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Post by ripper on Jan 12, 2019 10:46:07 GMT
Confessions from a Haunted House by Timothy Lea (Futura, 1979)
Here it is, the final adventure for Timothy Lea and brother-in-law, Sid. As ever, written by Christopher Wood, it came two years after the penultimate book, Confessions of an Ice-Cream Man. Earlier entries in the series came thick and fast, so the two-year hiatus between Ice-Cream Man and Haunted House is perhaps a sign that sales were flagging and ideas drying up. Anyway, after having this one hiding away for years, Dem's recent comments made me dig it out and, with a certain amount of trepidation, give it a go.
Timmy and Sid have come to the parting of the ways. After setting up the Noglea Emergency Service, their one and only call-out is a disaster. They are called out to a block of flats to deal with a gas leak. Tracing it, Sid asks Timmy for a light to see into a dark corner. Timmy is distracted by the sight of a well-endowed young lady stripping off in an adjacent block of flats, and instead of handing Sid a torch, flicks on his cigarette lighter, with predictable results.
So Sid and Timmy are going their own ways. However, while Sid is informing the Leas of this, Timmy's mum receives an airmail letter from the USA telling her that her sister's child, Harper, is arriving at Heathrow that very morning. Reluctantly, Sid agrees to drive Timmy to the airport to collect Harper. At Heathrow, Sid has a run-in with someone he mistakes for Harper. Timmy, however, finds the real Harper, a nineteen-year old Farrah Fawcett lookalike. After some confusion over suitcases, Harper is installed in Sid's car for the journey to Scragg's Lane. Harper asks if they can first call at a solicitor's, as that is why she is in England. To his delight, Timmy finds out that Harper is not actually a blood relative, her family name being Deneuve. Timmy fishes in Harper's vanity case for the solicitor's address, but instead finds a bomb, primed to go off in less than a minute. Sid chucks the bomb out of the car window and it demolishes the wall of a house and its outside toilet. Harper reveals that her vanity case has been switched for another.
At the solicitor's, Harper is told that she has inherited a large fortune, and Sid's attitude to her changes instantly. However, to comply with the terms of her inheritance, Harper must spend seven nights at the Deneuve family seat, Grim-stark Manor on Dartmoor. The solicitor advises Harper of a train to get there, but Sid will not hear of it, insisting on driving Harper there, and giving broad hints that he would not be averse to receiving a Jaguar as compensation for his troubles.
Outside the solicitor's, Timmy saves Harper from being hit by a flower-pot pushed by a black-gloved hand. Sid, however, is not so lucky, and is brained by it, adding to his injuries from the gas explosion. It is not long before Sid, Timmy and Harper are lost on Dartmoor, looking for the village of Grim-stark Parva. They come across the Cock Inn and ask for directions. The customers and landlord are hostile, and each time the name Grim-stark Manor is mentioned, there is a flash of lightning and peal of thunder. The weather being bad, they decide to stay at the Cock Inn until morning. Belle, the landlord's buxom wife, gives Sid the come-on, mistaking him for an eastern gentlemen due to the bandages around his head. Harper gets her own room, and Sid and Timmy share one. Soon, Sid is off to keep a rendezvous with Belle in her room. Alone, Timmy hears weird wailings, and is soon joined by a nervous Harper. Having to seem brave in front of her, Timmy explores and finds the wailing coming from a room. Timmy looks through the keyhole and sees Belle and Sid. The landlord appears with a shotgun, and Sid, Timmy and Harper are thrown out, spending the rest of the night in a nearby barn.
Sid, having suffered further injury, tells Timmy that he must drive. On the way to Grim-stark Manor, Timmy finds out that the car has been tampered with. The bonnet had not been properly shut, but Timmy had not thought it was important. Managing to stop the car, Timmy, Sid and Harper scramble out before it rolls off a cliff and explodes in a ball of flames.
So that is a summary of the first five chapters, about 40% of the book finished. It did have a slow start, but bucked up somewhat after Sid, Timmy and Harper began their journey to Grim-stark Manor. It will be interesting to see if the events live up to the title, or if it will turn out to be a bawdy Scooby Do. Hope to finish the book in the next couple of days....
