Nick Sharman - The Scourge

[dem]

This one's terrific as well.

Nick Sharman - The Scourge (Hamlyn, 1980)

Photo: John Knights

Blurb:
Why did TV personality Anne Warren suddenly drive her car off the motorway at manic speed?
How did Alan Brown drown in his own bathroom?
What made a Soho porn merchant hurl himself under an underground train?
What terrible evil caused widowed Mrs Anstruther to die of fright?

As the third mysterious death occurs private‑investigator Kiley starts to put together a horrifying pattern. But soon there are six victims ... and Kiley's search for the truth.becomes a desperate race against time.

The trail leads to Project Alpha – a diabolic force that releases psychic demons. And it's in the control of a madman obsessed with the desire for revenge ...

Kiley, a former cop turned private investigator, narrowly escapes death when he accepts a lift home from a glamorous ex-TV presenter after getting legless at a party. As they hit the motorway, Anne Warren goes gaga, deliberately driving the car through a crash barrier. Kiley hurls himself to safety at the last moment. Inspector Withers, a dour, hard-nosed hard-nut, visits him in his hospital bed to tell him he looks like a mummy and to keep his nose out of it, stick with his sleazy divorce cases as that's all he's good for. But Kiley can't help but feel he's already involved. Anne was doing him a favour. Something scared her out of her mind, but what?

On leaving hospital, Kiley locates Anne's sister, Dr. Mary Blake, with whom she'd been living since the tragic death of her husband. Dr. Blake, a Camden-based psycho-analyst, assures him that Anne was not the type to take her own life, far less drag an innocent party with her. One strange thing: on the eve of her death, she'd lied to Mary about her whereabouts for a two hour period in the afternoon. Who had she visited?

Further inexplicable "suicides" and bizarre deaths quickly follow. Max Bronson, Soho sleaze baron, goes berserk in Old Compton Street, shoots indiscriminately at passers by, and eventually throws himself under a train at Tottenham Court Road station. It's as though a demon were on his trail! The widow Anstruther, a former missionary, taunted by neighbouring schoolchildren over her alcoholism, is found dead at home, her eyes staring out of her head as though she's seen a particularly disgusting ghost.

Between them, Kiley and Mary identify David Sherman Benson, the mega-rich chairman of Benson Pharmaceuticals as the common denominator linking the deceased, although his relationship with so disparate a group is initially unclear. Benson Pharmaceuticals are market leaders in the field of Psycho-pharmacology, thanks largely to the efforts of the late Dr. Hiroko, a non-mad scientist, who, at time of his murder, was working on 'Project Alpha', a powerful liquid drug used to release and isolate one's "psychic demons." The noble Hiroko devoted his life to bettering the lot of mankind, but Benson who, for several years, has been driven by a lust for revenge on those he holds responsible for the death of his son, now has the perfect instrument by which to strike down his enemies. They will each be hounded to their dooms by their most abominable fears.

That's three Hamlyn's on the spin for me, and, have to say, I had a good time with each of them. If it's lurid horror pulp thrills you're after, Mr. 'Sharman' invariably delivers and The Scourge finds him at the top of his game. Particularly recommended to those with a diabolical fondness for 'Thomas Luke's Phobia.