Devil daddy

Bill Easter #1

by John Blackburn

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!

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery

Hardcover

First published November 1, 1972

About the author

John Blackburn was born in 1923 in the village of Corbridge, England, the second son of a clergyman. Blackburn attended Haileybury College near London beginning 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 work, including the bibliomystery Blue Octavo (1963). A Scent of New-Mown Hay typified the approach that would come to characterize Blackburn’s twenty-eight novels, which defied easy categorization in their unique and compelling mixture of the genres of science fiction, horror, mystery, and thriller. Many of Blackburn’s best novels came in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with a string of successes that included the classics A Ring of Roses (1965), Children of the Night (1966), Nothing but the Night (1968; adapted for a 1973 film starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing), Devil Daddy (1972) and Our Lady of Pain (1974). Somewhat unusually for a popular horror writer, Blackburn’s novels were not only successful with the reading public but also won widespread critical acclaim: the Times Literary Supplement declared him ‘today’s master of horror’ and compared him with the Grimm Brothers, while the Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural regarded him as ‘certainly the best British novelist in his field’ and the St James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers called him ‘one of England’s best practicing novelists in the tradition of the thriller novel’.

By the time Blackburn published his final novel in 1985, much of his work was already out of print, an inexplicable neglect that continued until Valancourt began republishing his novels in 2013. John Blackburn died in 1993.

Reviews

[William Oarlock · Rating 4 out of 5]

The British ROSEMARY'S BABY...Well, not quite. But still one of best works of John Blackburn.

When a teenage librarian is brought to St. Bede's London Hospital she is found not only to have been ritually beaten and raped but also afflicted with an unusual fever and Sir Marcus Levin is called for consultation. The traumatised girl (a Bronte fan) accuses Sir Mark of being her rapist screaming: "Devil Daddy!"

Lady Tania Levin knows her husband is innocent having met several times with Mark's doppelganger; the enigmatic and supernaturally tragic John Batterday who has to be the one responsible, but he has disappeared.

Then a largely-devoured corpse is found in a pig sty and the threat of an unidentifiable microbe and a pandemic with symptoms resembling rampant Progeria threatens the capital and the globe while an All-English Satanic sect led by the evil Canon Hamilton (very much in the J.K. Huysmans-Dennis Wheatley vein) celebrate their infernal rites...

Blackburn though overshadowed by such subsequent British genre authors as James Herbert, Ramsey Campbell, Graham Masterton, Shaun Hutson and Clive Barker etc. proves himself a true master crafting a still slick chiller incorporating the Wandering Jew legend, the Wild Hunt and the Black Mass.

[Karl]

This hardcover is copy is numbered 40 of 200 produced and is signed by:

John Blackburn (Family-approved facsimile)
Simon Clark (introduction)
Gahan Wilson (artist).

[Alex (The Bookubus) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

A teenage girl is rushed to hospital after being attacked and when she comes round she refers to someone, or something, called 'Devil Daddy'. The story follows Marcus, a renowned bacteriologist, who is brought in to look at the patient and becomes caught up in the case.

This felt like more of a mystery with some horror and occult themes. As the story goes on there is a focus on the scientific elements which was an interesting and quite unique angle. Also, there's a mysterious coven, a potentially deadly epidemic, and a doppelganger who may or may not be a forger of famous paintings. The main downside for me was that I did find it a little slow at times. That said, I really enjoyed the direction the story went and I thought the climax was absolutely brilliant.

[Sian Lile-Pastore · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was kinda fun - but am glad it was short!
a bit like watching a hammer horror - complete with casual sexism and racism. hurray.

[Doug Bolden · Rating 4 out of 5]

[This is another one I forgot to log earlier, so I'm putting down an incorrect read date because I don't remember precisely when I did read this one...]

It's weird, I was sure I had reviewed this one, but looking through my notes I don't see anything. At any rate, this was my second Blackburn novel and the one where I started to properly fall in love. You see, Children of the Night was intriguing to me. I liked it. A lot. But, foolishly, I thought that weird over-the-topness of speculative horror meets thriller meets rural countryside mystery meets history lesson meets middle-class heroes was more of a one-off than it actually was. This is more urban mystery, but beyond that the pieces are all in play here. You got some art history and Christian conspiracy and strange upper-class occultism and just...gleeful inclusions of references to the Wandering Jew. Like in several of Blackburn's novels, you have a strange pathogen and a death that is more than it seems. Also like several of Blackburn's novels, you have a group of central heroes plucked strongly from the middle-ranks who are able to solve what a combined official response cannot.

I liked the characters, and the central mystery, of Children of the Night better but this one was still an eye-opener, even for someone who had already went a bit down the Blackburn road.

[Michael Frasca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as strong a story as the previous Centipede re-releases of Blackburn's novels, but still a fun read.

[Bxllxe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Should’ve DNF’d