Death Tour by David J Micheal

Published by NEL in 1980.

I could not find anything out about the author. It would seem this was either his only book or a house pseudonym.

The cover to this book is fabulous. By cover artist Bob martin, same as Guy N Smiths Bats Out of Hell. I struggled to find any more information about him.

Now, I’m going to be honest here. I bloody hated this book. There are going to be spoilers, and this is going to be a brief review.

This was featured in the now famous Paperback from Hell, in the animals attack section in You would think a book with an alligator about to eat someone and the back blurb mentioning alligators in the sewers, you’d know what to expect. Well, you would be very wrong. At 156 pages long, the alligator turns up on page 148. And only for a couple of pages.

The story, as it is, is about 5 teenagers working for the college paper. They are looking for an exciting story to add. One of the teams dad, who is an awful man, bitter about his wife leaving him for a French teacher. He hats college types. He works at the sewers, and they hear a tale of alligators roaming the filthy pipes below the city. The five students steal a map, break into the sewers and go exploring. That’s it for the next 130 pages. It was like a really crappy scooby doo adventure. It then turns into a completely differs story, about people who have been trapped in the sewers. Its such a ludicrous concept. I think if the book had been called something else, I may have found it a bit more appealing. However, I waited for gory animal attack adventures that did not happen. In fact, nothing happens for three quarters of the book. Don’t get me wrong, it is a well written book, but nothing seems to happen. The college characters just annoyed me, and I was glad when they started dying off. I had no sympathy for any of them. I did feel sorry for the character of Queenie though. A bulldog that meets a sad end.

This was a struggle for me, and I was glad when I had finished it! Luckily, I only paid 50p in a charity shop (its clocking 30 quid on eBay).

A fine example of don’t judge a book by its cover. I have no idea how the New York times thought this was a book of “Sheer Terror”. I suffered from Sheer Boredom.