The Pike

by Cliff Twemlow

Its first victims—a screeching swan... a fisherman overboard... a drunken woman in a dinghy...

One by one, the mysterious killer in Lake Windermere claims its terrified victims. Tearing off limbs with its monstrous teeth, horribly mutilating bodies.

Fear sweeps the peaceful holiday resort when experts identify the creature as a giant pike... A hellish creature with the strength to rupture boats—and the anger to attack them.

But for some the terror becomes a bonanza—the traders who cater to the gathering crowds of ghouls on the shore. And they will do anything to stop the divers finding the killer.

Meanwhile the ripples of bloodshed widen...

Genres: Horror, Animals

160 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the English version of Jaws featuring a pike! Well, set in the Lake District we come across a deadly menace in Lake Windermere. A leading scientist says it's a giant pike. Will some international adventurers be able to lift the secret about the killing fish? The story is a bit cheesy with some intriguing parts. Hammer bought the rights but never made a movie on the book. Liked the twist in at the end. One of the forgotten pulp horrors of the past. Had expected a bit more here but at least I've found the English version of Jaws. This was worth it. Otherwise only for die hard pulp horror fans!

[John Dow · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh dear god.

[Batgrl (Book Data Kept Elsewhere)]

I can blame buying this book on the BBC Radio 4. I was listening to their podcast Open Book about the Lake District and, as usual, I started Googling for more information and photos. With the amount of writers that have lived in the area I did have plenty to add to my To Read list. Somehow I found myself on the wiki for Lake Windermere, and under the popular culture heading saw this:

In the horror novel The Pike (1982) by Cliff Twemlow, a 12-foot (3.7 m) long pike in Windermere goes on a killing spree, and the consequence is a boom in the lake's tourist trade. Two attempts have been made to film the novel.

...Some people believe that there may be a lake monster, similar to the one alleged to live in Loch Ness, and anomalous photos have been taken of the supposed creature; it has been affectionately nicknamed "Bownessie." The novel Giant Killer Eels by Stuart Neild is set in the Lake District and features Bownessie-like monsters in Windermere and Lake Unsworth.

What made me focus on The Pike was reading the wiki for its author Cliff Twemlow - he's someone that definitely had an interesting career. And thanks to Amazon being an easy source of used paperback books, I found myself with a copy. [Sadly a very smelly copy, so it's going to go away once read since I know it'll spread its smell to my other books.]

More about The Pike from Cliff Twemlow's wikipedia page:

Twemlow then tried to make a film of The Pike, starring Joan Collins, but the budget could not be raised despite Collins’ star power and Twemlow and Collins promoting the film on the BBC’s Look North programme. During the promotion Joan appeared on a BBC TV Tomorrow's World special featuring the innovative and technically advanced mechanical Pike, made especially for the film. The Mechanical Pike apparently now resides as an exhibit of robotics in Japan.

Pre-Read hope: That the book will be as humorous as the Giant Monster Attacks Town movies on the SyFy channel/B-movies of the 1950s. In other words, I'm ok with it being bad - in fact I really hope it's extremely cheesy.

On the back of the book:

ITS FIRST VICTIMS -
A screeching swan...
A fisherman overboard...
A drunken woman in a dinghy...

Somehow I don't think I need to worry much about the cheese factor.

Post Read: This was deeply cheesy and enjoyable on that level. And I'm not going to give it any stars because it's one of those Can Not Rate on A Normal Scale of Books. Check out the quotes under Reading Progress and you'll see why. It was no surprise that the whole love story part (and the weird psychic bond type hooha) was deeply terrible, even when reading just for "how bad can this book get." The rest was completely amusing. This is definitely one of those Books To Take On Vacation and Leave Behind On Purpose When Finished.

So I am going to spoil the end because it's something you can easily imagine would work as a screenplay (thought not a good one) and makes me wonder why SyFy hasn't snapped this up to make it. (Probably because they can come up with their own cheesy scripts in house.) Also the odds of everyone who might find this amusing actually getting their hands on a copy of this is remote. So here we go, dropping in near the end...

