Horror Paperback Infestation

 

I was an instant fan of Beth Holmes' The Whipping Boy (Jove Publications, '78), a strange and sometimes mind-boggling tale of child abuse. If you can wrangle a copy, you won't be disappointed.

The cover art is striking but strangely underwhelming, too. I often look at it and contemplate the thinking behind it.The interior of the sleeve is the actual face of the man whose profile is seen on the cover. 

 

Pretty decent rabies novel from Walter Harris, who preferred to be known as W. Harris. Definitely a product of the success of James Herbert's The Rats, it had a similar structure and got a little too preachy about the sexually active. You know who you are!

Cover art is great, and makes it looks like a war novel. There's a war against rabies, sure, but nothing terribly military. I'd say Star Distributors were probably trying to snag readers of Martin Cruz Smith's Nightwing ('77), the 'Bats Attack' hit of the year. Guy N. Smith's Bats Out of Hell was released a year later to further capitialize on Cruz's success. It was clearly a good time for plagues, infestations, and bats.

 

Did Victor Mullen quit the book trade after writing The Toy Tree (Paperjacks, '88)? Must have. I can't find anything else by him. I did look. Oh, yes, I looked hard because I loved The Toy Tree.  The language is awkward at times (a few too many adjectives), but Mullen captured the madness of a crazy kid very nicely. He pushed the envelope, too, with plenty of nastiness directed at kids and some juvenile games that would not have been out of place in Serrador's film Who Could Kill A Child? 

 

The book's art is very special. Probably much too subtle for the random paperback buyer, it  conveys the book's nihilism with skilled strokes of the brush.

 

The Toy Tree was another interesting release from the Ontario-based Paperjacks, the same publisher of the masterpiece The Happy Man (reviewed on this blog long ago).

The Toy Shop Tragedy

Have you ever felt sorry for a book? -- or a book's hard working author?

I have.

I still feel sorry for The Toy Shop and its author J. Robert Janes.

Take a good look at this cover. Study it and learn... learn how not to sell a book.

Pretty fuckin appalling, isn't it? It's another winner from Paperjacks, a long gone Canadian publisher. This strange little company didn't publish shit, but they sure packaged it that way.

They put out several novels by Mr. Janes including The Hiding Place, The Third Story, and The Watcher.

They also published one of my favorite horror novels ever, Eric Higgs' The Happy Man, a book I covered on this blog way, way back when Jesus was a grasshopper.

 The first edition of The Toy Shop came out in '81, via General Publishing,  in the midst of a horror novel boom. Bookshelves were top heavy with the stuff back in those days, and there were at least a dozen publishers -- Fawcett, New American Library, Pocket Books, Ballantine, St. Martin's Press, Avon, Zebra, Pinnacle, Dell, Charter, Jove, Popular Library -- cashing in and jostling for shelf space before boom turned to bust. Paperjacks released the book's second edition in a still-horror-friendly market in '84. 

I bought The Toy Shop because the cover art was so odd -- a picture of a rag doll with another picture, a face, pasted (badly) on top of it. Was this supposed to look amateurish? Was I missing the point?

I felt great sympathy for J. Robert Janes because writing books is damn hard work and he was being short-changed in the marketing department. If you do manage to get something published, its a little miracle. Unless a writer has lots of of devoted fans, he depends on cover art to attract some newbies (who or what was this going to attract?) The hope is, the potential punter will find the cover art enticing enough to want to flip the book to read the blurb on the back. If they don't want to do that, you're shit out of luck.

Not the best of blurbs. Not the worst, either.  A toy shop you can't trust. "Daddy's Secrets" (not hard to figure what those are). Nosy neighbors disappearing. Terror, sex, and innocence. And "innocence"? It's an abstract that doesn't quite fit with terror and sex. I get what they're trying to say, but it's awkwardly put.    

The front cover blurb isn't any great shakes, either: "Daddy, Mommy, Madness, Sin, Here We Let The Terror in!"

"Here"? Does that make any sense to you?

Wouldn't the correct -- no, smoother -- word be "Now", as in "Now We Let The Terror In!"?

 Zebra Books used to get roasted for their artwork -- unfairly, I feel. Sure, the art rarely connected with the story, but it was eye-catching and slick (see below!).

This nonsense -- The Toy Shop art -- is just drab and uninspired.  

Perhaps I'm pissing up the wrong pole? The Toy Shop did earn a second printing in November, '84, after Mr. Janes had released The Third Story (my favorite of his) and The Hiding Place. Had the cheap little rag doll composite attracted readers for the same reason it attracted me? Was its anti-aesthetic an engine of persuasion?

