'Richard Haigh' - The City

[dem bones]

Richard Haigh - The City (Grafton, 1986)

Les Edwards

The Horror-Pigs from The Farm are back - Hungrier than ever for human prey ....

It was the greatest agricultural show ever held. One of the world's biggest stadiums was barely large enough to host it. And one of the star attractions was the enclosure holding the massive humped Buckland White pigs, with their huge tusks, evil red eyes and narrow, murderous snouts. With their well-earned reputation for lethal viciousness, they were truly creatures out of some shrieking nightmare. Safely penned behind stout bars, they gave the spectators a delicious cheap thrill of cheap terror.

But then the pigs broke loose and so did all Hell ....

THE CITY continues the terrifying story of nature gone berserk that started in THE FARM. Gut-crunching, bone-grinding horror returns to seize your soul ....

The stadium is Wembley, stomping ground of veteran security guard Harold Ofield. Harold isn't looking forward to the Agricultural Show because it will attract crowds. Harold hates crowds. He particularly hates people under twenty-five and immigrants, but he's prepared to extend his loathing to everybody else, too. "Shitters" all of them. And now there's talk of those "filthy benders" the Animal Liberation Front targeting the event. Just let them try it, the shitters.

"After Tricky and the pigs, I'll be telling you how to make your own farmyard out of three empty chocolate boxes and some toilet roll holders. There'll be some music from the whimsically named Mutant Scum Legion and Mike Read'll be along to announce the winner of last month's Wham competition."

That's Doreen, co-presenter of Kids' Stuff with the universally loathed 'Tricky' Dicky Fraser, broadcasting live from the Festival. Tricky wears "fashionable checked trousers" and is, unquestionably, a shitter. Also in attendance are an SAS display team, and a 'perfect' couple from Yorkshire who preside over the model farm in between his slugs of vodka and her shagging anything with a pulse. There are plenty of other juicy potential casualties; the luckless Kelvin, the newest recruit to Ofield's team who sings along to the Fall's Eat Y'self Fitter (!), and wonders if he can last the week without laying the racist tosser out: Jenny Nolan, founder of Los Lobo's (an ALF splinter group) who breaks into the complex on the first night; a bunch of kids from a remand centre who are plotting an escape; Matilda, the cute little sow who everybody likes because she saved someones life once or something; surely the little kids won't cop it? Unfortunately Mike Read has probably been and gone when the riot breaks out ...

It takes them some time to make their move, but when they do the Bucklands go about their business with crushing enthusiasm, tearing their way through most of the cast in little under an hour. 'Haigh'/ James apparently planned a third book with the killer porkers emigrating to Australia - not sure if anything ever came of that?

File under: Extreme repulsive pig-swill.

The infamous 'banned' cover, reproduced from Fear #25, Jan. 1991.

[pulphack]

it's a better book that The Farm, which is ok but not prime LJ (i think he was saving the real rough stuff for The Witches at that time). there was a thrid book which was comissioned and written, but never published. no idea why: i think it was just a shift in Granada editorial policy rather than outrage at atrocity. it didn't make them pick sick or anything (watch that tumbleweed...).

[dem bones]

That seems to have been the case with Mike Linaker's Scorpions books too. At the end of Second Generation he sets us up nicely for a stingers versus the USA sequel but two decades on it doesn't look like it's going to show.

I've not read The Farm (more's the pity), but The City is a prime example of how Vault can affect your mental health. When I first read it, yonks ago, I DETESTED it. Maybe not quite as much as I did Witches I: The Prisoner but it was a close thing. Now the huge-permed babe and her pals are looking more attractive by the day and a rematch can't be far away.

[Calenture]

pulphack said:

(watch that tumbleweed...).

Why do I think I'm missing a PH joke here?

No, I'm probably just being paranoid, as usual.

[franklinmarsh]

The Farm is interesting, but it's virtually all set up. There's a host of LJ in-jokes. It's not just the pigs that go bananas.

[dem bones]

Stewart Home interview with Laurence James

also:
Richard Allen, Mick Norman & Other NEL Youthspoitation Novelists of the 1970s

Reflections on the work of James Moffat

[erebus]

I recently read The Farm, so naturally I had to read The City. Of the two I thought this book was the weaker. It takes such a long time for the carnage to happen. Page 137 to be precise, the book has 191. The padding before this is not interesting and very very uninspiring as the characters are not at all interesting. The initial book had a family setting and the characters were well set out. Here they are just thrown in and out of the book like confetti.
Of course the slaughter is good stuff. Most notable the racist bigot who gets his genitals tore off. Which begs the question why do all the nasty characters in these books always suffer the most horrific demise, usually concerning genital violence.
Don't think the third book would have been any better. Just cannot grasp the porkers running around the outback being right.