Worm

by John Brosnan, Simon Ian Childer (Pseudonym), Alun Hood (Cover Artist)

The surgeon put the stomach back and began to feel around for the small intestine.

That's when something bit him.

He felt the teeth sink deep into has hand between his thumb and forefinger, slicing through muscles and tendons. He screamed and jerked his hand out of the patient's belly. To his horror he saw what appeared to be the head of a large worm attached too his hand. As he backed away more and more of it emerged...

Genres: Horror

189 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

* Pen names:
Harry Adam Knight, Simon Ian Childer, James Blackstone, John Raymond

John Raymond Brosnan was an Australian writer of both fiction and non-fiction works based around the fantasy and science fiction genres. He was born in Perth, Western Australia, and died in South Harrow, London, from acute pancreatitis. He sometimes published under the pseudonyms Harry Adam Knight, Simon Ian Childer (both sometimes used together with Leroy Kettle), James Blackstone (used together with John Baxter), and John Raymond. Three not very successful movies were based on his novels–Beyond Bedlam (aka Nightscare), Proteus (based on Slimer), and Carnosaur. In addition to science fiction, he also wrote a number of books about cinema and was a regular columnist with the popular UK magazine Starburst.

Reviews

[Jack Tripper · Rating 3 out of 5]

1988 Bart Books mass-market, 189 pages.

(Updated 5/29/16)

After having been very impressed by Harry Adam Knight's* Slimer last week, I immediately ordered a couple more books of his. I started reading this one right away upon it's arrival, and while it wasn't nearly on the same level as the aforementioned, it was still a decent little time-waster.

As opposed to the non-stop horror of Slimer, Worm takes the form of a detective/police procedural novel. Various people in London are ending up dead, with their insides devoured by larger-than-normal parasitic worms. Down on his luck, alcoholic private investigator Ed Causey is hired by the sister of one of the victims to get to the bottom of it all, and Causey soon uncovers a conspiracy involving local drug lords and a corrupt surgeon.

Doesn't seem very scary, does it? That's because it's not, really, though there is one worm that's slowly growing to gigantic proportions in the London Sewers (one of the victims had thrown up in the toilet before dying). Knight will occasionally cut away from the slow-burn investigation to show the various shenanigans that worm is up to, having its fun with sanitation workers, as well as the people sent to find them. These scenes provide the only real horror element for the majority of the novel. Most of it details Causey's dealings with various thugs, uncovering clues, stumbling into trouble, etc.

Worm isn't a book I'd go out of my way to find, but if you do happen to come across it (and you're a fan of pulp horror, of course), this is a fast and relatively fun read. Just don't expect much of what the cover up top seems to promise.

2.5 Stars

*Harry Adam Knight was the pseudonym of late Aussie science fiction writer John Brosnan (sometimes with his buddy Leroy Kettle as well, though not here). He/they also published horror under the name Simon Ian Childer. This novel was released under both names.



1987 Grafton (UK) mass-market, 189 pages, published under the name Simon Ian Childer.

[K.T. Katzmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crime, with occasional monster.

In a well-paced opening sequence, a woman dies in mid-surgery as a three foot-long tapeworm bursts out of her gut. The victim's sister hires a private detective who's even slobbier than the norm, and we're off to the races.

Of a mystery novel.

Y'see, the worms barely appear in the rest of the book. You'll get an occasional few pages with an attack or sequence, but it mostly focuses on the hard-bitten detective fighting a very slimmed-down mix of a Fu Manchu operation and a Call of Cthulhu rpg cult. The worms mainly serve as a MacGuffin (and if you need that term explained, Hitchcock does it in this video.).

Basically, imagine The Maltese Falcon if the narrative jumped to the Falcon every so often as it ate a dude.

It's fun to watch the bad guys in action, though. They use a lot of neat tricks to make no one suspect anything's going wrong.

The politics in this book . . . Well, they're really weird, but I don't how to judge them. I'll have to pull back the curtain on the plot a little to discuss this.

And as I do so, I will say black instead of African American, because everybody involved is British.


The criminal organization seems incredibly stereotype: a huge black man nicknamed "Mule" who has rarely consensual sex with white women for the dark-skinned crime lord(his nationality is a mystery I won't spoil) the white junkie girl whom the scary dark skinned people have turned into a sex toy with drugs, the legion of black thugs, etc.

It's a crapload of uncomfortable stereotypes and ideas. And yet, the villain has a racist reason for assembly exactly that organization. That's a situation that justifies it.

And yet I'm conflicted again, because the author created that situation!

Look, there's an embarrassing cut scene in one of my books I'm never going to print involving one of my character's sex life. I looked at it after finishing the few paragraphs and wondered, is this too misogynistically, patronizingly creepy? Yes, came the instant answer, and I immediately cut the scene. Some part of me nagged inside my brain, you can totally find a plot justification, it said.

Yeah, I retorted. I'd obviously be deliberately justifying being misogynistically creepy. Even if the plot justifies something, I MADE THE DAMN PLOT.

Plots don't appear ex nihilo, after all. If the bad guys create an organization of racial stereotypes, then the author made a bad guy who created an organization of racial stereotypes.

But there's a brave black nurse and a slightly fun Chinese restaurant owner.

Then the Chinese restaurant owner turns out to be in the Tong with access to what I can only describe as one or more kung fu ninjas.

And almost every worm host is gay, an LGBTQ victim of an invisible sickness that eats them alive in the 80's. That's a little uncomfortable.

I dunno, people. How much is lazy stereotypes, I can't say, but there were enough there to make me notice.


Well, it's a Harry Adam Knight novel, and thus perfectly capable of a somewhat happy or utterly nihilistic ending. I won't tell you, though! By now, you know what you're getting.

And if I even make good on my promise to cut out twenty-five amazing 80's horror novel covers and frame them as one poster, Worm has made the cut.

[Signor Mambrino · Rating 5 out of 5]

The greatest novel ever written.

[Rita · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5🌟
this was such a good read. It would have been better if it didn't end on a cliffhanger, I am so invested in this story, and it's driving me crazy that I don't know what happens next!!!

[Adam Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great little punk ass horror novel.