Book Review: The Texts of Festival by Mick Farren

Book Review: 'The Texts of Festival' by Mick Farren

5 / 5 Stars

'The Texts of Festival' first was published in 1973; this Avon Books paperback edition was issued in November, 1975, with the cover artist uncredited.

 

This was the first published novel for Farren (1943 - 2013) and reflects his background as a rock musician.

 

'Texts' is set in a near-future, post-apocalyptic UK (the eponymous, ramshackle city of Festival presumably once was London). Technology is at a 19th century level, save for some decaying amplifiers and record players whose public playing of the 'texts' (i.e., LPs) from such classic rock artists as the Doors and Bob Dylan serve a quasi-religious purpose in the cultural life of Festival.

 

In the novel's opening pages we are introduced to a number of characters, some of whom come to rather abrupt endings in terms of life expectancy. Farren uses these passages to emphasize that in this post-apocalyptic UK, life is nasty, brutal, and short. 

 

The main premise of 'Texts' is that a large force of raiders has been assembled through the machinations of one Iggy, a meth addict gifted with a touch of military genius. Iggy has persuaded Oltha, the leader of the Tribals, to join forces with Iggy's band of methheads, and attack Festival. Iggy is industrious in gathering firearms, including automatic rifles, no small task in the wasteland. With this firepower, and the liberal use of meth, Iggy is confident of success. For their part, Oltha and the Tribals are looking forward to a booty of liquor and women.

 

Joe Starkweather, an older man of considerable standing in Festival due to his role in leading the people to victory in past wars against wasteland factions, gets word of the raider army. He tries to gather the communities of Festival into a joint defense, but the Merchant Quarter refuses to donate their considerable stores of arms and ammunition to any communal effort. Further complicating Starkweather's efforts is the ruler of Festival, a dissipated sybarite named Valentine. In his drug-fueled egomania, Valentine believes he alone is best qualified to lead the defense of the city, leaving Starkweather with no choice but to plan for expediencies.

 

As the raider army sets off on its march to conquest, sides will be drawn, desperate plans put into motion, and the survival of the city dependent on a brutal, no-quarter combat between the raiders, and Joe Starkweather, Frankie Lee, Mac the Smith, Harry Krishna, Claudette, and the rest of Festival's defenders......

 

At 174 pages in length, 'Texts' delivers a stripped-down narrative, with little space for the authorial indulgences of most New Wave Era sci-fi. Indeed, the novel reads more as a Western than sci-fi. There are plentiful scenes of action and violence, with the latter content quite explicit by the standards of early 70s sci-fi. Farren is good at composing his fight sequences, and the final confrontation between the raiders and the city is suspenseful, while keeping the reader uncertain as to the outcome. 

 

In closing, 'The Texts of Festival' belongs to that sub-genre of post-apocalyptic, wasteland-centered sci-fi that began with 'Damnation Alley' (1969) and continued with Charles W. Runyon's 'Pig World' (1971), and Suzy McKee Charnas's 'Walk to the End of the World' (1974). With these novels it shares a downbeat, nihilistic tenor that paved the way for the gleefully transgressive attitudes of contemporary properties like the Fallout video games. 

 

I'm comfortable with giving 'Texts' a Five Star Rating, but readers are directed to the 'Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations' blog for a different opinion of the novel's worthiness.

Penthouse June 1976

Penthouse

June, 1976

June, 1976, and the top 40 chart reveals the impact of disco, with some classic boogie-oogie tunes present on the chart. Also appearing is 'Shannon,' by Sha Na Na band member Henry Gross. A song about Beach Boys member Carl Wilson's dog, Gross's falsetto, in an era before Auto-tune, is amazing.

The latest issue of Penthouse magazine is on the stands, and it contains an advertisement for 'Calcutta Cloth,' a brand of leisure suits designed for summer weather. If nowadays they made these, and in a neutral color (as opposed to peach and canary yellow), I might buy them. Whether I would wear them in public, is uncertain....
 

There are some good articles in this issue. Anthony Pearson's 'A Conspiracy of Silence' examines the destruction of the U.S. spy ship Liberty at the hands of the Israelis in June, 1967. Lyndon Baines Johnson, the President at that time, suppressed reporting about the attack in order to avoid turning American opinion against Israel in the Seven Day War.

