Author Topic: PseudoPod 650: The Detweiler Boy  (Read 2271 times)

Bdoomed

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on: June 05, 2019, 02:15:31 AM
PseudoPod 650: The Detweiler Boy

Author: Tom Reamy
Narrator: Andrew Leman
Host: Alex Hofelich

“The Detweiler Boy” was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1977. Thank you to Vaughne Hansen of the Virginia Kidd Agency for helping us secure the rights to this story.



Show Notes
This episode is dedicated to horror hosts in general, and Sinister Seymour in particular.



The room had been cleaned with pine oil disinfectant and smelled like a public toilet. Harry Spinner was on the floor behind the bed, scrunched down between it and the wall. The almost colorless chenille bedspread had been pulled askew exposing part of the clean, but dingy, sheet. All I could see of Harry was one leg poking over the edge of the bed . He wasn’t wearing a shoe, only a faded brown and tan argyle sock with a hole in it. The sock, long bereft of any elasticity , was crumpled around his thin rusty ankle.




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« Last Edit: June 09, 2019, 10:16:44 PM by Bdoomed »

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Metalsludge

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Reply #1 on: June 05, 2019, 02:02:14 PM
This was a refreshing change of pace to a gumshoe story. Though I wasn't surprised by the ending (Read this one before, and I suspect it was a bit of a trope most of us saw coming anyway.) it was enjoyable to follow along with the detective work. Seems like the vampiric character had all the downsides of the condition without any of the fabled benefits. Funny he was a pulp writer. Wonder if the author related to the character a bit.



Sylvie

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Reply #2 on: June 09, 2019, 05:07:26 PM
Best part of this story was how familiar each new setting felt. I could picture each place and think, “yeah, I’ve been there before and I’m glad to be out of it.”



Scuba Man

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Reply #3 on: June 16, 2019, 01:24:48 PM
Good. Ug. Me. Like.  8)

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Lisa3737

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Reply #4 on: June 19, 2019, 05:47:28 PM
I enjoyed listening to a longer story.  Narration was perfect.



cwthree

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Reply #5 on: August 10, 2019, 12:24:38 AM
Wow! Now that was a story!



Scattercat

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Reply #6 on: August 26, 2019, 05:24:27 AM
Sounds like someone at Basket Case owes someone else some royalties.  ;-)

Honestly, wasn't super thrilled overall.  The science of the reveal was egregious even fifty years ago, and the detective's ability to connect the dots was extreme to the point of absurdity; if he'd been following the guy for other reasons and noticed how these gruesome suicides happened around him, it would have made sense, but connecting completely unrelated people dying in different ways for apparently no unifying reason and then noticing this guy's presence afterward strained my suspension of disbelief more even than "why not just get the boy an iron supplement?"  The story tries to make hay from how shocking the deaths are, but this is ostensibly set in a large city, where someone is actively murdered in a horrific fashion on a daily basis, not in a small town where even two accidental deaths in a month would be news-making.

I couldn't even just relax into the silliness for narrative's sake because the detective was a gross old asshole who insisted on inserting his opinions about women and gays into his description of events.

Sorry.  This one's a hard miss for me.

The narration was indeed very good, though.