Customer Reviews

Blood Fever (Super Mack Bolan)

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Not sure if I liked Blood Fever (1982) by Shelley Hyde (pronounced: Shall He Hide; an insider author joke, considering the novel's storyline?), pen name for Kit Reed. It's an easy read, 188 pages, but it's truly twisted, maybe even disturbed. First thought: the author is putting me on: a disease that only affects/kills one sex with the other sex completely immune to it. But the more I thought about it, the more shocking the idea became. I liked the scenes at the city dump and the Wilson farm where the once diseased, but now deceased, congregate in hunger. I thought the reason why the newspaper editor allowed the city mayor to censor the story from the rest of the world (out of fear his wife might kick him out of his editorial job because of a one time sexual indiscretion he had with the mayor), and the reason why the city's mayor didn't want the story to break (Malfia would cut off his hands for non-payment of gambling debts because he mishandled the disease, got fired as Mayor, and lost access to city funds causing gambling debts to go unpaid) to be preposterous. And talk about misbehavior directed at one sex and an unfair ending: all the heroes are killed or are secretly forced to relocate while the villains remain in power. But all may not bode well for the mayor-and-company because the diease has mutated and is bidding its time in an extended dormant state.

This is a 1982 paperback. Although Amazon indicates that it is published by Harlequin, the copy I have is Pocket Books through S&S. It has the same ISBN though. The author is Shelley Hyde.

Things are usually quiet in the little town of Broughton. Kids go to school, moms make dinner and keep house, dads go to work, and everyone cheers on the local football heroes of the town's only high school. But when Harry Timmons leaves his job at the virology lab to come home to his beloved wife Arlene, he can't begin to imagine what he'll find there. The snarling, homicidal beast he meets in the dark is not the gentle, timid woman he fell in love with back in high school. One by one the women of this small town start going berserk and kill any male that crosses their path. Police investigator Ralph Peterson senses that something just isn't right when Harry is brought in for murder. Once tragedy strikes his own family, Peterson begins to pursue the case in hopes of uncovering the forces at work in his town as well as a way to stop it before it spreads.

This is a typical cheesey horror book of the late 70s/early 80s. The cover is screamingly funny, and the author really makes no effort to hide the "We are surpressed women, and this is what happens when men don't listen to us" symbolism of the story. It's light, it's a quick read, and it's actually rather funny because the story makes no sense at all. It's perfect reading for when you don't want to think for a couple of hours!
(mellion108 from Michigan)