E. B. Stambaugh - Mantis

[dem]

E. B. Stambaugh - Mantis (Futura, 1989)

Blurb:
Pleasant Grove, California, lives up to its name: a peaceful small town, where violent death means something which happens elsewhere, in the big city. Only the toxic waste dump mars the beauty of the wild surrounding country.


Then, under the endless blue summer skies, a nightmare spawns in their midst. It begins with wild animals, found hideously mutilated. Next, every last inmate of the local Animal Shelter is butchered with a cold methodical relentlessness.


The victims are growing in size, which means the killer and its appetite are getting BIGGER. It leaves no footprints. Its saliva brims with poisons.


Finally, people are found horrifyingly slaughtered. For Chief of Police Jerrod Rudd the case revives long-buried terrors of his own and as Pleasant Grove becomes a community under siege Rudd must contend with the unthinkable night and day.
Something inhuman has crawled from Hell to loose a blood-splashed reign of terror.

only just started this, but i can't help feeling a little sorry for Mantis. For all i know, it could well turn out to be the quintessential 'When Praying Mantises Attack!' nasty (the blurb promises much and the cover's a treat), but this is Vault after all and who could ever love it above Eat Them Alive?

Green-fingered super-gran Clarice Boomer, 70, has always had an aversion to praying mantises, but she snaps up a few net-fulls of their marshmallow-like eggs at the Garden Centre as an alternate insecticide. Clarice chairs meetings of the Pleasant Grove Senior Womens Club (some terrifying US equivalent of the Jam and Jerusalem set, i guess) whose hot campaign topic of the moment is the ugly chemical waste dump two miles out of town.

When not tending her plants or overseeing PGSWC meetings, Clarice splits her time between clipping newspaper items for her scrapbook of "gruesome and deviant deeds" - she's been at it for 25 years, the twisted old bat - and meddling in the life of her godson, Jerrod Rudd, the local chief of police, whose career is putting a strain on his marriage to Helen. Clarice gets on well with the Rudd's sassy teenage daughter, Julie, and gifts her a mantis so she can study it for her biology project. Originally it was going to be an entire mayonnaise jar full, but the solitary female, Eloise (as the delighted Julie christens her), ate the rest ....

So, Californian idyll. Toxic dump. Grasshopper lookalikes renowned for their cannibalistic traits. Wonder what will happen next?

[H_P_Saucecraft]

Where did you get this one, dem?

I have something called Mantis, by K.W. Jeter, but no idea what that one is like - still in the to read section (yes, I have a section rather than a pile, as a high proportion of the shelves are unread ).

That cover is certainly very 'Eat Them Alive' & it sounds great so far.

[dem]

" ... what had taken place here was the result of a ghoulish frenzy he would not have thought possible outside a paperback horror novel."

well, i'm a third of the way through and it's kept me entertained until now. The several gory depictions of multiple animal slayings combined with the reminders that this is all taking place in relentless heat means you can pretty much smell the eviscerated horse carcass even as Stanbaugh salivates over the finer details of mutilation. Police chief Rudd realises that Eloise the pet mantis can't be responsible because she's still a small fry, but he has these nagging doubts .... Meanwhile his Godmother, Clarice, is coming over all Mrs. Marple. i think her 'eccentricity' is supposed to endear her to the reader, but she irritates the shit out of me and i hope she dies soon. Julie, the daughter, says 'rad' a lot and calls her brother 'asshole-face' so, like her aunt, i guess she's marked down for survival, more's the pity. For those who enjoy a good dog death, you want to see the mess the phantom slayer has just made of two Dobermann Pincers!

P. S. Saucy, i got Mantis, Squelch, Brain Eaters and Beyond The Threshold among others from the excellent Riley Books which i've ransacked for trashy treasures this past month - first time i've used an online bookshop and at least it's run by one of our own! Return Of The Living Dead was a fortuitous find from a stall off Brick Lane last Sunday and, unbelievably, sat beside it, more James Moffat madness: 'Ron Cunningham's Don Grey: Sports Commentator!

[dem]

It's like a litmus test, this one. If you don't thrill at the prospect of a giant mantis hanging upside down in a tree outside the public library, waiting to pounce on teen-lovers and old timers, then you can most likely give the entire 'when animals attack' genre a miss. For me, i thought it was wonderfully entertaining. The killer insects are only glimpsed very briefly until the end, but no question that they're the stars of the show. Very pleasantly surprised that the author had the good taste to dispense horrible lingering death to at least one of the, uh, "sympathetic" characters, and the all-important entirely predictable epilogue is outstanding.

[kooshmeister]

I thrill to that prospect. S'why I bought Eat Them Alive.

Is it just me or does the cover look like the mantis is reflected in a doorknob? I suddenly have this vague notion of the critter going door to door like the land shark in SNL and eating whoever is gullible enough to open the door.

[dem]

trust me, after Eat Them Alive, E. B. Stambaugh's novel is a work of supreme sanity which probably accounts for it's relative lack of reputation. Also, there's the date. 'Dark Fantasy' (i curse your soul!) had already sprayed DDT over the nasties by the mid-'eighties so what chance did a latecomer like Eloise have? i read it either directly before or after Saul Wernick's The Fire Ants and while Wernick's was probably the "better" novel, Mantis was unquestionably the better "When Animals Attack!"

[kooshmeister]

Snagged a copy of this off of eBay UK. Can't wait for it to arrive. Any other killer mantis novels besides this and Pierce Nace's magnum opus?

[erebus]

And the wants list became longer.

[kooshmeister]

Got my copy in the mail! It's thicker than I anticipated. I've flipped through it and it looks pretty interesting. The Tom Becker character is a real piece of work. Hate him already.

[kooshmeister]

What do we know about this book?



Is there an actual praying mantis in it or is it just metaphorical?

EDIT: A quick perusal of the reviews on Goodreads reveals it doesn't involve a killer mantis. Phooey.

[andydecker]

Mar 31, 2020 3:41:10 GMT kooshmeister said:

EDIT: A quick perusal of the reviews on Goodreads reveals it doesn't involve a killer mantis. Phooey.

What is the point of a novel called Mantis if there is no killer mantis in it? Doesn't surprise me, though. While Jeter did some interesting SF stuff, I tried two of his shared world novelisations, one Star Trek, one Star Wars, and thought them thoroughly dull.

[Jojo Lapin X]

Mar 31, 2020 9:06:36 GMT andydecker said:

While Jeter did some interesting SF stuff

I seem to remember one in which people, if they are unlucky, can end up as upscale hi-fi cables . . .

[kooshmeister]

Mar 31, 2020 9:06:36 GMT andydecker said:

What is the point of a novel called Mantis if there is no killer mantis in it?

Probably to tie in to the theme of the "voracious woman." Like how in the movie Nine Months, Hugh Grant's character has a nightmare where Julianne Moore turns into a mantis monster and attacks him in bed after sex.