W.A. Ballinger - Drums of the Dark Gods

[severance]

Drums of the Dark Gods - W.A. Ballinger - Paperback Library 1967 (U.S.), Five Star 1972 (U.K.)



A man and a woman - trapped in the Voodoo torture cellars of Haiti!
Richard Quintain and Julia Wellsley, sworn enemies of Black Magic, make a desperate effort to stop a Voodoo plot to rule the world. Risking their lives, they infiltrate the secret cells of depraved Satanists of Voodoo-ridden Haiti. But their purpose is exposed. Trapped in the blood-drenched torture chambers of Gorga, Master Adept of the Left Hand Path, they battle a supernatural horror that could turn mankind into a race of murdering monsters!

Well that was a cracking little read, clocking in at 31 pages more than Dem's optimum length of 128 pages, but it doesn't even seem that long. Ballinger, who I think is a pseudonym of either W. Howard Baker or Wilfred McNeilly, who both wrote as Peter 'Guardians' Saxon, certainly knows how to open with a shocker - as here we find a naked girl roped to the ground in the Haitian jungle who promptly gets systematically mutilated by thirteen drugged up locals after they've each had they way with her. Finally Baron Samedi himself rips her still beating heart out of her chest!
It turns out she was a Scotland Yard officer investigating the origins of a new instantly-addictive drug. Her boss requests our hero, fraud investigator Richard Quintain, to go to Haiti to see what he can dig up, having prior experience with the occult. He takes his assistant, Julie (not Julia as it says on the back cover) as she is a virgin, the greatest weapon against the supernatural, as well as a telepath and possessor of tele-kinetic power.
The Master Adept, when he finally makes his appearance is memorably freakish and the revelation of his drug workforce is ingenious but logical.
This really is a superb novel, Curt has already reviewed it on 'Groovy Age of Horror' - if you can pick this up, you won't be disappointed.

[andydecker]

Here are the two german editions of the novel.

Drums of Darkness - Horror Expert 5; Publisher Luther, 1971

Throne of the Snake - Dämonenkiller 37, Publisher Pabel, 1977

This is an odd case. Baker here got the treatment one rather associates with people like King or Herbert: same novel, different translations, different publishers. As these were published under different names I don´t think the second publisher even knew there already was a translation of that.

The translations are quite interesting as they are very different. The later one reads better, but it also toned sex and violence down. This is no surprise as this was published after the authorities got the pulps into its crosshairs and nobody wanted to make waves. On the other hand Publisher Luther was infamous for really liking the sleaze and they pushed the boundaries in the early seventies like no other.

As a hero Quintain is very cardboard, and there is a very strange bit about voodoo being influenced by the Waldensians who were sent as slaves to Haiti. I am no expert, but this seems a bit, well, nonsense.

About the debate of who wrote it originally, Baker or McNeilly, unfortunatly this doesn´t offer new evidence. The first is copyrighted to Ballinger in arrangement with Syndication International London. the second is copyrighted by W.H.Baker. Both are dated 1966.

[dem bones]

Only thirty pages in but my wild and totally uneducated guess is that this was written by McNeilly. As Curt points out, the seeds of the 'Errol Lecale' Specialist novels are here in the relationship between Richard Quintain and Julia Wellsley. Given that Julia is otherwise the epitome of the Swinging London dolly bird, maybe McNeilly realised that the reader would find it difficult to believe she was a virgin, and this would all work better in a faux 'Victorian' setting, hence the James Bond-ish Quintain metamorphosizes into Eli Podgram and Julia becomes Mara? Also, from the admittedly little i've read of his work, the shock horror opening seems to have been something of a McNeilly trademark (though i guess a competent hack could easily ape his style). Another trait; this may be a little too sensitive for some of our readers, but has anyone else noticed how he often throws in a line where the heroine is teased/ threatened that she's going to be spanked (Julia here, Anne Ashley in Dark Ways To Death, Petronella in The Torturer ...)?

My guess is that McNeilly wrote Vampire's Moon too.

[pulphack]

i think this may have been debated in paperback fanatic before now, but my view (for what it's worth) is that it's MacNeilly - the structure and basic plot of the book are taken totally from a Baker SBL - however, as MacNeilly found Baker's style too hard to adapt to the extra he was supposed to add, he seems to have gutted the text, leaving on the plot outline to which he adds and then rewrites from scratch.

very out of character for a quintain title, and certainly the genesis of the specialist, as the elements are all there, waiting to be taken back to another era.

[andydecker]

After reading here about it on the vault I bought a few Quintain novels out of interest, still haven´t read them yet. But in Drums he was a strange character. From secret agent to detective?

Still it is noticeable that McNeilly liked to put rape in his novels. In every Specialist novel it is a major plotpoint, and it is quite dominant in Drums also.

It read like a test-version for The Specialist.

[andydecker]

And speaking of Baker, he really was a shrewd businessman. Like with Drums he managed to sell the same novel twice abroad, this time a Quintain.

Kampf im Zwielicht (Battle in the shadows) Scherz Verlag 1970 - The Dirty Game

Heisser Job (Hot job) Maluche Verlag 1968 - The Guardians

These are two different translations of the same novel. As there are two different original titles I can´t say which novel this is original. It is a spy novel about Quintain and a girl namend Topaz Qwong.

Frankly I think the bit with "The Guardians" is a joke. Is there really a Quintain-novel with that title?

But Baker surely hadn´t a problem with selling the same novel twice. Which smells a bit of unethical business practisses if you ask me.

[dem bones]

Jun 5, 2010 12:25:00 GMT andydecker said:

After reading here about it on the vault I bought a few Quintain novels out of interest, still haven´t read them yet. But in Drums he was a strange character. From secret agent to detective?

Still it is noticeable that McNeilly liked to put rape in his novels. In every Specialist novel it is a major plotpoint, and it is quite dominant in Drums also.

It read like a test-version for The Specialist.

Curt points out that Drums Of The Dark Gods and the Specialist Zombie have plenty in common but parts of it also reappear in The Severed Hand - the meal of human flesh in rich gravy, the teleportation (of the doomed Salterre in Drums ... and Mara in Severed Hand. And:

"Fat people are jolly for the most part .... but this woman had no jollity in her" - Mama Goodtime in Drums Of The Dark Gods

"He was grossly fat but without the jollity of most fat people." - Zafir the chief eunuch in The Severed Hand

Whoever wrote it, Drums Of The Dark Gods is a bit special with some truly striking animated corpse interludes (instead of tin mining, our plague of zombies are put to work manufacturing a highly addictive drug). The evil mastermind Gorga, essentially an obese living torso with "a size eight head" and flippers is absolutely unforgettable even if the sob-story of his life can't help but remind you of Dr. Evil's tear-jerking monologue in The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Jun 5, 2010 13:48:47 GMT andydecker said:

Frankly I think the bit with "The Guardians" is a joke. Is there really a Quintain-novel with that title?

andy, Vault Mk I: W.Howard Baker - The Guardians

[andydecker]

thanks for the info, dem! Appreciated. Maybe I read this.