During the Seventies and Eighties East Asian religious organizations set up shop, with some success, in the USA. One of these was the 'Unification Church,' founded by the North Korean-born reverend Sung Myung Moon. By the mid-70s the antics of the so-called 'Moonies' were gathering attention, such as this article by Michael Pousner, which portrays the cult in something of a negative light.

The Interview is with Vincent Bugliosi (1934 - 2015) who gained fame for prosecuting the Manson Family for the 1969 Tate - LaBianca murders. Bugliosi's greatest talent was in self-promotion........

The fiction piece in this June issue is a neat little tale, set in the USA of 1997, titled 'The Technician.' Author Michael Rogers posits a near-future America where Christian fundamentalists are the major political power. The first-person narrator is a drug dealer who makes a mistake..........a mistake with hazardous consequences. This is the kind of story that would be a little too edgy for Omni (which would debut two years later).

A portfolio is devoted to Chelsea Eriksen, a young lady with 'long blonde hair' and 'ice blue eyes,' and a 'free and easy California spirit.' The photos capture the California sensibility of the 1970s - an era now become myth - and the accompanying Earth Tone aesthetic. Quite a package, if you ask me........

 

 

 

 

 

 

And so we say farewell to June of '76, fifty years ago, when life was a little less complicated and colored in beige, brown, and gold.

How it was, 47 years ago

 

The mass-market paperback edition of Norman Spinrad's 'A World Between' was published in the Fall of 1979, so that may be around when this photograph was taken 

Book Review: Legion from the Shadows by Karl Edward Wagner

Book Review: 'Legion from the Shadows' by Karl Edward Wagner

3 / 5 Stars

'Legion from the Shadows' (253 pp.) was published by Zebra Books in April, 1976, and features cover artwork by Jeff Jones.

 

I remember picking up this book in that Spring of '76, and thinking it was OK........how does it hold up when re-read some fifty years later ?

 

'Legion' is a sequel of sorts to the Robert E. Howard short story 'Worms of the Earth,' first published in Weird Tales in the fall of 1932, and subsequently reprinted in the Zebra Books compilation of Bran Mak Morn tales, 'Worms of the Earth' (1975). 

As with 'Worms of the Earth,' 'Legion' is set in Caledonia (i.e., Scotland), circa 208 A.D. Although the events of 'Worms' have led to a setback for Roman plans to bring more of the northern British Isles under their control, Lucius Alfenus Senecio, the governor of Britain, is intent on renewing the effort. As 'Legion' opens, a Roman outpost has been established in the highlands, and Bran Mak Morn, the king of the Picts, has gathered a force of several thousand barbarians to lay siege to the outpost. 

 

As Mak Morn prepares for the assault on the outpost, a scout comes running with astonishing news: the entire Roman garrison has been eliminated, and the outpost destroyed. Bran finds disturbing evidence that his allies from 'Worms,' the so-called serpent-folk of the tunnels and burrows that lie beneath the earth, have struck out at the unsuspecting Romans.

 

Mak Morn learns that the witch-woman Atla, and the Roman legate Claudius Nero, have raised an army in the labyrinthian depths. They have a proposal for Mak Morn: an alliance of the Picts and the subterraneans, for the purpose of driving the Romans back into permanent shelter behind Hadrian's Wall. 

 

While Mak Morn has little love for the Romans, the idea of an alliance with Atla and Nero is poisoned by the latter's decision to hold Mak Morn's sister Morgain as hostage. Mak Morn embarks on a hazardous quest to traverse the underground empire of the serpent-folk, find and free Morgain, and return her to the Pictish fortress of Baal-Dor. Whether he wants it or not, Mak Morn will have the aid of the mysterious warrior-woman Liuba. But as Mak Morn is to discover, two warriors against the entirety of the Worms of the Earth makes for poor odds.........  

'Legion' is a workmanlike effort from author Wagner, who deploys the sort of pulpish sword-and-sorcery prose style in wide use in the 1970s. Readers should have a thesaurus handy for 'rubrous,' 'actinian,' 'cantrips,' 'acclivities,' 'lancinations,' and 'boskage.'

 

Most of the narrative takes place within the tunnels and burrows of the subterraneans, which handicaps the plot: our hero spends most of his time stumbling around in the dark, reacting to various forays perpetrated by Nero and Atla. Since Bran Mak Morn is even dumber than Conan, it's often a matter of some well-timed intervention by other parties that saves him from death (or at the least, mutilation).