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Post by dem bones on Jan 12, 2019 11:12:07 GMT
You're a braver man than I, Rip! I remember the gas explosion but the Farah lookalike is news to me - must have lost patience with the thing sooner than I thought. Don't want to be tempted, but sounds like it's livening up ... Have added cover & blurb for forms sake. Timothy Lea - Confessions From A Haunted House (Futura, 1979) Blurb: More gripping than THE EXORCIST! Funnier than INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS!
The first Timothy Lea confession for two years is not for faint hearts. Shapely American heiress Harper Deneuve must spend seven days and nights within the haunted walls of Grimstack Manor before claiming her inheritance. But somebody is trying to kill her.
Could it be Festering, the sinister butler? Or one of the other unwholesome members of the staff: Quint, Grip and Blight? Perhaps the beautiful but deranged Lady Antonia? Or pert little Fanny, the aptly named undermaid?
Maybe the mysterious 'Mad Black' Jack Deneuve, or easily aroused Fiona Frenzy?
As Timmy and Brother-in-law Sid struggle to get to the bottom of everything, the mystery deepens and the incorrigible pair are hurtled towards a stunning and unexpected climax.
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Post by ripper on Jan 13, 2019 9:59:54 GMT
I have finished the book and below is my summary. A warning that it will, of course, contain spoilers should anyone wish to read it and not know the end.
After the accident, a horse and trap appear driven by a neighbour, Fiona Frenzy, who gives Sid, Timmy and Harper a lift to the Manor. She reveals that many Deneuves had disappeared without trace over the years. There, they meet the staff: Festering the sinister butler, Quint the slow-witted footman, Mrs Burybun the cook, Grip the groping handyman, Blight the smelly gardener, and Fanny the sexy undermaid. Fanny takes Timmy upstairs to show him the sleeping arrangements. They meet Lady Antonia, a half-mad nymphomaniac whose late husband she wore out. In the bedroom, Fanny and Timmy are getting amorous on the bed when Fanny pulls at the bell ropes in her passion, pulling Sid through the ceiling as he happened to be holding the other end. Dinner that night is terrible as Mrs Burybun has quit, taking much of the food with her.
Sid and Timmy stand guard outside Harper's room as she is scared. Sid plucks a book from a bookshelf and a secret panel opens in the wall. Timmy and Sid go through the opening into a cellar full of junk. Timmy finds a ring with the family crest on it and puts it on. Timmy stops Sid from stepping onto a grating, below which are sharp spikes, primed to impale anyone who steps onto it. They hear Harper scream and rush back to her room. She says a snake came out of a carving on the wall. Sid pulls a bell rope to summon Festering, but it is actually the snake. Sid flings it out the window but forgets to let go. For the rest of the night all three share the same bed.
In the morning, there are weird sounds outside, but after Sid, Timmy and Harper peer through the window, it is only the milkman. After breakfast, Sid keeps an eye on Harper while Timmy goes outside. Seeing a wreath propped against the door, Timmy bends down to pick it up and a dagger thwacks into the door. On the wreath it says RIP Sidney Noggett and Timothy Lea. Timmy loses his nerve and runs off, ending up in a farmyard where Fiona Frenzy is on her horse. He helps her down but steps in horse dung. Fiona takes him into the barn and remarks that his ring looks like the one worn by Mad Black Jack Deneuve, who disappeared after swearing to haunt all heirs to the Deneuve inheritance. They are soon at it in the barn loft, but in passion the loft collapses and they end up on a hay bale conveyor belt which dumps them onto Fiona's horse below. The horse bolts and they are soon pursued by a fox hunt. The horse jumps a wall, dumping Timmy into a ditch, while Fiona and the hunt carry on.
Arriving back at the Manor, Timmy enters, closing the door seconds before a huge dog bounds up, scratching furiously. A whistle sounds and the scratching stops. Timmy tells Sid they should investigate Blackmoor bog, which has claimed many victims over the years. They and Harper borrow a car and drive to the bog. Timmy goes to investigate the bog, but a shout from Harper alerts him to Sid, who has inadvertently stumbled into the bog. Harper and Timmy rescue him, but the car ends up sinking into the ooze and Timmy is forced to jump from it for his life.
