Trash Menace Gallery

Night Hunter 6 The Labyrinth by Robert Faulcon 1988, Charter Books

Dan Brady finds his kids. A good chunk of the book involves his son attempting to escape captivity from a country estate with not quite the terror and suspense of the Rescuers, the rest is Dan running around a small town and just bumping into things. Arachne started out as a massive occult conspiracy and by the end it's pretty much one guy, with more members of Arachne helping Brady than opposing him.

It's usually nice to have a series wrap up, but the ending was rushed and unsatisfying. Easily the weakest of the series.

Larry Kent 640 Naked Curse by Don Haring 1966, Cleveland

Larry Kent started life as an Australian radio show I Hate Crime as a competitor to Carter Brown. Kent is hired to scare off a stalker, pay off a blackmailer, and find a missing son, only to find each client belongs to the same family.

Better than average plotting and better action scenes than most PI novels, with a decent body count. Despite the saucy covers this was less suggestive than a Carter Brown from previous decades, like it was a fade-to-black scene with a couple extra sentences removed on either side.

Conan the Champion  by John Maddox Roberts 1987 Tor

Conan joins the service of a Northern Queen. He rescues her from another dimension in time to defend against attacks by two other nations. Equal parts monster fighting and strategic warfare.

Blood and Honour by Wolf Kruger 1981, Robert Hale Limited

Sergeant Herzog is a German soldier court martialed and sent to the Eastern Front for refusing to wear his Iron Cross. He received the cross for massacring helpless civilians and refuses to wear it until he thinks he earns it. Herzog is a man of principle - not principled enough to not massacre civilians or stop fighting for Hitler, but principled enough to grumble about it.

The book alternates between frontline battles and officials yelling at each other. It takes over half the book to settle into a typical squad based war novel. The most notable characters are a katana swinging Japanese soldier speaking broken English and a chronic masturbator.

Hutson saves up for the final battle, a massacre in a Russian churchyard, which plays out like a Peckinpah film. It's listed as part of a series, but this first installment is set after the others with different characters.

The Bartender 1 Highballs and Highkicks by R.J. Calder 2023, Point of Impact Publishing

Tough gal Brodie goes undercover as a bartender at a cover for an underground fight club to avenge a dead friend. Quick and brutal action, more good stuff from Point of Impact.

Death ed Stuart David Schiff 1982, Playboy Paperbacks

Two Bottles of Relish by Lord Dunsany (orig Time & Tide, Nov 12, 1932)

A variation on a locked door mystery - a body disposal without leaving the house mystery. This one stayed with me since childhood, though the premise wasn't as locked in as it could be.

Deathtracks by Dennis Etchison

A Nielson family survey taker visits a couple who look for hidden messages in TV laugh tracks to explain why their son died in Vietnam.

Always Together by Hugh B. Cave

One elderly twin murders the other and keeps up a ruse that she's still alive. A good setup for a twist in the tale which never happens.

Toilet Paper Run by Juleen Brantingham

Engaging story set in a girls' reform school, but the ending felt tacked on to fit the genre.

The Green Parrot by Joseph Payne Brennan (orig Weird Tales, July 1952)

Another boring entry in the "that person you thought was alive turns out was already dead" style of ghost story.

Fragment from a Charred Diary by Davis Grubb

Comedy piece about a man using a voodoo doll to commit the political assassinations of the 1960s, escalating from there.

The Scarf by Bernice Balfour

A disfigured woman concealing her face with a scarf and a curious newspaper delivery boy.

Sentences by Richard Christian Matheson

Comedy twist in the tale about a man getting his life rewritten.

Prickly by David A. Riley

A child corrupting Satanist with a monkey familiar kills himself in a British tenement building. Years later, strange creatures scuttle the halls, and children sing nursery rhymes about Prickly.

The Kennel by Maurice Level (orig Tales of Mystery and Horror, 1920)

A cuckold husband finds the body of his wife's lover and disposes of it.

Onawa by Alan Ryan

An adoptive native girl with a taste for blood

A Telephone Booth by Wade Kenny

A gambler can get tips from the future from a pay phone.

Straw Goat by Ken Wiseman

Folk horror with murderous farmers and a sacrificial straw goat.

Horrible Imaginings by Fritz Leiber

Long piece about a creep being obsessed with his neighbor, which I skipped.

The Blind Spot by Saki (orig Beasts and Super-Beasts, 1914)

Comedy piece about a killer servant.

The Dust by Al Sarrantonio

A simpleton shut-in is obsessed with dust.