 

The closing chapter of the novel restores some badly-needed action and import to the plot, but coming after too many interminable sequences that should have, and could have, been trimmed from 'Legion,' it fails to raise the novel above a middling, Three Star Rating. This novel mainly is for Karl Edward Wagner completists.

'Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night'

by Nik Cohn 

New York magazine, June 7, 1976

In June of 1976, I was about to turn 16, and living in 'upstate' New York. My father was born in the city, and as a 'native New Yorker,' he routinely would pick up a copy of New York magazine to stay in touch with happenings 'downstate.'

 

I remember sitting down to read that June 7 issue, and finishing the article with some amusement. I was too young to be a disco attendee, so the whole storyline about the people boogie-ing at '2001 Odyssey' in Bay Ridge was rather remote to me. It seemed like fun, but you had to be at least 18 to get entry into bars, and besides, there was no way I had the disposable income to be a Disco Boy.

 

https://niallcrowley.substack.com/p/the-tribal-rites-of-saturday-night

 

Of course, within a few months of publication, that story in New York would gather momentum and amplify the disco craze to immense heights......before everything came crashing down circa the summer of 1980.

I think I might listen to some disco albums on my record player (you have to go vinyl, when it's disco) and have a listen...........and pretend it's 50 years ago........  

Heavy Metal 2026

I don't usually cover contemporary sci-fi and fantasy media, as there are a number of blogs and websites (like 'Bleeding Cool' and 'The Beat') that do this in a comprehensive manner. But every now and then I like to comment on contemporary stuff through the lens of an Old School fan of print media............ 

 

I've now acquired the first five issues of the 2025- 2026 reboot of Heavy Metal magazine. Issue one was available in April, 2025, and issue five just hit the store shelves. So HM is hitting a regular / quarterly publication schedule, something which never is assured with a reboot, particularly one that spawned as a Kickstarter enterprise (a 2022 effort to relaunch HM foundered after 7 issues, so it's a good sign that this latest effort is meeting schedule).

 

At $14.99, the 2026 edition of the magazine shows the advance of inflation since 1977, when HM debuted. But you get 232 pages for that $14.99, which is pretty good value. The magazine (as of yet) has no external advertising, which isn't all that surprising, since I can't think of many corporations nowadays that look upon print media as any sort of marketing venue.

 

Editor Frank Forte seems to grasp what made the initial 3-4 years of HM so engaging and is looking to recreate that sensibility. Gratifyingly, so far there's not much sign of crap like Matt Howarth 'Changes,' or Kierkegaard's 'Rock Opera,' or Stiles and Lupoff's 'Professor Thintwhistle,' which made me groan in the 1970s and 1980s.

A good example of Forte's philosophy is the publishing an English-language translation of a vintage comic by the Spanish artist Fernando Fernandez (1940 - 2010), 'The Callistan Menace,' in issue five. 

 

Rendered in graytone / wash and linework by Fernando Fernandez, with a translation by R. G. Llarena, this comic represents the great stuff that appeared 50 years ago in the pages of the Warren, Marvel, and Myron Fass / Countrywide magazines. 

Fernandez's artwork recalls the deft renderings of people, planets, and spaceships by artists like Esteban Maroto, Alfonso Font, and Paul Neary from long-ago titles like Eerie, Creepy, 1984, and Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction.   

Fernandez also adapted the Isaac Asimov short story, which first was published in 1940. While I'm often less than impressed with Asimov's stuff, 'Callistan' is a good Golden Age tale and one that is well-suited for a 12-page format. Fernandez is skilled at keeping the story from being too wordy, and yet, not too compressed.

It's rare to see this kind of care and craftsmanship in this modern age of comic art. I doubt many writers who work for Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, and other publishers could do as good a job in plotting and composition as Fernandez. 'The Callistan Menace' fits in well with the other content of issue five and lends credence to the magazine's cover blurb, 'The World's Greatest Illustrated Magazine.'

Anyways, if you want detailed overviews of the contents of each issue of this reboot, then I direct you to 'Fred's HM Fan Blog' to get the full scoops. 

 

For my part, as an elderly aficionado of the glory days of HM, I'm keeping the rebooted franchise in my Pulls list and looking forward to issue six..........