Giant Pike attacks multiple times. Finally the crack team of diver/explorer/adventure/tech guys dive and - not a surprise - the pike attacks, but the entire group band together and the reveal.... it's not a fish, it's a 12 foot long mini submarine. Page 151:

It had a metal head, fashioned to the perfect likeness of a giant pike, with gleaming steel teeth.

Manned by Will the florist, who was mentioned earlier and in a paragraph or two the story let us know that Will had a Thing for ancient predators. Oh and I should add that the machine was stopped by Ulysses, the eccentric Scotsman, who'd shot it with an arrow - which impaled Will the florist, sending him to the hospital.

You'd think think that'd be the end of it - BUT NO. Because in a deathbed-hospital scene we discover from Will that he never used the sub to hurt anyone, and he'd only injured one of the divers by accident. He claims that the Giant Pike is still alive in the lake, because he's seen it. The police refuse to believe the death bed confession and decide that the menace in the lake is indeed dead - er, decommissioned - so problem over.

At this point there are only 4 pages left, so you're pretty sure it's just enough for an epilogue, babble with the love interests, and perhaps teaser for book two. BUT NO. Love interest couple is at the lake and Mike (the journalist) assures Emma he can indeed water ski. He goes off skiing across the lake and suddenly, p. 159:

Emma watched, and the scream flew unbidden to her throat, breaking on the air harshly, a cry of terror and panic as Mike was suddenly seized from beneath and drawn at speed past the launch. Five yards beyond Emma's out-stretched hand, and before the astonished eyes of more than a hundred people, Mike disappeared beneath the water. The last thing Emma saw of him, the thing that burned itself into her brain, was the look of agony on his face. Consciousness left her swiftly and she toppled into Ulysses' arms.

No amount of haggling by Wilmslow would move the police. Inspector George and others pointed to a backlog of cases where people swimming or skiing on the lake had disappeared. They got tangled and sank, the inspector said. There was terrible pressure at lower levels, pressure that would keep a body from ever rising.

Emma is sedated and cared for by her father, her dreams of happy marriage to Mike shattered. Ulysses monitors the lake, knowing that someday he'll find and have revenge on the Pike. Now not just because it killed his dog, but also for Mike.

"Ah'll find ye," he said quietly, and far off there was the answering swish in the water.

Because the Pike can't make any answering sounds to threats except water noises. Otherwise it would bellow or yodel or something.

There were no fish and chips jokes. That I can remember, anyway. I might have blocked out some of the writing though, immediately after reading it.


Quotes, unless there's something monster-like in the content assume the links are about scenery (I wrote that bit about monster-like before I read the book - but none of the monster descriptions were that good, as you can tell from the spoiler quotes above):

Opening lines, p 5, just to get the place names to link to some visuals:

"Peace. Sunlight was dispersing the dawn mist around Bowness waterfront, silvering the lake and warming the shoulders of three anglers down by the ferry at Hawkshead. It was Sunday and still early enough for a man to feel the quietness touching his ears. The anglers trailed their lines and gazed out across Windermere, watching the still grace of two swans."

Also see Bowness-on-Windermere. Snarky comment about Quietness ear touching below under Reading Progress.

p 8:

"...to glimpse the deep, open trough of Riggendale."

p 20:

"...To their certain knowledge, the three men had already been filed under Fairies, Millionaire Playboys, Overgrown Kids, Spies, Drifters and Flashy Weirdos. Privately, they did have a label for themselves, though they were always careful never to display it: Commercial Adventurers.

Except Commercial Adventurers actually sounds dull compared to Flashy Weirdos. Though the Flashy Weirdos does sound like the name of a bad cover band.

Adding this bit just to give you an idea of the "high tech" writing that goes into describing the diver/adventure dudes, p 94:

"Joe, Larry and Lars were the centre of attention as they kitted themselves for the preliminary dive. In addition to the usual wetsuits and air tanks, the men were fitted with a variety of electric and photographic gear that gave them the appearance of space explorers. Lars, the most exotic-looking of the three, had a small video camera strapped to his head, coupled to a recording machine at his waist. On his chest there was an adapted Canon Autofocus camera in a pressurised housing, and strapped to his belt he had a battery pack powering two flashguns and a wide-beam spotlight. His spear, a wickedly thin and pliant device fitted with battery and capacitors to deliver a lethal shock on impact, was anchored to his left shoulder."

