SASQUATCH by M.E. Knerr

DEATH IN THE SNOW ... death that comes on two legs, eight feet tall, with arms of iron and hands that can tear the head off a man and fold his rifle into a pretzel! Author M.E. Knerr presents an all-too-plausible story of what could - no, what will happen, when a gentle forest giant is pushed into a frenzy by the encroachment of our modern world. When that happens, all will fear the name SASQUATCH!

Knerr's story is not quite the over-the-top gonzo thriller like Bogner's Snowman was, with its globetrotting, 20-foot-tall Yeti nukin' action, instead tracking the violent outbursts that threaten the small town milieu in Lodgepole, CA. Knerr's characters are cleanly drawn and get the job done well enough, and he doesn't waste too much time getting where he's going. Characters are here one minute, dead the next, as they tell each other what they know about the mysterious Sasquatch, argue about if he even exists, and run around on each other between the town's sole, sleazy bar and the ski lodge up the way. It all leads up to a blink-and-you'll-miss-it climax typical of vintage thriller writing. Where Knerr really excels is his sense of place: you can almost hear the snow crunching underfoot as cowboys and coppers skulk around the woods searching for the beast!

NEL's best ...

There's not a lot out there about author Michael Knerr, aside from that he worked under a lot of pseudonyms writing quickie sex and genre titles for cheapie publishers like Monarch and Pinnacle. A guest post by SF author John F. Carr at the Mystery File blog dredges up some biographical detail, including Knerr's relationship with classic SF writer H. Beam Piper ... be sure to read the comments, too!

Knerr's terror tale was originally published by Belmont Tower Books as Sasquatch: Monster of the Northwest Woods in 1977. This edition goes for ridiculous prices online due to kitsch value, which is why I finally wrangled a copy of the NEL edition from the following year and threw it up on the archive for all to read, absolutely free: here it is in all its scanned glory!

For simple pleasures and knowing glances, Knerr's Sasquatch earns a 3/4 rating.

New English Library, 1978 (original pub. 1977)

SNOWMAN by Norman Bogner

Something in the night

Something in the day

Nothing is wrong but darling

Something's in the way 

There's slaughter in the air 

Protest on the wind 

Someone else inside me 

Someone could get skinned, how

Hard boiled pulp action meets creature feature thrills in this oddity from literary and genre novelist Norman Bogner (1935-2022). The monks of Tibet call him Sogpa - Satan. The sheriff and the local editor are claiming it's a gigantic rogue grizzly. But disgraced climber Bradford knows ... it's the SNOWMAN!

He handed Bradford the photos of Janice's head with the black stars burned into her face. The other photographs were close-ups in color of the triangular footprints.

"Christ," Bradford said, "he's on your mountain."

This beast is no normal animal, no simple brown haired hominid, as Bogner makes clear right away. He's an atavistic, evolutionary freak, 25 feet tall, burning with elemental hatred and an insatiable hunger for flesh. Alone and perpetually pissed off, he burns the land with his footsteps leaving a bizarre rainbow effervescence. His hair is hard as stone, his skin sharp as daggers, and his teeth leave burning starpoints as he rends his prey, leaving mutilated bodies in his wake.

Now he's found a new feeding ground, at the summit of the Great Northern Ski Resort's peak. And now he's PR woman Cathy Parker's problem.

Cathy had messed around when she was younger in a series of painful affairs. Now she had little respect for men, since most of them were in search of an easy piece, mothering, or both simultaneously. Her job demanded the front of glibness, friendliness, and she fell into the role rather than expose her vulnerability. She had mastered the shades of public relations, which she understood as civilization's method of counterfeiting reality.

Bogner blends pulpy grit, mundane reality, and flashy fantasy into this unique concoction, as Bradford's old Vietnam buddies and his Sherpa pal Pemba are enlisted as yeti bait. The extreme realm of mountaineering demands special considerations as to tactics - would you believe nuclear cross bows? Bogner dots his eyes and crosses his tees without ever belaboring a scene, and before we know it we're at the end of this 221 page (gut) ripping yarn wishing there was a little more to come.

The striking hardcover!

Partially traced from a Frazetta piece!

No matter, but it would have been nice if maybe the Snowman got one more big scene devouring some skiers ... Bogner keeps things ratcheted down fairly tight throughout, despite his willingness to go out there with mini-nukes and mega-yetis, and part of what makes this such an enjoyable read is his precise control of the story, with not a word wasted. Bogner's working us like a fish on a line, but ain't it a wonderful way to die!

A little romance, a little action, a little bit of the ol' ultra violence - this one has it all. Bogner knows just when to dip out on a scene, and just how far to push things.

Across the pond, Snowman got a gruesome edition courtesy the New English Library:

Which copies the monster from Terror in the Midnight Sun, aka Invasion of the Animal People (1959)!

My, my, someone fetch a priest! You can't say no to the beauty and the beast as Bogner's Snowman slaughters his way to a bloody 4/4 rating!

Man is still the prey ...

