Edward Jarvis - Pestilence

[dem]

Edward Jarvis - Pestilence (Hamlyn, 1983)

Blurb:
What is it?
The subtle killer that no one has seen ...
The plague that grows – and grows – from an unknown source...
A monster of writhing, insatiable blood-lust...
The voracious destroyer from which there is no escape...
Until mankind is faced with final, total carnage.
PESTILENCE


Maggots is so spectacularly, endearingly rubbish it's easy to overlook Mr. J.'s other great contribution to horror lit, the equally ludicrous Pestilence. The dialogue is rank, several chapters are unspeakably boring, the humans win, and there's only one measly bad sex interlude (albeit the greatest ever written). In short, this novel is BRILLIANT.

It's the early 'eighties, A CERTAIN EVIL SOVIET SUPERPOWER have been up to their old nuclear-testing tricks to leave mankind once more facing death by doom, this time courtesy of a flesh-and-bone absorbing marine horror.

Garry Marshall, top Fleet Street journalist turned top advertising exec, is among the first known victims of the pestilence, when wife Verni insists he unblock the drains. As Marshall is busy removing a blockage from the pipes, something gently sucks two of his fingers clean off. What can it all mean? Garry reports his bizarre experience to an old pal at the Daily Monitor and, as reports of similar atrocities arrive from across the globe, is persuaded to return to the fold and head the Universal Media Alert Group (UMAG). In true James Herbert annoying every-man action-hero style, Marshall is unanimously elected the only man who can save us and promoted to world-wide leader of Operation Chop (Co-ordination & Help to Overcome Pestilence), gaining a glamorous personal assistant, Lorna Leigh, in the process. Other leading players on the team include Dr. Carl Larson, Sweden's foremost geologist: Glen Kalmar, a Connecticut duck-fancier, and Judd Cass, the big movie producer, who was shooting his latest blockbuster in India when his child star dipped her foot in the water and ... He's not been the same man after witnessing that nasty incident. Trouble is, other than agreeing that it's all Russia's fault, we're still not quite sure what we're up against. Crocodiles, eels, piranha, are all in the frame until Glen Kalmar, identifies the true culprit - those bastard extinct dinosaurs, the lamprey! One fierce brain-storming session in a Fleet Street boozer later and they've arrived at both a campaigning slogan and a good plan. "Death to the lamprey's, CHOP! CHOP! CHOP!"

Verni complains that she and the kids never get to see Garry any more now he's too busy saving the planet, and books a boat-trip to Calais ....

To be continued ....

[dem]

Lorna - a vision in "cream coloured buttock-hugging trousers and matching linen shirt" - may not contribute much to the war versus the Pestilence, but there's nobody better at providing "a woman's comfort" should you learn via live TV that your wife has been devoured by a giant lamprey.

The Lamprey have somehow grown to such gargantuan size that a single one can - and does - take down the biggest Killer whale on earth. Dr. Larson sensibly suggests destroying them with solar energy, but Glenn has a better idea - nuke Canvey Island! It may not end the Pestilence, but let's face it, the place is an absolute shithole, nobody would miss it, and you'd be doing the poor bastards forced to live there a favour. A compromised is reached. Larson sets about harnessing the Sun's rays, Garry gets to wipe Canvey off the face of the planet, and Mr. Jarvis is demoniacally possessed by Rev. Lionel Fanthorpe.

They waited. The world waited. They slept. The world slept.

'Will it be all right, Garry, darling?' Lorna's whisper was the world's whisper, her hope the yearning hope of all mankind. 'Will it truly be all right?'

'Has to be, lover. Really. Has to be.'

Then they slept on. And the world slept on. They awoke, and the world awoke, suddenly to live again.



In other news, Chapter 21 was perhaps the funniest four-and-a-bit-pages I had ever read until Chapter 29 topped it.

As for product placement: Moet & Chandon, Lanson Black Label, Krug, Bollinger, and Jaws.

Edward Jarvis. Total legend.

[erebus]

Compared to Maggots, this book is a Legendary. He kind of bites of more than he can chew by setting both books around the world, rather them setting them in merry old Britain. You have to have a certain knack at writing to be able to keep the reader interested, Jarvis clearly didn't have it.
I have put my views on Pestilence in the other thread. Its not a total loss Dem ,stick with it.

[dem]

I stuck through with it to the bitter end and still can't decide whether it's straight and awful or among the very best parodies of the 'When Animals Attack!' novels. The documentary approach suits this far better than it does Maggots which fizzles out after dramatic opening.