Book Review: The Mexico Run by Lionel White

May is 
No Place for Gringos 
Month !  

Book Review: 'The Mexico Run' by Lionel White

 4 / 5 Stars

 

Back in May of 2022, I featured 'May is no Place for Gringos' Month,' featuring reviews of four paperbacks that dealt with the misadventures of gringos who find themselves in strained circumstances, South of the Border. 

 

Cheerful, affirmational books that celebrated multiculturalism and diversity......... 

 

Here in May, 2026, I'd like to add a fifth paperback to the Month: 'The Mexico Run,' by Lionel White. It's an account of a gringo doing clandestine things down in May-hee-co........things that are a little peligroso, shall we say ? 

 

'The Mexico Run' first was published in 1974 by Fawcett; copies of that original paperback are costly. Luckily, in October 2022, Stark House Press reissued the novel as a trade paperback, as part of a twin publication with another White novel, 'Jailbreak.' 

 

White (1905 - 1985) was a crime reporter, and the author of over 35 crime and suspense novels issued between 1952 to 1978. In his introduction to 'The Black Lizard Anthology of Crime Fiction,' his 1987 anthology of postwar noir stories, Ed Gorman recalls seeing White's Gold Medal paperback, 'Death Takes the Bus,' and its transformative impact: 

The cover, designed by the masterful Michael Hooks, depicted one of his wild but forlorn red-heads submissive at the feet of a hood with a .45 in his hand....The title was in yellow, as was the medallion in the upper right hand that would virtually change my life. 

Gold Medal book number 663 was DEATH TAKES THE BUS by Lionel White.

That was my first Gold Medal book.

So: on to 'The Mexico Run.' It's set in the late 1960s - early 1970s, and features a Vietnam war veteran named Mark Johns as the protagonist. Johns has a scheme to import Acapulco Gold, a potent strain of Cannabis sativa, into the USA from Mexico. As schemes go, it's complicated, one that requires trusting far too many untrustworthy parties, but Johns, confident of a big payoff, is willing to take risks. It's also the case that Johns isn't very bright [the reader is given to understand that Johns's time in Vietnam has imparted a degree of fatalism to his psychology.]

With information imparted by a Vietnam colleague named 'Bongo,' Johns works some connections in the San Francisco area and finds himself a buyer. With the USA end of the op cemented, Johns next heads South of the Border to Tijuana. En route he intervenes on behalf of a lubricious hippie chick named Sharon, who is blonde, attractive, in trouble, and in need of rescue. 

As Johns discovers, Sharon is good in bed, but also a magnet for attention from swarthy Mexicanos. One such Mexicano is Captain Hernando Morales, Johns's Tijuana connection and the sort of man who makes everyday, corrupt federales look like choirboys:

There's an old saying that all jails are alike and all cops are alike. This is not true. Jails in the United States are tough, often brutal. But compared to Mexican jails, they're country clubs. A certain number of police officers in the United States are vicious, cruel, and often sadistic. Sometimes they ignore the law as often as they enforce it. Compared to Mexican police, however, they are courteous, considerate, and kind; gentlemen of the old school. 

Johns understands that Captain Morales is a muy mal hombre, but Morales has the necessary introductions to the proper people, including some Acapulco Gold growers, and the smuggling operation gets off to a reasonably good start. Flush with cash from his first Run, Johns returns to the Ensenada area, intent on stepping up the volume of his buys. But that's when things start to go wrong......very, very wrong........and Johns learns that Mexico indeed, is No Place for Gringos..........

'The Mexico Run' is a well-written crime novel, with a narrative sparked with episodes of nasty violence, violence with a Special Sauce derived from South of the Border malevolence. The climax of the novel is suspenseful, as Johns is obligated to make a run to a destination north of the border, a run where the slightest error can have lethal consequences.

The only weak segment of 'The Mexico Run' is in the final several pages, where some revelations are trotted out, revelations that seemed to me to be more than a little contrived.

When all is said and done, 'The Mexico Run' is another valid entry in those treatments of the perils going South of the Border holds for gringos, and it deserves a Four Star Rating. 

Omnibuses from Bud Plant

Although Bud Plant now has retired, the purchasers of his book warehouse, Bill Schanes and Sasha Fera-Schanes, are operating the company in much the same manner as did Plant. Marty Grosser is now overseeing the Bud Plant's Incredible Catalog (below).

