Booklore has just been published by Zagava. A very beautiful book, expertly crafted and handsomely designed; it includes my essay Fishing For The Pike, a treatise on the life and times of Cliff Twemlow and my some-might-say unhealthy obsession with his 1982 piscine pulp classic The Pike.

Pretty stellar line-up of contributors in this one, including Brian Catling, Reggie Oliver, Timothy Jarvis, and Supervert.

Further to Cliff Twemlow’s The Pike, here’s some archive footage detailing 1982’s sadly aborted movie version featuring Twemlow, Joan Collins, and the brilliantly awful mechanical pike.

In this documentary Twemlow informs us that “the largest pike ever caught was nineteen foot.” A statement so wrong I am going to pretend that it is true from now on.

By noted English “actor, nightclub bouncer, horror paperback writer and library music composer” Cliff Twemlow.

Sadly out of print, but available in dog-eared form from the usual places. I admit that I’ll buy most books with a pike on the cover, but this really is good. I’ll be tracking down a copy of his other novel The Beast Of Kane.

Here’s a picture of Cliff.

Random line from his wikipedia entry – “The Mechanical Pike apparently now resides as an exhibit of robotics in Japan.”

More info at http://itsahotun.com/Cliff_Twemlow.htm