(1968 Ace mass-market paperback with George Ziel art, 188 pages)ĭuring the Depression-era 1930s, the people of a small farming community in Mississippi are spending their nights in fear of a vicious madman on the loose. But I'm still a little sad when someone who dedicated his life to wordsmithing passes unnoticed from the world. In casting my eyes over the prose, it brought back exactly nothing. Bookmark evidence suggests I stalled on pp110-111.
It's been sitting in a box for years and I forgot I hadn't finished it. I had another of his novels around, Conflict of Interest, and it was pretty dadgummed dreary. Lee Bailey isn't terribly deft either, but had the disadvantage of being written while the subject was alive. All the stilted dialogue survived, none of the mildly exciting naughtiness did, the unLouisiana accents the actors attempted weren't good.no one down south says "pee-can" when speaking of the tree nut ever.and the whitewashing of the victim took away any smallest interest the murder has.Īuthor Whitten, gawd bless 'im, wasn't a dab hand at the novels. All the "miscegenation" and therefore titillation was removed, the setting changed to Bayou Louisiana, and the acting exactly what you'd expect from a 1970s TV film.
The TV movie is only tangentially related to the book. It passed an afternoon, and it was less than memorable until I saw that the author died.
It was a mediocre un-horrifying horror novel or a middling police procedural, raised above the run of the mill insofar as it ever was, by the Mississippi setting and the daring for the times interracial sex and romance. The novel, an ancient paperback copy of which I've had for a zillion years, is an artifact of a bygone age. 3) Author Whitten died at 89 on 1 December 2017. 2) The made-for-ABC movie from 1972 is one of those really crummy movies of the week that ABC was (in)famous for in the 1970s, the Friday night teens-and-tweens monster flicks. Well, a few things to discuss: 1) The 1967 novel's perfectly adequate and not one whit better than it needs to be.
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