You can find some pretty good deals on some Marvel '2099' omnibuses in the Late Spring catalog / website, as I did with the 'Spider-Man 2099' omnibuses volumes 1 and 2 (above). If those Marvel comics from the mid-1990s are of interest to you, you may want to see what's available at the website.

 

One thing I always stress is that the shipping from Bud Plant is very good: sturdy boxes, well-cushioned. And if an item is 'used,' it will say so in the listing. This is a nice departure from what tends to happen with many of my graphic novel orders from a major online retailer: battered copies being sold as 'new'...........  

Book Review: The Magic Man by Charles Beaumont

Book Review: 'The Magic Man' by Charles Beaumont

  

 3 / 5 Stars

 

'The Magic Man and Other Science Fiction Stories' (258 pp.) was published by Fawcett Crest in 1965.

 

Despite the brevity of his career, which only lasted from 1954 to 1963, when a debilitating disease curtailed his output, Beaumont (1929 - 1967) was a major short story author, best known for his contributions to the television show The Twilight Zone. The stories compiled in 'The Magic Man' all saw print in various magazines and digests, such as Playboy, If, and Esquire, in the interval from 1954 to 1960.

 

One thing about the stories in this collection is that spinsters are prominent. I don't know why, but they are......... 

 

My capsule summaries of the contents:

 

Miss Gentilbelle (1957): a Southern Gothic tale, featuring a spinster with a cruelty streak. Supposedly Miss Gentibelle was modeled on Beaumont's mother Letty.....!?

The Last Caper (1954): a sci-fi parody of the hardboiled detective story.

 

The New People (1958): the 'new people' are Ann and Hank, recent arrivals to the placid world of the suburb. It turns out that their neighbors are welcoming, but maybe a little too welcoming. One of the better stories in this collection.

 

The Vanishing American (1955): The epitome of the mid-1950s Organization Man, Mr. Michell is stricken with a peculiar - and perhaps fatal - case of urban anomie.

 

The Monster Show (1956): vaguely comedic sci-fi tale about some executives planning to air the 'world's greatest TV show.' They speak in a 'futuristic' argot. This is a very forgettable story.

 

The Magic Man (1960): Micah Jackson, aka magician and patent medicine salesman 'Dr. Silk,' is playing what may well be his last show, in the prairie town of Two Fork, Kansas. And what a show it will be..........this story is a homage of sorts to Ray Bradbury.

 

A Classic Affair (1955): a husband appears to be Straying. But it's not that sort of infidelity that you think it is.........

 

The Hunger (1955): unconvincing tale of a serial killer on the loose in a small town; a spinster named Julia is obsessed with the situation.

 

Black Country (1954): a black jazz band's leader, Spoof, is a combination of Magical Negro, and Doomed Black Bluesman. Using overheated prose intended to mimic the rhythms of jazz, Beaumont relates how Sonny, a young white boy, learns from Spoof how to bring that big sound. I hate jazz, and worshipful stories about jazz, so this entry did nothing for me............

 

The Love-Master (1957): Salvadori, the eponymous Love-Master, counsels a young man complaining of a 'frigid' wife. Will the Chinese Flip technique bring energy to the connubial bed ? Another of the better stories in 'Magic Man.' 

 

The Dark Music (1956): schoolteacher and spinster Miss Lydia Maple discovers an isolated woodland glade, where she enjoys the attentions of a strange, but not unwelcome, phenomenon. 

 

Fair Lady (1957): spinster Miss Elouise Baker finds love in an unlikely place: her daily bus trip.

 

Perchance to Dream (1958): a psychiatrist encounters Philip Hall, a young man whose dreams lately are taking on a disturbing sense of reality. The premise is too contrived to be effective.

 

The Crooked Man (1955): in a future where homosexuality is legal, but heterosexuality is not, the eponymous Man is looking for Girl Love, which makes him a pervert. Beaumont's description of the gay lounge (where the Man has gone for an assignation) is greasy and disturbing. This story was quite provocative for its time.

 

Open House (1957): Eddie Pierce just wants a quiet evening at home in his apartment, but then the doorbell rings.......dark humor is prominent in this piece.