All spelling as in the original. Also, welcome to high tech, 1982.

[S.wagenaar · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this book wasn’t horribly written, but it wasn’t fantastic either. This particular copy is a new reprint of an early 80’s paperback, and it is overflowing with typos, missing words and capital letters that don’t make sense; a pretty poor scan I’m thinking. And while I thought the overall tale of a giant, deadly pike killing tourists and such wasn’t too bad, the ending was abrupt and disappointing. The main character gets killed, essentially right out of the blue, and no one captures/kills the deadly pike. The story just ends with all the spectacle of a damp firecracker. It could /should have ended with a bang, but it just…ended.

[Patricio Padua · Rating 4 out of 5]

How good can a Jaws ripoff written in 1982 by a onetime club bouncer and Z-movie star be? Pretty good is how!

[Luke Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

When a swan is violently dragged into the mysterious waters of Cumbria's Lake Windermere, it is the start of a terrifying series of events that quickly engulfs the entire Lakeland community. As some try to dismiss the disappearances of drunken boaters and careless fishermen, a group of three intrepid underwater photographers join forces with a local expert, who surmises that a giant pike is at large in the lake. As tensions mount, a hunt begins for the predator. But to some, it is a gift bringing trade and tourism to their shores, and they are prepared to take drastic measures to see it protected.

It has been a long while since I literally couldn't put a book down, but this old-school (first published in 1982) creature feature had a pace as relentless as the monster at its heart, and a chilling narrative as cold as the icy waters of Windermere.

Even though they were cliches, I cared for most of the characters. From a reporter licking his wounds from a failing career on holiday who can't believe his luck when the story breaks, to a civilisation weary Scot more at home with nature than amongst folk, each is clearly given a place in the story that suits them.

My only real quibble was that the mystery of the monster is certainly always that. We don't really gain insight into the titular villain, and we're left wondering all the way to the end and beyond.

The sharp-eyed will spot more than one nod of the head to Jaws, of which this is a very British and B-Movieish take on. Worth scouring a second-hand bookshop or two to find!

[Fishface · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful read from the post-JAWS killer fish era. Really very well written; the story moves right along. The author started to stray dangerously into the gratuitous-sex zone, but saved the day for me by making it a blisteringly intense romance, out of nowhere, minus the usual pointless sex scenes. Totally awesome ending -- really original. This is going to make a corker of a Cliffie's Note when I review it for my fish blog!

[Mika Lietzen]

The pike is the miniature shark of freshwater lakes, a merciless killing machine with rows and rows of sharp teeth and delicious meat which goes best with some dill sauce and new potatoes. Gobbling up a pretty swan early in the novel, the 12-feet, 250-pound pike of Lake Windermere progresses to eating a face, one foot and one drunken lady.

A group of Americans, Joe, Larry and ex-Swede Lars, who are "making millions" out of their amateur underwater photography, bustle their way into the official operation to find the pike and promptly spend most of the novel planning. A tabloid reporter called Mike snags the pike all the headlines and a lady friend for himself. And then there's old Quinn, sorry, Ulysses "Strongbow" Grant, a scotsman with an accent and a bone to pick with the beast (it ate one of his dogs). When these manly men finally enter the water to actually look for the pike it's found in a page or two and revealed as a hoax. Or is it?

For some reason, Twemlow wrote The Pike as a deadly serious novel, with barely any humour despite its ridiculous, discount Jaws subject matter. A 160-page novel about a killer pike should be a fun, quick read but no, this one is almost insufferably dull. For the most part nothing happens, the pike pops up only sporadically to quickly snack on some meat candy and is then gone again. The community affected by this flesh-eating monster in their midst is also surprisingly uncaring or unknowing, despite all the headlines. The seeds of a surprise ending are sown only a couple of pages before the twist by introducing a most improbable character who somehow happens to be a big fan of predatory fish. None of the characters have any personalities to speak of and some are prone to strange and slightly creepy musings, such as when Ulysses contemplates how nice it is that Mike and Emma have found love together. Aww.

