Charles Birkin – Dark Menace

Charles Birkin – Dark Menace (Tandem, 1968)

Dark Menace
Happy As Larry
S.O.S.
The Jungle
T-I-M
The Life Giver
‘Don’ t Ever Leave Me’
The Yellow Dressing Gown
Waiting for Trains
The Lord God Made Them All
The Accessory
Simple Simon
Siren Song

includes perhaps his grimmest war story after the nororious ‘A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts’, Waiting For Trains:  “Would the horror of this war, even in its aftermath, never end?”

Dresselberg. At the close of WWII, George Barrow, a reluctant railway transport officer in the occupying army, is powerless to prevent a train crossing the border into Soviet territory due, in part, to the indifference of his superiors who can’t be bothered to check one of the prisoner’s credentials for fear of causing a diplomatic incident. The cattle trucks are crammed with young Russian immigrants who’d been conscripted into the German army and are therefore “traitors”. When the train reaches Glenheisen they will be killed and buried in a mass grave, as have so many before them. Depressingly, this one is even bereft of the “relax – it’s only a story” get-out clause.

Catherine Arley – Dead Man’s Bay

Catherine Arley – Dead Man’s Bay (Tandem, 1970: originally Collins, 1959. Translated from the French by Jehanne-Marie Marchesi )

Blurb:
“Can be confidently recommended to those who enjoy this particular form of blood refrigeration” – Sunday Times
“As sharp as a broken bottle” – Daily Mail
“An agreeably horrible little tale” - Spectator

Two days alone in the cliff-top house, in the bleak isolation of the Breton coast. What could happen in only forty-eight hours to bring her to the brink of madness?
Small incidents; trivial – but so inexplicable.
Who had put the kettle to boil on the stove?
Why was the cuff-link on the floor?
How did the cat die so unaccountably, so grotesquely?
Was she responsible? Was she losing her memory, her reason?
Or was some human agency controlling this gradual crescendo of terror?

Charles Birkin – The Kiss Of Death 1964

Charles Birkin – The Kiss Of Death (Tandem, 1964)

Dennis Wheatley – Introduction

The Kiss Of Death
The Hens
Les Belle Dames Sans Merci
“The New Ones”
The Mouse Hole
Fairy Dust
“Some New Pleasures Prove”
The Kennel
“Mon Ami, Pierrot”
The Mutation
Lighten Our Darkness
Fine Needlework
The Hitch
The Three Monkeys
Malleus Maleficarum

Thanks to my friend Mark Samuels who provided Vault with these scans of the original, 1964 edition of of Charles Birkin’s The Kiss Of Death. Scandalously, the 1967 reissue omits one story, Lighten Our Darkness !

For Mary Etheldreda Keswick who is so deeply interested in the horrific and the macabre.

The Kiss Of Death: An obscure island in the Philippines. In her younger days, social-climber Lady Sylvia Nicholson was engaged to Colin Howard, but “jilted him at the altar when a bigger fish swam along.” Several years later she lies in bed awaiting a midnight visit from her latest lover, Philip Dewhurst. She makes love to the man who enters in the dark …. only to discover that it isn’t Dewhurst she’s sharing her bed but her old flame, Colin. Who is now a leper …

‘Some New Pleasures Prove’: Devon. Laura Campbell’s car breaks down shortly after being stopped at a police roadblock where she was warned that sadistic killer Arthur ‘The Midnight Murderer’ Smith is on the loose having escaped from the Waymore asylum. When she chances upon Jasmine Cottage, Laura thinks her troubles are over – until, watching the ten o’clock news, she realises that her genial host fits the description of the man the police are looking for.

Fine Needlework: Northern France. The ultra-wealthy Jacques is kept isolated from society because he’s a dangerous psychopath. A nanny, cook and a male nurse are his only company until Clarissa and Mary, guests of the absent Countess, arrive and, oh dear, the male nurse is drunk out of his brains …

‘Les Belle Dames Sans Merci’: “Take off your clothes my dear. It will not be too painful. While you are conscious the water will not be unduly cold … or would you sooner that Reed should strip you? He might well find it entertaining …”
Homosexual Conrad and his manservant, Reed, still have their uses for women, as his third wife is about to discover … Best described as “chilling”.

The Hitch: Another of Birkin’s unbearable stories concerning Nazi atrocities during World War II. Some years after the hostilities, the Wends innocently purchase a lampshade while on holiday in Bavaria. It has a peculiar design in black and blue, a benevolent Neptune overlooking some frolicking sea-horses. By some bizarre coincidence, Gretel, their loyal Jewish home-help, was married to a young man with such a design tattooed across his chest …

Malleus Maleficarum: London, The Savoy. Jeremy Vraders’ occult dabbling lead to his being assailed by tiny demonic figures which attach themselves to his person and accompany him everywhere. Anthea finds it all very fascinating and attractive, but unfortunately, mentions the wrong name in their company and they desert their host. Jokier than usual, and as such, not really my thing.

