'The Block' (286 pp) was published by Panther/Granada in 1984; the cover artist is uncredited.
Gerald Suster (1951 - 2001) was a UK author of a large number of fiction and nonfiction works on the occult and the supernatural over the interval from 1979 to 1997.
Is 'The Block' an undiscovered gem of a Paperback from Hell..........or another mediocre horror novel from the early 80s ?
The latter, unfortunately.............
The novel's opening chapter is mild enough: it's London, October 1982, and lawyer (er, barrister) Tom Bradley, his wife Veronica, and son Colin are overjoyed at moving into their seventh-floor apartment in the classy Lavender Gardens block. Due to Tom's dedication to pursuing Social Justice issues instead of taking on more lucrative legal work, the family's finances have been strained, and caused fissures in Tom's marriage; the move into the Gardens is seen as a chance to start over amid favorable surroundings.
No sooner have Tom, Veronica, and Colin begun to make their acquaintances with the other tenants of the Gardens when tragedy strikes; a resident is struck down in a gruesome manner in what appears to be an accident. But as the days pass, other mishaps begin to take their toll of the inhabitants of the building. Coincidence.........or malice ?
What Tom Bradley and the other residents of the Lavender Gardens don't know is that the site of the building has a dark and disturbing history involving the summoning of occult forces........and the awakening of these forces will bring death and destruction to the Block and its hapless tenants..........
'The Block' has an interesting enough premise, but at 286 pages in length, it is too long and too indolent to really succeed as a horror novel.
In the initial chapters, author Suster has fun with describing the secret vices and perversions of the building's tenants, introducing both black humor and mild surprises, but these observations can't lend much momentum to the narrative. Episodes of violent deaths also pop up in the initial chapters, but these quickly become repetitive as the plot struggles to gain traction.
The final chapters bring on large doses of splatterpunk- style mayhem, but these are so belabored that rather than energizing the narrative, they simply prolong its misery.
I won't give away any spoilers, save to say that the denouement, when it finally arrives, has such a contrived quality that I found it to be disappointing.
The verdict ? 'The Block' is not one of the better examples of 80s horror fiction. Unless you are adamant about collecting all of Suster's works, this one can be avoided.
As I was reminded when I read Robert Bloch's "A Warm Farewell" recently (actually a better-than-average Bloch because the puns and other jokes were kept to a minimum), a stock element in fiction about a character who is a social justice activist is that his or her spouse is not down with the struggle and is skeptical about how the crusader puts the family's comfort or well-being at risk in the interests of some abstract principle or some other demographic group, and here you offer another example.
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