It Grows on You by Stephen King

A vignette of small town misery which feels more like background to a fuller story. It's been re-written a few times, and later versions may be more tied in to the Castle Rock mythos and be more explicitly horrific. Something about a house getting a new wing built connected with people dying, but not much meat on the bones here.

The Copper Bowl by George Fielding Eliot (orig Weird Tales, December 1928)

Nasty proto-shudder pulp yellow peril story of a French Legionnaire's love being tortured by a Chinese despot.

Six-Gun in Cheek: An Affectionate Guide to the "Worst" in Western Fiction by Bill Pronzini 1997, Crossover Press

There's a serviceable history of popular western fiction in the framing, but I've been so broken by pulp fiction that all of this sounds normal to me. There's a little bit of silliness with overdone slang, but there was nothing here to snicker at or appreciate the audacity, it's just western fiction.

Rogue Cop by William P. McGivern 1954 Dodd, Mead & Company

A crooked cop tries to warn off his clean cop brother, who witnessed a murder the mob wants hushed up. There's a decent novella in here underneath the clichés, padding, and moralizing. Gets dark when a gangster gets fed up with his moll lush, drops her off with some boys to be gang raped, then wants to get her back.

I'm not one that requires likeable main characters, but I also had no interest in this heel being redeemed. Could also do without the Irish priest.

CADS 2 Tech Battleground by John Sievert 1986, Zebra

The CADS are Computerized Attack/Defense System, troops in eight foot tall battlesuits who are trying to take back America from the Russians after a nuclear attack. The first installment was jam packed; this one has a lot of milling around at their underground base. They fight cannibal hordes, a weapons contractor and his gang, a Russian submarine base, and Florida swamp gangs, mending the Hatfield/McCoy feud along the way.

TNT: The Devil's Claw by Doug Masters 1985, Charter

A Middle Eastern power has a weather control device that he's using to destroy the Western world and turn the Middle East into a paradise. Our Irish journalist with mildly superhuman powers is on the case.

We get a teams of eight little people eunuch acrobatics murdering people with razors and fisting their mistress, a massive underground base, and technical genius who calls himself Charlie Brown and surrounds himself with nude models named after Peanuts characters. Despite these elements the story drags and only picks up at the end.

This is made worse, so much worse, by his mission in the first half of the book - to seduce a lesbian. And by seduce, well, this was originally French. The scene itself is completely lifeless, devoid of any salacious value, and didn't really affect the story much.

After this, TNT has to satisfy a 69 woman harem to keep the guards from being alerted. This is done in about a page, and I think I timed it at a minute 20 seconds per woman within the story, which would barely cover the logistics.

Michaël Borgia was the penname used by Pierre Rey and Loup Durand for this ougrageous parody of the supermales of men's adventure paperbacks. Rey and Durand wrote some bestsellers separately in the 1970s and 80s (Durand was also a ghostwriter for bestselling writer Paul-Loup Sulitzer).

Nine novels published in 1978-1980:

Fun fact: I read some of those when I was 12-13 as they were serialized in French weekly magazine VSD. I also read Rey's Out at about the same age, a swiss bankers/mafia thriller with some sex scenes I went back to more than a few times.

The Spider 113 February 1943; v29 #1 Secret City of Crime by Grant Stockbridge (Norvell Page)

The Spider infiltrates the underground city of Easy Street, run by Perfect Crimes, Inc, where hoods can learn new skills while they hide out on the lam. The mastermind, The Brain, stages disasters like train accidents to cover up for bloody bank robberies. Nita, Jackson, and Ram Singh are captured and held hostage.

At one point, The Spider instantly hypnotizes a hood to let him into a secure area, reveal secret information, and stand guard to shoot any other criminals who come in the room. Completely lets the air out of the rest of the story - why doesn't he just keep doing that through the whole thing?

Squirm by Richard Curtis 1976 Ace

The novelization of the film, which I'm mostly familiar through MST3K. A downed electrical line causes worms to attack humans. Eventually. Mostly it's a city nerd trying to hook up with a country gal and them finding and losing skeletons.

I'm guessing this was based on the earlier script, though very close to the movie. A flashback to how Roger lost his thumb is the only full new scene. All the characters are described as amazingly attractive, skinny Mick is described as 175 pounds, and the Sheriff is a smooth talking ladies man.

Gorier and with more ambitious effects than the film - Roger's final form is as an ambulatory pile of worms. Biggest loss was that the best line - "You gonna be the worm face" is written as "Now we’ll see what you look like after the worms get you!"