Cliff Twemlow was, according to the information on the net, a Mancunian legend, a self-taught man's man and night club bouncer who made everything from music to books to movies with seemingly inexhaustible energy. Famously The Pike was also supposed to be made into a movie, with Joan Collins already attached and a mechanical pike built (featured in a contemporary BBC news report), but the funding fell through. The possibility of a movie perhaps explains the novel's existence and many of its shortcomings, but it's no excuse.

[Garick Cooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a middling horror / thriller by Cliff Twemlow, who seems to have led a fascinating life first as a bouncer, then as a screenwriter, actor, and producer of low-budget films. (Indeed, The Pike was supposed to have been filmed, but never escaped development hell.) He has at least captured that indefinable and sometimes elusive quality of readability, keeping things moving along at a smart pace. And there are occasional surprising insights, as this one on page 142: 'Drama and a tiny bit of ritual... That's the secret of pulling in crowds.' But there aren't enough bits like that, and in particular the action scenes fall flat. The novel is quite lightweight at 160 pages and is a quick, easy read.

[Nick Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

Backstory of the author and the never made film are more interesting perhaps than the book itself, which is a basic jaws rip off with less interesting lead characters. The quint in the book is a hoot tho, this time a reclusive scottish fisherman and his long bow. I kind of hated the ending, but i didnt see it coming so, hey. I bought the reprint from amazon which seems to be thrown together by the late authors friend and businessman, vete. There are lots of grammatical and spelling errors present, on every few pages atleast, but that didnt take away from readability for me, as original copies are expensive. This was published from an original manuscript, seemingly unedited.

[Mikepottz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blood gurgled out of the swans mouth, pulled under water, resurfaced with half severed wing, then leaving a trail of blood. Half a man's face ripped apart, a massive tooth lodged in the skull, the bite size would estimate a fish 12 feet long and 250 pounds. As rumours flow the lake will gain all shapes and sizes of boats rubber necking and some wanting to catch this monster of the lake. More deaths will come, come limbs ripped, severed, panic will permeate.

[Jack Bird · Rating 2 out of 5]

[spoilers]

I bought this book hoping it would be terrible, which is probably quite disrespectful of me towards Cliff Twemlow. Turns out, the actor/doorman/director/composer/bodybuilder makes for a half decent author, too.

However, the ending was basically gash. The florist was riding a robot pike? But the real pike is still out there? And they never met? A twist for a twist's sake, aka, shite.

[Sophie Bowns · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a shame the film was never made!

I loved this book! It’s set about 30 mins away from me and I’m so gutted that the film was never made. I reckon it would’ve been a cult classic. I wonder what became of the 12ft model pike?!

[Mr James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beast of Kane was a lot better,this book really did not do it for me,whatever the topic could be possible,the Loch Ness monster could be a giant pike or eel,but this sort of thing is just a tad far fetched to become a good horror novel,prefer giant crabs myself!

[Shea Chen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The English version of Jaws, but it's not good.

[Paul Vieraitis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poor grammar and a boring story

[James Windle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it around 1983...so 42 years ago...13 at the time. Guess it was a poor man's Jaws....not a bad read though...heard somewhere they planned on turning it into a film with Joan Collins.

[Scott Oliver · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starting with the attack on a swan and then progressing on to more human targets, a giant pike is stalking the depths of Lake Windermere

Not a bad read but a bit low on action with the pike.

[Richard Freeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the very best of the classic era of British horror paperbacks. When a fisherman sees something in Lake Windermere drag a full grown swan underwater he investigates only to be come a victim himself. So begins a series of predatory attacks in the lake. As the body count rises the Daily Mirror send up a report to cover the story. At the same time a team of divers and film makers from the US are visiting. The monster turns out to be a giant pike and a ghoulish tourist trade grows up around it.
This book was a great read and a big influence on me as a 12 year old. It really shaped the way I structure a story and write myself.
In nature mimicking art in the year 2000 a huge fish was attacking swans and geese in a wildfowl reserve called Martin Mere. It was a massive wels catfish. In Lake Windermere itself there have been reports of a 'monster' since 1959. They sound very like a titanic eel. It hasn't eaten anybody to my knowledge though.

[Andrew Costello · Rating 1 out of 5]

Quite possibly one of the worst books I've ever read.