Peter Haining – The Anatomy Of Witchcraft

Peter Haining – The Anatomy Of Witchcraft (Tandem, 1974)

Satanism, White Magic, Voodoo: the ancient rituals are alive today.

Witchcraft in Britain
Appendix I: The Initiation of a Witch
Appendix II: Ritual Magic
The Growth of Black Magic
The Witches of America
Evil on the Coast
Appendix: The Satanic Ritual
The Ancient Craft in Europe
Witchcraft Behind the Iron Curtain
Voodoo – Black Witchcraft
Appendix: The Voodoo Blood Sacrifice
The Rest of the World
Bibliography

Thanks to Steve Goodwin for posting the details and coverscan on Vault of Evil

Tony Blackburn – A Laugh In Every Pocket

Tony Blackburn – A Laugh In Every Pocket (Tandem, 1975)

Blurb:

Tony Blackburn breaks the fun barrier with a chart-topping album of putrid jokes and funtastic humour. A must for all three-legged pedestrians, essential to any self-respecting collector of glass eyes, compulsive reading for dachshund owners, and guarenteed to get your ears vibrating, your eyeballs rotating and your brain cells bubbling. Can you live without a copy?

“Tony Blackburn’s jokes are like prunes — they keep you laughing regularly. ” – Ed Stewart
“The finest thing of his kind since his Life of Grampworth, but lacks an Index. ” – Terry Wogan
“A sensation! Never to be repeated ” – Tony Blackburn’s Mother.
“Dear Tony, if you were going to steal gags why didn’t you steal any good ones?” – Kenny Everett

David Forrest – The Undertaker’s Dozen

David Forrest – The Undertaker’s Dozen (Tandem, 1974)

Terror can have such simple beginnings—a child’s letter to Father Christmas…a lovely girl glimpsed in a London street…a spin down the Brighton Road…a night spent in an empty mansion for a bet.

And the consequences can be so fearsome, as the unsleeping dead walk again, as strange emotions stir inanimate things to murderous life, as horrors beyond our imagining cross the threshold into everyday life; can anyone be sure that all is as it seems?

After you have read this book, can you?

The Cynic
The Ghostwriter
Shingle
Whoever You May Be …
Boys Will Be ….
The Pilgrimage
The Wrong Christmas Spirit
The Voyager
The Finger Man
Pillion Rider
The Blackamoor
The Undertaker’s Dozen
Spare Parts Inc.

Thanks to Mark Samuels for providing the blurb, cover scan and contents of this one. You can Mark’s plot-outlines on Vault’s Undertaker’s Dozen thread here.

Find missing covers here

Curt Purcell’s Groovy Age Of Horror has Ralph Comer novel The Mirror Of Dionysos (1969) – “The elemental powers of white magic contend with a more terrifying form of evil” – and Arkon Daraul’s Witches And Sorcerers (1969).

Sexy Witch has Witches And Sorcerers (1965 and 1969 editions), Ronald Seth’s  Witches and their Craft (1970), Jules Michelet’s  Satanism and Witchcraft (1970) and Louise Huebner’s Witchcraft for All (1971).

Alwyn Turner’s Trash Fiction has the 1965 and 1969 editions of Daraul’s Secret Societies and examples of Tandem’s non-horror output.

Tandem-specific links

There don’t seem to be many of these. Chetwynd-Hayes’ Tandem  paperbacks are discussed at Loughville and there’s a useful illustrated article on some of the Witchcraft titles at the entertaining  sexywitch blogspot

Ronald Holmes – Witchcraft In British History

Ronald B. Holmes – Witchcraft In British History: The Manipulation Of Mankind’s Primitive Terrors And Superstitions (Tandem, 1976: Muller 1974)

Jessie Douglas Kerruish – The Undying Monster

Jessie Douglas Kerruish – The Undying Monster (Tandem, 1975)

“Devil or ghoul, the bane of Hammand would have it’s victim”

Isn’t that the most spine-chilling cover you’ve ever seen?

Dannow on the Suffolk Downs: For generations the Hammand family have laboured under a curse, apparently due to an evil ancestor who sold his soul to Satan. To make matters worse, they’re plagued by a werewolf who does for most of them, either rending their bodies or driving them to suicide. Now London-based Miss Luna Bartendale, a psychic detective, is called in by the present owners to see if she can prevent their doom at the fangs and claws of the monster.

First published by Heath & Cranton in 1922 and successfully filmed by 20th Century Fox two decades later, Tandem released this paperback version for no apparent reason I can fathom in 1975.