 An internet search reveals that Mr. Janes has written fourteen novels, was born in 1932, and is Canadian. That explains the Paperjacks and General Publishing connection (was Paperjacks an arm of General?). I'm curious about The Watcher, and must start upending every second hand bookshop between here and Ontario to find a copy. It's not like I need more obsessions, but another one won't hurt. The writer, it appears, was a mining engineer and teacher before turning full time wordsmith. He had this to say about writing:

"If anyone tells you that this is fun—forget it! It is lovely sometimes to be able to write every day. There are the highs and lows as in any other job. But it is absolute hell most times."

Despite the cover art, the pure horror work of Mr. Janes (as opposed to his crime/detective work) remains curiously entertaining, and twisted in just the right way. If you know what the right way is, you'll know it needs no explanation.   

I remain in sympathy for The Toy Shop.

This woman's face is featured on the front cover of two Janes books.

Was she the Alfred E. Neumann of Paperjacks?

Enquiring minds would like to know.

Not Happy

I'm not The Happy Man tonight. I'm "The Ecstatic Man".

After years of searching, it arrived in a yellow, padded envelope this afternoon.
Yes, folks, The Happy Man hardcover. The 1st Edition, for Pete's Sake!

Isn't it stunning?

I already raved about the paperback in a previous blog, "The Inside Scoop on Happiness", which you can find at:

http://phantomofpulp.blogspot.com/2009/01/inside-scoop-on-happiness.html

...so I'm not going to go all redundant on you here.
This is Eric C. Higgs, the author of what I consider to be one of the most underrated American novels of the 20th century. His pic, which I have never seen before, is to be found inside the book's rear dust jacket.

He looks amiable, but not overly so (which is consistent with the character of his book).

The Happy Man -- in hardcover (St. Martin's Press, '85), and in paperback (Paperjacks,'86) -- has been MIA for well over two decades; that's a long time for a classic to be ignored by publishers.

Surely it's time for a relaunch!

Perhaps Leisure's Dan D'Auria, who has a bloodhound's nose for quality meat, could be convinced to repackage and republish this sardonic slice of evil and ship it out into the cruel world once more.

If that fails, perhaps Gauntlet Press or Cemetery Dance? I'm confident The Happy Man will find himself a warm, wet publishing place eventually.

The St. Martin's Press jacket copy is a persuasive piece of macabre marketing:

The back jacket offers this compelling sinew from the novel (I have desaturated it for easier reading):

The striking jacket illustration is credited to Sam Salant.

For comparative purposes, I leave you with a late night re-run of the Paperjacks paperback:
Buon appetito!

The Inside Scoop On Happiness

I wasn't a happy camper until I got my hands on "The Happy Man".

After reading a glowing Fangoria review, I set out to snag myself a copy. Unfortunately, its publisher, Paperjacks (long defunct), did a miserable job of distributing the book, so it dropped out of sight. Years went by. Lives changed. TV shows got axed. Nightmares of not ever reading "The Happy Man" plagued me. The book was making me very un-happy.

A chance encounter on-line pointed me to a seller who was holding a mint condition copy. After paying them close to what Paperjacks probably paid Eric C. Higgs to write the damn thing, I became the proud owner of a minor horror classic.

The book hooked me instantly with this: "The Marshes rotted in their house two full days before they were discovered by a delivery man from Sparklett's."

I never looked back. Sick humor and ghastly horror. Perfect.

"The Happy Man" of the title finds a grotesque brand of happiness when he is plunged into a strange, suburban world of perversion, mutilation and murder.

Eric C. Higgs might well be the unsung Albert Camus of horror. His trim little novel, which is perfect at 166 pages, is a masterpiece of humor, horror, subtlety and menace.

Originally published by St. Martin's Press in '85 (hardback, I presume), the Paperjacks edition is April, '86.

It's not speculating too wildly to say that the book's terrible cover may have contributed to its market demise.

Dropping the "C" from his name, Eric Higgs' returned in '87 with "Doppelganger". A St. Martin's Press paperback, it has a stronger supernatural slant and opens with a smart quote from von Schiller: "What the inner voice says will not disappoint the hoping soul."

Higgs' opening paragraph is funny and horrible at the same time: "The shove sent Mr. Sam tripping backward, arms flailing wildly. His ankles hit against the service island's curb and he started going down, right between the pumps for unleaded and unleaded supreme..."

"Doppelganger" was never going to rise to the level of brilliance accorded "The Happy Man", but it's not too shabby, either. Grisly. Grotesque. Odd. It's all that and more.

Where is Eric Higgs now? I don't know. Was he sent to Coventry by his competition? Did he retire with the non-profits of his only two horror novels?

This inquiring mind would like to know.

There is a fresh simplicity in Mr. Higgs' language, a sense that there's no disconnect between what he's thinking and what he's writing. He's giving us the bloodied truth. That makes him important.

I'm very happy that I discovered Eric C. Higgs , but his long absence from the genre is starting to chip away at my happiness.