The Snowman is available to read and download at archive dot org. This title was also reviewed by one Tony Caro and the ever reliable PorPor Books Blog, check 'em out.

Dell Publishing, 1978

SHOCKWAVE by Nick Everett

"From the depths of the ocean comes the most devastating of all the Earth's forces ..."

Watch out ... for the SHOCKWAVE!

The "rugged Englishman" Kirk, sexy lady scientist Simone, and a boatload of Norwegians are sitting on top of a big problem in the North Sea: an unstable trench that's about to launch a landslide into the ocean depths, triggering the most massive tsunami ever seen in this hemisphere. Worst of all, the blast wave will be on track to slam into the eastern coast of the UK!

This is author Nick Everett's only credited work, though the polished writing points to a pseudonym of some working writer. Everett leads with a little bit of disaster science onboard the good ship Isthmian, along with Kirk's battered libido - Simone "can make a duffle coat and a pair of sea-boots look sexy" we're told, and once Kirk gets off this tub he's entertaining thoughts of a courtship with her. That'll have to wait, of course, once the seafloor shakes and the big wave starts rolling.

Everett writes a short, tight little disaster epic, drawing down on family man Walter's evacuation via traffic jam and on daredevil pilot Ryan's rubbernecking by way of his precious twin engine Dakota, the very same plane brought to life on the front cover. Walter's a drab grey man living a drab grey life, and now he might lose it all without having ever really enjoyed himself! Ryan meanwhile gives us a bird's eye view of the action and pushes himself further and further into reckless hedonistic thrill seeking.

Like the water sucked out to sea before a tsunami, the empty hours between the announcement of the disaster and the inevitable crashing wave are a loathsome absence, proof via negation of a horrible, inescapable reality. When the shockwave finally comes roaring ashore and overground it's almost a relief, a sweet release for our trapped cast. Pilot Ryan could easily have flown to safety, but his own demons compel him to witness the destruction, and poor Walter, well, he's stuck in a miles long caravan along with a thousand other souls.

Closeup on the cover art!

Everett mentions a 220 foot tall tsunami resulting from the Good Friday quake that struck Alaska in 1964, which also factored into the background of Arthur Herzog's Earthsound. Over at the Paperback Palette, Jeffersen has amassed an exhaustive entry for water based disasters - that's "flood, deluge, squall, gale, tempest, cyclone, hurricane, typhoon, tsunami," any and all "EXTREME WATER EVENTS," and Shockwave is among the many, many entries. Jeffersen also has questions about Everett's identity, because great minds think alike.

His lengthy survey also covers Deluge by Richard Doyle and The Raging Flood by R.T. Larkin. Check it out!

Shockwave earns a reliable 3/4 for a no frills, cheap thrills disaster!

New English Library, 1981

SWORDS OF THE BARBARIANS by Kenneth Bulmer

IN THE TRADITION OF CONAN ... again! It's back to the well for more barbarian thrills as author Kenneth Bulmer hits us with the generically titled SWORDS OF THE BARBARIANS!

Bulmer is probably best know for his long running Dray Prescot series, a planetary romance series inspired by Burroughs' Barsoom stories that ran 50+ volumes! Here he serves up some swords and sorcery stew with a rather thin stock, but hiding some surprisingly spicy bits.

Kenneth Bulmer (1921-2005)

Twin heroes Torr and Tara have come to Gamelon Town as a leg of their vague quest for Jaran the All-Seeing, and nobody's having a good time. There's always that tension in swords and sorcery, of the "uncivilized" barbarians against the corrupt and decadent city dwellers, but here Bulmer sends it to new heights. Torr and Tara are terrible guests, stealing chickens and turning scumbag officials into mice with nude magic while just generally knocking shit around. Meanwhile, the Gamelon Townies are awful hosts, wannabe rapists corrupt to a man and ruled by scheming wizards who commune with demon familiars. No wonder then that Torr and Tara welcome the depredations of the invading Garthlanders ...

Belmont Tower continues its cheapjack tradition of shoddy releases, with typos galore and a back cover summary that manages to describe siblings Torr and Tara as lovers! To be fair to the publishers, Torr does think his sister is pretty sexy, and gets lost in thought at least twice over her hot body. Hoo boy ... Tara is a sexy witch who has to get naked to work her magic, and much plot hay is made over a cheap boot buckle preventing her complete disrobing. She's also tied up and leered over multiple times by various villains, and eventually cursed with the Black Bodice - a hot little leotard number that slowly constricts its victim to death! This is one of the sleaziest swords and sorcery titles I've read thus far, and also one of the goofiest. Bulmer fills his fantasy world with wild creatures like the teryxes (gigantic griffins) and the eight legged sjeeds, both used as mounts by the militant men of Garthland.

Fear them ...

