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Post by dem bones on Jan 6, 2016 10:17:06 GMT
Archie Roy - Sable Night (Apogee, 1987: originally John Long, 1973)  Photo: Su McLafferty Blurb: Archie Roy's three previous thrillers have been enthusiastically acclaimed for their outstanding ingenuity and originality. Some reviewers have compared his action scenes with those of John Buchan, but Dr Roy scientifically-based plots are very much his own. Sable Night makes another fast-paced narrative with a strong and, intriguing theme.
What destroyed Ruth Lorimer? Was it something to do with her work at Benmore House, where research took place in a region beyond the fabric of this world and where the director's strange theory suggested that long-discarded beliefs may be more than mere superstition? Or was it something else, even more bizarre?
Michael Scott, sent to Mull to investigate the girl's death, finds himself treading dark and dangerous paths on an island whose beauty is in sharp contrast with the hidden and malevolent forces he has to uncover and oppose before his own life is destroyed.
"Extra-sensory perception plus Satanism in Mull. Plenty to bite on and a rousing climax." - H.R.F. Keating, THE TIMES
Photograph by Cover Design by Ian Roy
I loved Archie's Devil In The Darkness and this is shaping up as its equal at the very least. On behalf of his friend Sir Peter Lorimer, Dr. Michael Scott, Canadian psychoanalyst and emergency church organist, takes up residence at Ulva Cottage on the island of Mull, until recently the home of Sir Peter's daughter, Ruth, who drowned while under the influence of drugs, leaving her clothes behind in a tidy pile on the beach. Lorimer believes that her tragic demise is connected with her work as resident librarian at Benmore House, where Brian Meredith and his staff are conducting experiments in ESP upon the exuberantly psychically gifted. "The House of Strange Talents" is happy working environment no longer now that Dr. Arnold Bourne has taken up residence. Bourne, a big shot scientist employed at the Baird Neurological Research Institute, has made it his careers work to expose all things mumbo jumbo as sham and Benmore House as a money-making racket. Problem is, much as he's determined to, even Bourne can't explain away the abilities of Major Lofthouse, Miss Middleton and the twins, Helen and Petra Turner, as infantile party tricks. As staff member Sheena Ridgeway confides. "I am a bit worried. Let me put it to you, Dr. Scott. You're a psychoanalyst. What happens when a man has built his whole life on a belief that something is not so, to the extent of being irrational about it, and then is forced to prove day after day that it is so - has his nose rubbed in it and knows he will have to make a public retraction before long?" Helen, a feisty Glaswegian mini-skirt girl, can put up with his insufferable interference no longer. Make allowances for the sarcastic git? "Balls! He probably thinks I've got a radio transmitter sewn into my bra." Much for Dr. Scott to ponder, and that's even before he chances upon a party of nude moon-worshippers at the quarry initiating a new member into the coven ....
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Post by Mike Brough on Jan 6, 2016 17:59:21 GMT
Nude moon-worshippers? Count me in. I'll bring my night-scope.
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Post by Mike Brough on Jan 15, 2016 19:41:43 GMT
And I'm in... 3 chapters in and hooked. Roy's sense of place is fantastic. I've spent may holidays on Mull, from the 90s on, and he captures things perfectly. If he mentions the fish & chip van by the Tobermory pier, he gets five stars.
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Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Feb 11, 2016 10:16:31 GMT
Interesting stuff. I know Archie Roy was consulted by the BBC production team when they were preparing 'The Omega Factor' back in the late 1970s. And I also believe he was the inspiration for Bill Patterson's character in the later BBC Scotland paranormal series, 'Sea of Souls'.
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Post by pulphack on Dec 11, 2016 18:33:28 GMT
I was watching 'Premonition Man', the documentary about dream precognitive Chris Robinson the other night, and the venerable Mr Roy cropped up in this, with some extensive interview footage in the extras. A very level headed chap in my view, but that may be because I share his view that there is something in some so-called psychic phenomena, even though the majority is pish, and that scientists and skeptics are oft-times too inclined to dismiss everything as it would entail some head-scratching and rethinking of cherished notions. I've had the disk since April and watched it before, but I only made the connection this time around. I must check out his work.
Incidentally, Chris is one of the 1% in my view, as I have direct experience of him and his work. Actually, to be honest this stuff as fiction is fun, and when you've seen the amount of frauds and delusional folk that I have it's easy to dismiss. But when you see something that you can't explain away it is challenging, and does make you start...
Well, it does me, but it didn't Prof Roy. The documentary was made only a few years before he passed away, and until checking these threads about him again, I didn't realise he was gone.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 12, 2016 9:13:36 GMT
... when you've seen the amount of frauds and delusional folk that I have it's easy to dismiss. Likewise, Mr. Hack. Very, very likewise! Meanwhile, Valancourt have just reissued Devil In The Darkness. |
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