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Post by dem bones on Nov 5, 2015 19:34:43 GMT
Walter Harris - Saliva (Star, 1977) Blurb: The Kiss of Death
It was such an idyllic scene, a picnic in the Chantilly woods with the family and the dog, and it had such disastrous consequences: the spread of rabies into Britain. It is not just animals that can be carriers of this hideous death, but also human beings. The virus, present in saliva, can be transmitted just by a kiss ... The dog bit it master, who passed the disease and the madness to his mistress.
She was the wife of the British Prime Minister and her rabid, slavering collapse at an international conference in Brighton caused public panic and private pain - and revealed all too clearly a network of diplomatic infidelities.
While scientists searched for the source of the contagion and newspapers howled for action, picnickers were pouring into Chantilly... The Ardennes, January 1 1944. Starving badgers set about the corpses of an incinerated Panzer regiment. They like what they taste. Thirty years later, a rabid descendant of these "well nourished, glossy man-eaters," emerges from the forest at Chantilly intent on one last meal before it dies. Unaware of the badger menace, Jean-Pierre Boulle, Chief secretary to the French Minister of Commerce, treats his wife, Madeleine, daughter, Philippine ,and Bibi, the dozy family dog to a picnic in the woods. Dying badger bites Bibi on the nose ... Jean-Pierre Boulle looks forward to the pre-European Conference get-together in Paris as an opportunity to catch up with his #1 mistress of four years, Marigold, the wife of the British Prime Minister, Sefton Clyde. Jean-Pierre is a self-confessed lecher. He even secretly fancies Philippine - and she's only eight. A fortnight later, at the Brighton Conference, Marigold falls to the floor, tearing at her evening gown, frothing at the mouth ...
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Post by dem bones on Nov 6, 2015 10:45:44 GMT
It's official. The PM's wife died of rabies! Poor old Jean-Pierre. Bad enough that he's feeling dreadfully ill, he's also in the doghouse with Madeleine over his very public spontaneous outburst of grief as he witnessed Marigold's death throes. But now Mrs. Boulle has way more to worry about than her husband's infidelities. A phone call from her maid in Paris informs that Bibi the poodle has been destroyed after attacking the postman. The vet has since confirmed that the dog was .... rabid! Just like the late Marigold Clyde. Just like .... her husband? And what if he's passed the condition to her via his saliva? 55 pages in (it's a brisk 160 pager), am liking this much more than I did Walter's turn as 'Carl Dreadstone'/ 'E.K. Leyton' for Creature From The Black Lagoon. This one creeping up the to read pile also looks as if it might be fun ... Walter Harris - The Day I Died (Star, 1974) Blurb Not since Tom Jones has a character shared in the horrors and delights of eighteenth-century England with so passionate a love of life and adventure.
Wheatcroft Hazel — venturesome, loving, impulsive, a man whose natural ingenuity reigns supreme from birth to death and far beyond.
Torture, execution, the warm embrace of lusty wench, the thrill of love and war, the final joyous recompense of daring deeds... Throughout his life he stretches every sinue of his virile soul. And when he dies his world is born again to last until eternity. Delightedly possessing each and every person he may choose, Wheatcroft creates merry havoc in the world in which he used to live.
You will laugh with Wheatcroft Hazel at his supernatural amatory escapades. But when you finish, pause awhile. Maybe you can sense someone nearer than beside you, who without foul intent has (for a spasm of eternity) usurped your mind and body... and mated you with one unknown... |
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Post by dem bones on Nov 6, 2015 22:47:34 GMT
More Saliva;
"There's another - and its awful ... In the lobby, Sir. He's foaming at the mouth and - and barking like a dog."
In a way, it's all Sefton Clyde's fault. Seems the British Prime Minister devoted too much time to his job, not enough to pleasuring Marigold, hence her torrid affair with the frisky Frenchie. Easy to say she should have invested in a pig mask, but as yet we're not even sure Sefton is a Conservative. Jean-Pierre has now gone the way of his mistress, and in circumstances so undignified even his wife could no longer think of him as human. Meanwhile, another of Jean-Pierre's conquests, super-promiscuous Pussy Schering, the trophy wife of some US Ambassador or other, has come over poorly. Her husband ain't looking too clever either.
Thurston Beale, owner of the Brighton Evening Star is in his element. Two prominent public figures dead on his patch and the authorities expect him to sit on the story? Publish and be damned! If "Rabies Comes To Brighton" doesn't boost circulation, nothing will!
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Post by dem bones on Nov 12, 2015 17:55:42 GMT
Finally got to finish Saliva and it's pretty much everything you'd expect, and less. For a novel flaunting the tag-line "their lust let a killer loose in Britain," Saliva is disappointingly stingy on bad-sex interludes - even the "amorous" French restrict themselves to voyeurism - and the body count is pitifully small, with just the three deaths on the South coast and a handful in France. Dr. Robin Blake is the-one-man-who-can-save-us, but his task is made the more arduous by Thurston Beale, proprietor of the Brighton Evening Star, whose shameless scaremongering mobilises a vigilante gang versus harmless household pets. On the plus side, a tidal wave of diabolical dialogue, much of it slushy, particularly when Blake and his fiancée Caroline (the P.M.'s daughter), are centre stage ("Darling!" "My sweet!" "My pet!" "No, don't call me that again. I can't stand it!" etc.). Likewise, a suspenseful final sequence, with Blake investigating the LAIR of the rabid monster badgers and their pals, makes up for much, as does the fantastic cover artwork.
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