At one point Bulmer references a far Khurdisran, and Belmont Tower's quality control is so poor that I'm not sure if he meant to explicitly write Khurdisan as a nod to John Jakes' barbarian hero Brak. In either case, it's not always the best idea to remind readers of other, better stories they could be enjoying. Bulmer also gives us the usual fantasy names like Frelgar, Kar Sjontu, Shishu-Sji, and others, with many foul and unknown gods cursed in passing - "By the swag belly of Obese Rumphaldi Himself!" Some of them land, some don't, and Bulmer's world feels more like a DnD pastiche than a fully realized setting. Some decent character work is appreciated, and sidekick Frelgar is especially well drawn as an "unfrocked philosopher" - a former wizard who now refuses to practice magic. The invading Garthlanders are a curious bunch, a conquering army of honor obsessed nobles who are treated more sympathetically than the Gamelon defenders. Torr sums it up near the end with disquieting relevance for recent events:

"Now may your people take possession of this place, Kar Sjontu," Torr said gravely. "I know nothing of the rights and wrongs of a whole people thus migrating and taking over another habitation. But I do know what my sister and I - and Frelgar - suffered here. You are very welcome."

Rare enough for Belmont Tower, we (sort of) get some illustrations, with old drawings of monsters reproduced from "The Book of Grotesques," presumably to inspire us about the many demons that Torr has to slay in duels with the wizards Zirmazd and Quapartz. The cover is another banger from artist Ken Barr, and typical of the genre is only loosely connected to the actual story - the villains are red heads, and there are flying monsters of a kind.

The New English Library put out the striking cover above, with beautiful '70s type, while managing to accurately relate Torr and Tara. For a semi-effective genre entry, Swords of the Barbarians earns a mixed 2/4 rating.

Update, November 2025: for a second opinion that only proves great minds think alike, Cora Buhlert reviewed this title for the Galactic Journey blog!

Belmont Tower Books, 1970

CROC by David James

"In the twenties it started," Boggs began, but then he stopped. Andrea was staring at him, disbelief in her eyes, but waiting for him to continue.

"All the rich bitches from uptown were raising hell, going to parties, driving their fast cars, putting in swimming pools in their penthouse places. But it got boring after awhile. No one was satisfied. They wanted something new, something different. So some of them began stocking their pools with baby alligators and crocodiles. Only the fad didn't last long, so they dumped the things down the sewers rather than kill them."

David Hagberg returns as David James for another pseudonymous thriller, following up his disaster novel Blizzard with some real creature feature carnage in Croc! NYC sewer worker Boggs loses his partner Fascetti to an impossible monster after probing a cave-in off the cross-town line, and after almost getting chomped himself he's press-ganged by Fascetti's widow into returning to the sewers with a .45 to kill the beast!

Things do not go as planned. In Hagberg's universe this is down to both institutional problems and the vagaries of the personalities involved - and boy does Croc have some characters! Boggs is a rummy lifer working the shit detail in the Sanitation Dept., and Hagberg spins some eloquent characterization as he contemplates what amounted to his life, staggering knee-deep through the pitch black sewers (with a shitty '70s flashlight, batteries draining fast) pursued by the monster croc - dreams, failures (many), and what-ifs and could-have-beens, some involving his dearly departed partner Fascetti, who almost (almost!) named Boggs his firstborn's godfather.

If you ever had to use these, you know Boggs is doomed ...

Andrea Fascetti, meanwhile, was all set for a good life as a good wife, and now has to clean up this fucking mess, which she splits 50/50 between the croc and Boggs. Her iron core - hidden inside a Talia Shire type beauty which the male characters are by turns enraptured, aroused, and a little frightened by - might never have come out if not for this tragedy, and makes one consider the multitude of invisible lives of midcentury housewives, forever standing behind their husbands. As things spin out of control, the authorities finally plunge into action, and here again Hagberg draws us in with a cast of cops, scientists, and bureaucrats who could have been cardboard cutouts but instead are all either a bunch of fuckups, barely holding it together, or just plain weird! His reptile expert Koch gives us just a light info dump on crocodilians, telling us that based on size and disposition our killer is most likely a saltwater crocodile - he's thriving down in the sewer, too, because they like brackish water! This quick rundown is typical of Hagberg's light touch - he never lingers on genre conventions when we've got enough of an idea to keep moving. In fact, even though his Croc ultimately has a low body count comparable to Katz's Alligator, Hagberg moves things so fast and furious that we never feel cheated. The setting, characters, and monster feel authentic without over explanation, and Croc can rest comfortably as an accomplished monster mash right next to John Sayles and co.'s 1980 film Alligator  - though Croc lacks that film's sharp satire, aiming for more resigned humor from Hagberg's cast of screwups and freaks. Hagberg does get some sly jabs in with Bremberger, the up-and-coming pol whose attempts at self-promotion through crocodilian crisis get shot down at every turn.

Croc (or Croc') was originally graced with the crackerjack man-vs-beast cover above, courtesy its 1976 debut from Belmont Tower Books. The New English Library edition lacks a certain dynamism by comparison, despite a decently fierce croc and a hard-to-see hand slipping beneath the sewage. NEL doesn't miss a trick plugging its moneymaking Crabs series from Guy N. Smith though!

Croc is available to read and download at archive dot org. For some lean, gritty thrills, Croc earns 4/4 stars.

New English Library, 1977 (original pub. 1976)