John Moore
"Pink"
The Odyssey Press
London
1970
The first flicker came when Pink Hunter roared his hot-rod into the life of Buck Foster and his family who shared with two atrange female boarders the grand old house with its turrets, its cupolas and its memories of other summers.
For the careless, tough, perverted Pink there was Pearl Murdock, the school-teacher with the Venus figure and a mind to match: "the greatest living authority on the sexual behaviour of the town's masculine community".
There was the schoolgirl, Betty Jean, and her strange Reverend uncle: for her a strange fantasy maze intermingling dolls and parties with a scarcely comprehending sensuality that spelled death for one.
There was the young coven of watchers who peeped into Pearl's conveniently-placed bedroom windows; Mrs Foster, remembering her last gentleman friend whose ashes she kept on the window-sill and who left those strange, disturbing snaps behind.
There was the crippled, seemingly-mild Jim Foster, Buck's father, and the Reverend William's bedridden, self-emaciating wife who knew all too well of his penchant for young girls.
In the long hot summer of Limeville the turreted house and the town waited unknwingly for the lust and violence that was yet a heat haze. And some - like Pink Hunter's desire-sharing sister - would walk into the flames.
