Peter Saxon – Scream And Scream Again

Peter Saxon – Scream And Scream Again (Paperback Library, Dec. 1967. Previously known as The Disorientated Man)

I couldn’t make sense of the film on one viewing and I also struggled with the novel first time around, so lets see if I’m any the wiser after a rematch.

London. Detective Chief-Super Dale Keene is investigating a series of gruesome murders. The victims are young women whose throats have been slashed and all the blood drained from their bodies. On the wrists of the deceased, twin puncture marks which suggest that the killer is a vampire. One of the girls was employed as a maid by mild-mannered Dr. Browning, so he’s obviously our number one suspect. A plan to capture the murderer using P.C. Helen Bradford as bait backfires when the bloodsucker kills her on Tooting Common and effortlessly toughs up her colleagues when they race to her rescue after hearing sucking noises over their tracking device.

Elsewhere Ken Spartan, Olympic athlete, collapses while out jogging. He wakes up in hospital with a silent nurse feeding him something through a straw. His arms and legs are systematically amputated over a period of …. days? months? Spartan has no way of knowing as he’s kept permanently stoned.

Meanwhile in East Germany, the sadist Konrath has risen through the ranks of the Secret Police, disposing of any immediate superiors with the patented Vulcan death grip whenever they question his methods of obtaining information.

That brings us up to the halfway mark. Seems to me as though 70 pages is not gonna be enough to bring all these strands together satisfactorily which is maybe what baffled me last time. And the back cover blurb promises Black Magic – we’ve not had a hint of any of that yet.

What happens next? “Review” continues on Vault of Evil!

Thanks to ade for top cover scan!