Ted Willis - Man-Eater (Pan, 1977)
The incredibly prolific Lord Ted Willis created
Dixon Of Dock Green so it's interesting to see how he copes with a
Rivals Of The Rats candidate and, four chapters in, it looks like he's a natural for pulpy horror adventure.
Nothing ever happens in the tiny Yorkshire village of Whitford .... until the Great Davino parks his van up on the moors. Things have not been going well with his circus act of late and he's had enough. Unable to feed his Royal Bengal tigers, Ranee and Mohan, he sets them loose to make their own way in the world.
If Tom Pickford had known this was going on, he might have cancelled tonight's romp with sex-mad Penny. Tom is married to May, the local feminist and the first person in Whitford to adopt the title 'Ms.' He's been knocking Penny off for some time during the nights he's supposed to be engaged in chess matches over at George Leppard's house and his wife suspects nothing. But this night he doesn't come home.
It's not too good with Penny, either. After Tom abandoned her and seemingly vanished in mid-air, she drove home to be molested by her sleazy uncle (he even snatched back the £20 he normally pays her for the privilege). And when the police find Pickford's abandoned car, her missing black drawers are on the back seat.
Then there's the hermit David Birk who has the obligatory mysterious past, quite probably a dark one. He's well stocked up on guns and ammo and recognises a tiger's roar when he hears one.
*****
In GNS's hands, I think its fair to say that there would've been a higher body count and several gratuitous bad sex interludes, but, these short-comings aside, I'd nominate
Man-Eater as an honorary Nel. It's certainly a page-turner.
When chief inspector Gosford starts asking questions about the missing man at her place of work,
The Star Of India, Penny reckons its time to quit Yorkshire and hit a more exotic location (London). She returns home, jemmies uncle Toby's trunk, nicks his cash and throws his porno mags out the window - along with photo's of himself and another local luminary abusing an under-age girl. Uncle Toby is a strict Methodist minister in his public life, but you suspect a life-changing experience is about to befall him.
Meanwhile, the Great Davino has booked into a hotel, sealed his room and turned on the gas ...
The characters/ walking-cliches are far better drawn than the usual ciphers (my only complaint being that they tend to do their bit then disappear for the rest of the book: the bitchy landlady at
The Star Of India who bawls out her barmaids and can't wait to grass Penny up being especially wasted). There's Gosford, the aforementioned honest cop and nominal hero, trying to do what's best in the face of his ego-maniacal Commissioner's lunacy: James Topping, the ex-Fleet Street big boy now reporting on the local rag who, somewhere between supping pints in
The Woolpack and eyeing up his secretary, rediscovers his passion for journalism and public spiritedness: Little Maud Pickering, an 11 year old obsessed with Kim Braden in
Anne Of Green Gables on TV, who gets stuck up a tree in the dark: Willis even remembers to throw in a toytown biker gang.
File under: pick it up if you see it around.
