David J. Michael - Death Tour

[dem bones]

David J. Michael - Death Tour (NEL, July 1980: originally Bobbs-Merrill, USA, 1978)

Blurb;

It was crazy but it was a story.
The five students who specialised in weird features for the college paper needed a story badly when they heard about alligators infesting the city's sewers.
With a stolen map of the sewer system they climbed down a manhole into an underground world of fetid pools and sludge-filled tunnels.
In a dark territory that played host to black rats and hideous reptiles their reporting mission turned into a nightmare as death sprang from the evil-smelling gloom ...
HOW MANY OF THEM CAN SURVIVE THE DEATH TOUR?

"The world is fine, but people stink"

Tom Marsh and Mary Malgen, 20, are members of Five-Star, a campus production team, whose regular investigative feature, Touring, has proved a surprise hit with the students. Tom and Mary are an item, though there's a massive obstacle standing in the way of their relationship - her father. Old Man Malgen is a big shot at the local sewage plant. He's also a misanthrope and alcoholic who despises "college punks" above all others on account of his wife's adultery with a French teacher five years ago. Since that day, he's had Mary fetch and carry, cook and clean and generally follow orders like she's his personal slave. Mary, with not a bone of rebellion in her, meekly does as she's told. Consequently Tom likes nothing more than winding the old bastard up, so when Mary lets slip that her father has had half his leg bitten away by an alligator in a disused stretch of sewer known as the catacombs, well, what better news story to investigate for Five-Star?

So it's down in the sewer we go to discover god-knows-what novelty pets people see fit to flush down the toilet. But the team soon tire of the hunt and, after they've stupidly hijacked and derailed the underground tram, suddenly this doesn't seem like such a wizzard jape after all. Hopelessly lost, they discover this section of tunnel isn't as unoccupied as everyone seems to think. Who is that shambling, white haired drooler roasting rats on a spit and why is he so anxious to kill them?

The death tour is on for real and only Malgen can help them now. Maybe ....

Death Tour has all the trappings of a classic 'when animals attack!' nasty without actually being one at all, but I still belted through it in one hit (156 pages) and had a good time doing so. Sure, there are a few decent rodents and reptiles down there but this has more in common with a Richard Laymon psycho thriller, just far leaner and minus the frequent bad sex interludes. Even the seen-it-coming-a-mile-off twist is a good seen-it-coming-a-mile-off twist. Tom, Mary and their equally irritating sidekicks are typical slasher flick fodder, and you'll likely have sorted the survivors from the doomed long before the anticlimactic early run in with a monster goldfish; Cherry, nominally the leader, is overweight, overbearing and ginger, prone to getting her fat arse stuck in the tunnel. Krevitch, the camera operator, is frightened of his own shadow, and the likable Hunk, mentally impaired but fiercely loyal. As one dimensional teens go in these novels, they're not so bad but you'll remember Old Man Malgen's splendid performance long after you've forgotten the story.

[erebus]

Looks and sounds great. Never seen this anywhere but I certainly put it on the wants list.
Thanks for the heads up.

[dem bones]

Don't know if it effects everyone this way, but the opening chapters so irritated the hell out of me that by p.15 I was tempted to shove Death Tour way back down the to-read pile (it's not like I don't have plenty on the go and the tricky round up of the remaining 6th Black Book Of Horror won't write itself). Once it kicks in, though ...
What with this, Baxter and Subterranean, that's three on the spin i've managed to finish - can't think of when that last happened!

[doomovertheworld]

I finished this one off on the train home from work yesterday.

I would definitely agree with demonic’s opening post that it is not the book, based on the splendidly lurid, cover I thought I was buying. However, saying that I still enjoyed it and it is very easy to read. The book that it turns out to be is good. Towards the end, particularly when the twist kicks in, I definitely got an Eaten Alive vibe from it.

[droogie]

Is there any artists' credit on or in the book? I'd really like to know who painted that cover. Thanks.

[dem bones]

Feb 7, 2015 14:35:09 GMT droogie said:

Is there any artists' credit on or in the book? I'd really like to know who painted that cover. Thanks.

It's uncredited in the book, but consulting my stash of Justin Marriott's Paperback Fanatic reveals the artist as Bob Martin of Sasquatch fame.


Glad you enjoyed it, Mr. Doom!