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Post by Middoth on Apr 21, 2020 11:00:48 GMT
Richard Lortz - Lovers Living Lovers Dead ( Dell Publishing 1979. 186 p.)
Cover art by Gervasio Gallardo
The story of Michael, a professor of Comparative Literature who is beginning to suspect that his wife, Christine, an ex-student some 20 years his junior, is harboring dark secrets about her past.
To uncover these secrets, he teams up with Christine's psychologist, and the two use deception to find out about her mysterious past, which is personified by her even more mysterious father, whose ghost-like presence is felt throughout the novel. In the climactic scene of Lovers Living, Lovers Dead, Michael raids his wife's secret hope chest, finding out that Christine's "wild stories" about her father's trips to Africa and the Far East, where he consorted with "witch doctors" and tribal chieftains, were not tales after all, but realities. He finds millions in Swiss bank accounts, and pornographic pictures of his wife being molested as a child (so that she could not be sacrificed as a virgin). As it turns out, Christine's father struck a deal with the devil as it were, one in which he delivered his daughter's soul in order to save her from becoming a human sacrifice.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Apr 21, 2020 11:54:13 GMT
Who does not like clutching, sensual things?
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Post by Middoth on Apr 21, 2020 12:15:21 GMT
The living brains only.
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Post by Dr Strange on Apr 21, 2020 12:39:04 GMT
Never heard of this before, so googled it. Another one that splits opinion it seems (WARNING: links contain SPOILERS) - Positive review from Too Much Horror Fiction. Less positive, and much shorter, December 1977 review from Kirkus (though "Like skinnydipping in a cesspool, and inviting your family along" might sound like a recommendation to some). |
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Post by Middoth on Apr 21, 2020 19:44:52 GMT
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Post by Middoth on Apr 21, 2020 20:16:34 GMT
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Post by andydecker on Apr 22, 2020 10:23:39 GMT
Wonderful cover! Thanks!
Stuff like that only makes one ache for the work and the freedom of earlier decades harder. As ridiculous the French covers became with the sex sells maxime - even I who likes this kind of stuff finds it preposterous to put a naked girl on a William Hope Hodgson collection - as prude and boring they are today.
But the Spanish one is equally striking. A typical New Wave cover. Could as easily be on any Moorcock SF or Keith Roberts, etc.
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Post by Middoth on Apr 22, 2020 10:33:46 GMT
In this case it is very appropriate cover. Very rare occasion.
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