Please let me introduce….. Larry Brent

Larry Brent was the first German horror Groschenroman. Created by Dan Shocker (author of Macabros) in 1968, this series’ history is as confusing as it is fascinating.

As most readers of this blog will probably know, Krimi is the German term for Kriminal (=criminal) stories and films of any kind: no whether it is detective, mystery or hardboiled fiction, in German they can all be summarised as Krimi books or films.

Krimis had for years been a very successful Groschenroman sub-genre and one of the more popular series was Silber Krimi (=”Silver Krimis”). The character of Larry Brent was created for issue 747 of that series and carried the sub-title Silber Grusel Krimi Nr. 1. Grusel can best be translated as “spine tingling” and this sub-title indicated the slightly more phantastic nature of its story.

Following the success of that concept, new Larry Brent stories were created on a monthly basis and from number 25 on, the sub-title was placed as the main title for the Larry Brent adventures. From issue 50 onwards the series also lost its status as a simple sub-series of the Silber Krimis and started appearing as a regular, independent series.

This independent series carried both reprints of old Larry Brent stories as well as new ones. On top of that it also started to regularly feature non-Larry Brent stories of other writers and lasted for 494 editions until 1986.

In the meantime Larry Brent had also started featuring in a series carrying his very own name that also lasted until the late 80s and again featured reprints as well as new stories.

Larry Brent was shortly revived in the 1990s, but only lasted for four issues. That series was simply called Dan Shocker after its author. The first brand new Larry Brent story in years (“Nachtritt der Mondgeister”) had repeatedly been promised, but failed to materialise due to the author’s bad health.

On top of all these stories there were also occasional Larry Brent adventures in paperback and hardcover. When it comes to the original novels in Groschenroman format we have a total of 200 Larry Brents by Dan Shocker plus a handful of very recent new adventures penned by Manfred Weinland and Martin Eisele. Oh, and did I mention the audio books?

Initially the Larry Brent stories were still predominantly of a thriller nature with only small phantastic elements, but that should soon change and we have the hero battling vampires, werewolves and a number of other monsters. Brent is also known under the alias of X-Ray-3 and works as a secret agent for the PSA, the “Psychoanalytische Spezialeinheit” (=psychoanalytical special unit).

I have not yet read any of these stories, but they sound great and have me gagging for it, so stay tuned.

Bis die Tage
Holger
The World of Hammer Glamour

Dr Morton

Just when you thought you had probably heard the last about Groschenromane - I really need to get off my arse and write some more for Groovy Age - I got this submission from another German Groovy Age reader, Andreas Decker, about Dr Morton, a series I was always interested in even though I have yet to read a single one of its issues. I think Andreas did a great job in summarising the attractions of this particular series and also helped provide some spectacular cover scans from his collection. Thanks, Andreas!!!! - Holger

The competition on the newsstand-horrormarket in the seventies at the height of the boom was basically done by the three publishers Pabel/Moewig, Bastei and Zauberkreis, who all had their weekly series. Every week impressionable youths like myself could buy the new adventures of Dämonenkiller, Geisterjäger John Sinclair and Larry Brent.

But from 1976 to 1977 there was a fourth publisher called Erber and Luther Publishing Group, who published the most brutal and depraved series which ever saw the light on the massmarket.

Dr. Morton.

It lasted for 54 issues, until the Bundesprüfstelle für Jugendgefährdende Schriften finally pulled the plug.

Erber was primally an outfit doing tons of Romance and Nurse novels, but they liked a piece of the action and tried their own thing. At first they did a lot of anthology stuff and translations in paperbacks, then they went on publishing original stuff in the Heftroman format. The writerscene in Germany is rather small and chatty, but even today nobody knows for sure who created the series and wrote it. Or those who know don´t tell. Same thing.

The concept was ahead of its time. Dr. Glenn Morton, the hero of the series, is a brilliant surgeon in England, a doctor for the high society with an office in Harley Street in London and a clinic in Brighton; he is rumored to get knighted soon. A pillar of society, Dr. Kildare for the rich. But he is a genius with an inquisitive mind and no scrupels at all, so in his secret lab he likes to do medical experiment. On crooks and innocent bystanders alike.

William Grimsby is his right hand and friend, officially working as his driver. But Grimsby has a little problem. He is a serial-killer – as he would be termed today – who can only get off when he kills a woman. But good help is hard to find, so Morton lets him have his hobby.

Your typical adventure has the good doctor having a new project at the beginning. Transplantation of heads, infection with cancer, mind-control, all for the greater good of course, for later, more enlightend times, when his genius would be acknowledged. So Grimsby has to kidnap some unfortunates, who either are crooks or some innocents who had just bad luck. The good doctor wasn´t picky. Mostly the operations were successful, and afterwards the remains were thrown into an acidvat. Of course Scotland Yard was always hot on the trail of the mysterious villian, but as Morton and Grimsby were the heroes of the book, they never managed to catch them.

The nameless writers – not every novel is credited as John Ball, and there are some differences in the writing; a good guess would be at least three writers - were inventive in their gruesome plots. There was the crime-lord who got his Granddaughter served for dinner at a family reunion, complete with a video afterwards showing how Grimsby hacked her to pieces and put her on the grill. Or the story of the sleazy pop singer with a sadistic streak who got his mind fixed by Morton until he ended as a necrophile raping and eating corpses.

Conceptwise it was far ahead of its times. This was long before anti-heroes like Hannibal Lector captured the imagination of millions of readers.

Frankly, even for Heftromane the short novels (about 25 000 words) weren´t written very well and have often aged badly. The plots were simple and straightforward. But the action was fast, furious and often jawdroppingly brutal and graphic, and the horror factor consisted mainly on the medical experiments and on Grimsbys hobby. The inventive murdering of his victims was described in some details.

The fun didn´t last very long. Serial-killers and nazi doctors as heroes, not a good idea in a genre which in Germany always had censorship problems. No series got so many issues on the index like Dr. Morton did.

Erber didn´t go without a fight, though. They tried to retcon the doctor into a hero fighting the good fight on the side of law and order, for the police and queen and country, but this was met with indifference from the readers. No wonder. They should have let him rest – and murdering - in peace.