Devil Daddy (1972)
John Blackburn
Book Description
Teenager Elsie Kerr is hospitalized with a high fever after being found raped and beaten. When eminent bacteriologist Sir Marcus Levin is asked to consult on the case, Elsie accuses him of the crime, pointing at him and screaming “Devil Daddy!”
Then things really start to get weird: Elsie ages eighty years in a matter of hours, and Sir Marcus finds himself racing to stop whatever killed her from spreading while at the same time trying to clear his name. But the trail will take some unexpected and sinister turns: a grisly corpse half-eaten by pigs, a coven of madmen with a diabolical plot, a grotesque and sacrilegious ritual, and an enigmatic old man who may be unable to die!
John Blackburn (1923-1993) is a master at reworking ancient and medieval legends into chilling tales of modern-day horror, and in Devil Daddy (1972), one of his most bizarre novels, he is at his most inventive. This new edition is the first in over four decades and joins fourteen of Blackburn’s other classic thrillers also published by Valancourt Books.
John Blackburn
Book Description
Teenager Elsie Kerr is hospitalized with a high fever after being found raped and beaten. When eminent bacteriologist Sir Marcus Levin is asked to consult on the case, Elsie accuses him of the crime, pointing at him and screaming “Devil Daddy!”
Then things really start to get weird: Elsie ages eighty years in a matter of hours, and Sir Marcus finds himself racing to stop whatever killed her from spreading while at the same time trying to clear his name. But the trail will take some unexpected and sinister turns: a grisly corpse half-eaten by pigs, a coven of madmen with a diabolical plot, a grotesque and sacrilegious ritual, and an enigmatic old man who may be unable to die!
John Blackburn (1923-1993) is a master at reworking ancient and medieval legends into chilling tales of modern-day horror, and in Devil Daddy (1972), one of his most bizarre novels, he is at his most inventive. This new edition is the first in over four decades and joins fourteen of Blackburn’s other classic thrillers also published by Valancourt Books.
reviews
‘A flesh creeper . . . Mr Blackburn has few superiors in this genre when he is at the top of his form. Black magic, satanism, bacteriology, murder, rape . . . the required gasp of horror.’ – Spectator
‘Uncanny thriller. Fiendish . . . Horrendous mix of modern technology and medieval hocus pocus with finale that induces a “cauld grue.”’ – The Observer
‘Splendid ghoulish read.’ – Sunday Times
‘Even on the warmest night of the year, Mr Blackburn knows how to chill our marrow.’ – Scotsman
‘Uncanny thriller. Fiendish . . . Horrendous mix of modern technology and medieval hocus pocus with finale that induces a “cauld grue.”’ – The Observer
‘Splendid ghoulish read.’ – Sunday Times
‘Even on the warmest night of the year, Mr Blackburn knows how to chill our marrow.’ – Scotsman
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BOOK DETAILS
ISBN: 1941147763 ISBN-13: 978-1941147764 $16.99 US, 152 pp. Trade paper Published 2015 |
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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
John Blackburn was born in 1923 in the village of Corbridge, England, the second son of a clergyman. He started attending Haileybury College near London in 1937, but his education was interrupted by the onset of World War II; the shadow of the war, and that of Nazi Germany, would later play a role in many of his works. He served as a radio officer during the war in the Mercantile Marine from 1942 to 1945, and resumed his education afterwards at Durham University, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1949. Blackburn taught for several years after that, first in London and then in Berlin, and married Joan Mary Clift in 1950. Returning to London in 1952, he took over the management of Red Lion Books.
It was there that Blackburn began writing, and the immediate success in 1958 of his first novel, A Scent of New-Mown Hay, led him to take up a career as a writer full-time. He and his wife also maintained an antiquarian bookstore, a secondary career that would inform some of Blackburn’s later work. A prolific author, Blackburn would write nearly 30 novels between 1958 and 1985; most of these were horror and thrillers, but also included one historical novel set in Roman times, The Flame and the Wind (1967). He died in 1993.
It was there that Blackburn began writing, and the immediate success in 1958 of his first novel, A Scent of New-Mown Hay, led him to take up a career as a writer full-time. He and his wife also maintained an antiquarian bookstore, a secondary career that would inform some of Blackburn’s later work. A prolific author, Blackburn would write nearly 30 novels between 1958 and 1985; most of these were horror and thrillers, but also included one historical novel set in Roman times, The Flame and the Wind (1967). He died in 1993.