William H. Hallahan - Keeper of the Children

[dem bones]

William H. Hallahan - Keeper of the Children (Sphere, 1980; originally Avon, 1979)

Blurb:
THE MASTER HAD TAKEN THEIR CHILDREN - ONE BY ONE BY ONE ....

Alone in a child’s bedroom in a suburban Philadelphia home, Eddie Benson listens for footsteps on the stairs.
The footfall Eddie is waiting for will not be human. It could be someone's pet cat, or a stuffed toy, or even a smiling marionette doll.
But whatever it is that comes creeping up the stairs, it will have only one intention — murder.
If Eddie Benson wants his daughter back, he will have to fight a battle no human has ever fought before. And he must win. For only the victor can return with his life — and soul — from the realms of such dark, unnatural evil.

Tran Cao Kheim, a refugee Buddhist monk from Vietnam, sets up temple in Philadelphia. Kheim teaches redemption through self-sacrifice, fast attracting a dozen or so disaffected teenagers to the cause. The kids embrace atonement for the sins of their grasping parents, They dress in orange saffron smocks and sandals to pound the streets, shaking tambourines and beating drums as they collect for the starving kids of Asia. Kheim's impeccably kept House of Peace provides a safe haven for his disciples. There's no drug-taking, no partying, no orgies, no pecking order. This, naturally, upsets the kids' parents something terrible.

Eddie Benson, successful producer of hit TV commercials, arrives at the airport to learn Renni, his fourteen-year-old daughter, has joined the cult and so too her best pal, Pammy "chip on her shoulder" Garman.

In the face of police indifference — they've too many properly missing kids on file to worry about a bunch of healthy adolescent idealists doing their own thing — Kenneth Custis forms a committee for those whose children have fallen under Kheim's spell. Initially, Custis hired two private detectives and a psychiatrist to snatch his "vegetable" son, only for the boy to bomb it back to the House of Peace at the earlies opportunity. The more we see of the parents — every one a refugee from a 'sixties Mothers of Invention nightmare — the more we sympathize with their offspring.

Custis believes he has conclusive evidence that this so-called 'Kheim' is an illegal immigrant, and petitions to have him deported. Kheim retaliates — at least, something does. Custis is battered to death ..... by a twig-footed scarecrow swinging a lead pipe.

P. 45 of 188. TBC

[helrunar]

I'm intrigued by this one. Love what you say about it. Those parents sound like the real "monsters" even if the back cover blurb would have it the other way round.

H.

[dem bones]

And he understood: Kheim would choose one of these dolls. The attack would come from one of them. And, following the pattern, it would come after dark.

He gazed at them like a victim studying a police lineup, trying to pick his assailant from the crowd. He felt that if he averted his eyes momentarily, the painted-on smiles would slip an infinitesimal degree into a scornful smirk. He studied the princess and the crowned toad and all the others, including the puppet-skeleton and scarecrow. He considered the witch, Signora Strega, three feet high and beautifully made with her drawn chin and crone's nose, her flowing black gown and peaked black cap. Then his eyes went to the bear. And on the bear he settled — this could be his assailant; more than five feet high, it stood in the corner, both paws raised, mouth opened in a half-smile to show large canine teeth.

Not only has his brat daughter's desertion caused him inconvenience, but Harry Garman is convinced the weirdo monk is out to kill those parents who oppose him just as surely as he somehow pulled off the impossible murder of Kenneth Custis. Garman's answer is to book a flight to Bermuda; sod his bitch daughter — she's caused him enough trouble already. Cecelia, the dipso wife/stroke/punchbag, at last finds the courage to oppose him. He can go where he pleases, but she refuses to leave town without Pammy. Her spouse can hardly believe his luck! An indefinite holiday in the sun and no whining drunk to cramp his style!

Having taken charge of the committee, a rare sympathetic character is torn to bits by a pack of Tibetan temple cats. Mrs. Garman saves Khein the bother of mobilizing his forces by drinking herself insensitive and slashing her wrists in the bath. Her odious other half, recalled from his hols to identify her corpse and clean out their savings, runs into difficulties in the shape of a golf-club wielding mannequin. The majority of the parents are safe — they're mostly relieved to be rid of their uppity, ingrate spawn and pose no threat to the magic monk. Eddie Benson however, has suffered a belated attack of parental responsibility, and passes on his big break opportunity in Africa to concentrate his energy on recovering Renni. But how ....?

TBC.

[andydecker]

The Avon original has one of those great covers.

(Thanks to the original scanner Will Errickson)

This should be a poster.

[dem bones]

Eddie Benson consults a parapsychologist pal who refers him to a colleague who refers him to the yogi Sanjay Nullatumbi for a two-week crash course in psychokinesis and astral travel techniques. The yogi warns him that, should he come a cropper passing across the Stundevil Fen — the astral threshold — he will never recover his sanity. He does not much rate Benson's odds in taking on as skilled an adversary as Kheim.

Benson's plan is to surprise the Monk on the astral plane, sever the silver chord linking spirit to body, and leave him stranded in eternal darkness. Just as we anticipated, this culminates in a horrific death struggle between a teddy with a two-headed axe, a clockwork mouse, and a clown puppet with a baseball bat and a toy cannon.

Who wins? Let's just say it's one of those novels where the downer is you know they won't both lose. Otherwise, a lively read full of mad bits.

[helrunar]

Ah...

Just as we anticipated, this culminates in a horrific death struggle between a teddy with a two-headed axe, a clockwork mouse, and a clown puppet with a baseball bat and a toy cannon.

Dem, so often your writing provides the one real bright spot in an otherwise undistinguished day.

cheers! Hel

[Jojo Lapin X]

The Kindle edition was on sale, so I bought it!