Didn´t knew that NEL so often issued new covers on reprints.

I started to read this after Devil, which I really liked. But got stuck somehow and now it disappeared somewhere in the stack. Must finish it sometime.

[franklinmarsh]

I was beginning to forget books like this existed. Magnificent stuff, Dem.

[dem bones]

Been dying to read him since Steve's post (third from the top) on Vault MK 1, but it's the first time I've set eyes on one of his novels, and it's shaping up a treat. Julie Jordan (see blurb) has disappeared, her last known whereabouts, Dr. Meadowson's place where, according to the host and hostess, she left the party early. Her husband to be, Mike Benson, believes the pair are covering for the corpse-like Gray Jordan, a man who, Mike's gut instinct tells him, is evil, and his gut instinct is right. Jordan is a proper fictional Satanist - old school: never settle for the easy option when there's a perfectly viable evil alternative. He's not dipped into his evil spells book yet, but we already know he's a dab hand at mind-control and brainwashing techniques.

A doorstep confrontation with the master of strangeness leaves Mike in hospital, having mysteriously collapsed and smashed his head on the way down. Fortunately for him, the man assigned to the missing woman case is Chief Inspector Wall, a prime mover in Scotland Yard's little known Occult Investigation branch. Wall transferred to the unit after a Bunch of Devil-Worshipers sacrificed his eight year old son on an altar so he's inclined to believe Mike's ravings, especially as there have been a spate of similar unaccountable disappearances down Surrey way over a number of years ....

andy, I don't have a copy but this one?

[andydecker]

Jan 18, 2010 11:13:19 GMT dem bones said:

andy, i don't have a copy but this one?

Yup, that´s mine. And that´s the part were I put it aside, after the introduction of the Occult Squad. Can´t remember why.

[dem bones]

It's worth sticking with - unlike this post which may be a bit spoilerish though have tried to curb my worst excesses!

Gurney, Eric Ericson, Jack Shackleford, Brian Ball, Sandra Shulman, Raymond Giles, Mary-Rose Hayes ... There's a bloody good Fanatic article crying out to be written about the NEL Black Magic novels during the Peter Haining years. He certainly knew how to pick them. By close of part I, Mike has been abducted from his Hospital bed and spirited away to a crumbling tower, a relic of the ruined monastery. From his cell, he watches shadowy figures feeding something unseen by the lake. Meanwhile Chief Inspector Wall has lost his trusted sergeant who, searching for the ruthless, twisted, thoroughly evil Gray Jordan, ill-advisedly investigated the Meadowson's loft without first borrowing a protective anti-lightening suit. In part II we learn most of what went down at the Meadowson's "party"/ full-blown Black Mass, and why Julie was hand-picked by Jordan as a sacrifice to the Anti-God. Gurney handles the ensuing Satanic orgy with far more restraint than i'd expected after reading Steve on The Necrophiles, but the man has a great way with atmosphere, and here he's genuinely nightmarish. Imagine To The Devil - A Donut minus Conkey ****ing Bill turning up to spoil everything at the last moment.

And we've still got well over half the book to go (it's a NEL Mammoth: 189 pages)

[dem bones]

Jan 19, 2010 19:01:40 GMT andydecker said:

And that´s the part were I put it aside, after the introduction of the Occult Squad. Can´t remember why.

don't know if it was the same with you, but after belting through the first half, I hit a wall in Part III and it was like wading through glue for fifty pages!

Can't 'review' this thing, not even to my usual lousy standards, but essentially, the story boils down to a war between two evenly matched, extremely powerful Black Magicians, although that doesn't begin to do justice to a plot that suddenly zooms off some place way beyond convoluted. For example, although it seemed she was sacrificed the last time we caught up with her, suddenly there are at least four identical Julies expertly mimicking each other (if one screams, they all do, etc). Mike can't differentiate between them, so what chance do we have? Drag in a coven of one-armed, apelike Satanists, a trio of monster pike, and quite possibly the most sadistic voodoo torture spell ever conceived, and you could say the going gets pretty damn weird. The voodoo business - let's just say it involves soldier ants crawling across an image of the intended victim - has already been used to drive four corporate leaders to suicide before the Satanists set about destroying Chief Inspector Wall by the same process. The passage when he first realises what they're doing to him has to be among the most truly appalling moments in horror fiction. Come the concluding quarter and it's back to more traditional armed cops versus the bad guys territory, but we are a very long way from Dennis Wheatley with The Evil Under The Water, that's for sure.

[Craig Herbertson]

The passage when he first realises what they're doing to him has to be among the most truly appalling moments in horror fiction. Dem

Sounds like my kind of book