Back at the Manor, Timmy is about to declare his love for Harper until disturbed by Sid. Harper goes to bed, and Sid and Timmy snoop around. They see a couple in Elizabethan clothes, transparent and one headless, who suddenly vanish. After more scares via a kitten and Festering, Sid's nerve breaks and he locks himself in his room. Resisting the temptations of Lady Antonia, Timmy locks himself in his room. He lays on the bed and drinks some bitter-tasting water. He is soon bleary-eyed and stumbles to the sink. He falls back onto the bed and awakes to find himself on top of the bed's canopy with Lady Antonia beneath. He falls onto her, and Festering, Quint and Grip burst in and drag Lady Antonia back to her own room. Sid enters and Timmy explains that he has been drugged. Sid discovers that the canopy can be lowered to the bed, and if Timmy had not stumbled to the sink he would have been suffocated. He had fallen onto the canopy and been raised along with it. Sid and Timmy knock on Harper's door and find she had passed out after seeing someone in her room. Timmy finds a creeper runs by her open window, allowing anyone to climb it to gain access to her room.
A few days later it is the night of the annual Hunt Ball. Sid persuades Timmy to don a suit of armour and stand in the gallery so he can unobtrusively watch what is going on. Sid gets steadily drunker as the night wears on, dropping his watch into a trifle and sitting on a gateau. Wittering, Harper's solicitor arrives unexpectedly as at midnight Harper will come into her inheritance. He asks her to come into the parlour to sign a few papers. A mouse gets into Timmy's armour and in trying to get rid of it accidentally sets off a fire extinguisher which propells him down the stairs. He ends up in the toilet and is joined by Sid. They go in search of Harper and find Wittering's briefcase and gloves in the parlour. Timmy recognises the gloves as those covering the hands that pushed the flower-pot onto Harper, and realises that Wittering is behind all the mysterious events. Timmy finds a flower he had given Harper by a wall and desperately searches for a secret panel. He finds it, and he and Sid enter a tunnel that leads them outside to a clifftop. Wittering has Harper and is trying to push her off the cliff. Timmy rushes at Wittering, who fires a gun, but the bullets ping harmlessly off his armour. Suddenly, a huge dog bounds up, and it and Wittering fall off the cliff.
Sid, Timmy and Harper make their way back into the house. Harper reveals that Wittering had been embezzling the Deneuve fortune for years and she has no inheritance, and it was to protect that secret that Wittering had been killing heirs. Sid is stunned, but Timmy is happy now that Harper's inheritance does not stand in the way of him declaring his love for her. However, before he can do that, Harper says she has a fiance and wants to invite Sid and Timmy to her wedding.
So ends the final Timmy Lea adventure, and I have to say that I thought it wasn't half bad. The setting made a nice change, and the mystery was genuinely interesting. In fact, the erotic encounters, such as they were, got in the way a bit. It is mostly a Scooby Do old dark house mystery, with the 'Haunted House' of the title being justified by that sighting of the Elizabethan ghosts, which seemed rather tacked on and pointless as it went nowhere. I'm sure members will see nods to other famous stories and there are a few loose ends left dangling, but overall I enjoyed it. Even though it was the final entry, it did not give out a vibe of deliberately being the end of Timmy Lea in print, and I think maybe more were planned but never came to fruition. I was actually a little sad that Timmy didn't get to ride off into the sunset with Harper, though I suspected all would not end well. For the last in series, imo this wasn't a bad way to bow out for Timmy and Sid.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 13, 2019 19:09:47 GMT
Many thanks for the commentary Rip. You fiend, I'll have to read it now! Sounds like a bawdy version of What A Carve Up. Pity they didn't film this one.
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Post by ripper on Jan 13, 2019 19:36:18 GMT
Many thanks for the commentary Rip. You fiend, I'll have to read it now! Sounds like a bawdy version of What A Carve Up. Pity they didn't film this one. A bawdy version of What a Carve Up isn't a bad way of describing it. I was also reminded of the Frankie Howard film The House in Nightmare Park and the 60s version of The Old Dark House. Actually, Confessions from an Old Dark House is more accurate than its actual title, despite the fleeting glimpse of the ghosts. Don't be surprised if you have a host of questions after finishing it, Dem. For a start, what is with that dog? It's clearly a nod to Hound of the Baskervilles, but if it is Wittering's dog, why does it push him off the cliff? I didn't mention it in my summary, but the painting of Lady Antonia's late husband bears a likeness to Timmy, and I thought this would be a plot point, but it went nowhere. There are more red herrings than a trawler net could hold, and many loose ends, but I liked it and got a fair few laughs from the various situations. There was also the sense that the plot was developing, rather than being simply a series of set-pieces as in many Confessions books, and imo it is a pity that Wood couldn't have written more like this.
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