 

Last Rites (1955): Father Courtney is called to administer the Catholic rite of extreme unction to a dying man. There are philosophical issues.

 

The Murderers (1955): gay couple Herbie and Ronald have taken up murder as a delicious pastime. Who will be their victim this night ?

 

A Death in the Country (1957): despite the increasing age of his Chevy and himself, Buck Larsen is determined to continue his career as a stock-car racer. A very good tale of life and death on the dirt-track racing circuit of the late 1950s.

Summing up, 'Magic Man' has its share of duds and its share of good stories, making it another Three Star anthology. It's interesting to think of what Beaumont would have done had he not come to a too-early end. 

Ten 'Small Town from Hell' Short Stories

Ten 'Small Town from Hell' Short Stories

 

I have a fondness for crime, suspense, and horror stories that take place in small towns. Stories about travelers whose journeys leave them stranded - usually overnight, but sometimes for longer - in a sad little town in the middle of nowhere. And there's always something a little.....off........about the town. Something that isn't immediately apparent, but comes into play before very long. Before you can escape..........

 

So here are ten stories, most of them published before 1990, that involve small towns that have something unsettling about them. I've tried to stay away from more well-known stories (e.g., 'The Shadow over Innsmouth') in favor of those that are a little more obscure.

 

Here we go...........watch that speed limit, and be sure to lock the door of your hotel room. Better yet, wedge a chair under the door handle ! 

 

 

The Full Treatment, by Rog Phillips: never go over the speed limit near the sleepy, inbred hamlet of Bethel. A great treatment of the 'Small Town from Hell' theme, and one of the best stories in the anthology 'Alfred Hitchcock’s A Hearse of a Different Color,' 1972

 

 

Where Yidhra Walks by Walter C. DeBill, Jr. : in the wilds of West Texas, a traveler finds himself stranded in a small town named Milando. The townspeople don’t take kindly to strangers, particularly strangers who start to ask too many questions about the practices of a cult that worships an ancient entity….. 'The Disciples of Cthulhu,' 1976

 

 

On the Road to Honeyville, by Kate Wilhelm: Elizabeth and her mom are making the long drive on the two-lane blacktop road to the town of Salyersville, by way of the town of Honeyville. En route, they enter the Twilight Zone. 'Orbit 11,' 1973.

 

 

 

Ceremony, William F. Nolen: the nameless protagonist of this story is obliged to spend the night in the crumbling town of Doour’s Mill, Rhode Island. It’s cold and rainy, and it’s Halloween. And the few residents of the town who are out and about, are unusually thin…… 'The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XIV,' 1986

 

After Nightfall, by David A. Riley: Eliot Wilderman is doing sociological research in the UK, in the sad little village of Heron. He notices that everyone in the village takes great care to lock and bar their doors at night. 'The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series I,' 1975

 

 

Tough Town, by William Sambrot: Ed, a travelling salesman, is accustomed to getting indifferent treatment from the folk of the small towns that he visits. But then he finds himself in one particular town, where the people are openly hostile. Why ? Ed will find out, to his detriment……'Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me,' 1967

Chameleon Town, by Carl Jacobi: a group of chess players, led by physician Lucius James, are obliged to spend the night in the odd little northeastern coastal town of Kingsport. Upon taking a late-night stroll, James is startled to have a sense of deju vu, even though he never before has been to Kingsport. Another tale with a Twilight Zone flavor. 'Nameless Places,' 1975.

The Children of Noah, by Richard Matheson:  At 3 a.m. Mr. Ketchum speeds through Zachry, Maine, population 67, and is startled to be pulled over by the local police. They place the indignant Mr. Ketchum in jail, and are vague about when he’ll be released. But they do take care to provide him with a wonderful breakfast in the morning….. 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories My Mother Never Told Me,' 1965

 

Stillborn, by Mike Conner (1981): a young, newly-wedded bride is obliged to make friends with the elder women of a 19th century mining town. There is something disturbing about the underground chamber where they gather to socialize……'The Best of Modern Horror,' 1990

 

 

One for the Road, by Stephen King: on a snowy and stormy January night, the patrons of Tookey's bar in Falmouth, Maine, are startled to see a well-dressed man come into the place. The man is in dire condition, having walked six miles from where his car went off the road. Off the road, near the abandoned town of Jerusalem's Lot......'Night Shift,' 1978.