The horror expert

A New Novel by Frank Long
BELMONT BOOKS NEW YORK CITY
THE HORROR EXPERT is an original full-length novel published by special arrangement with the author.
BELMONT BOOKS First Printing December 1961
© 1961 Belmont Productions, Inc., all rights reserved
BELMONT BOOKS published by Belmont Productions, Inc. 66 Leonard Street, New York 13, N. Y.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TWISTED
She had a secret library of psychological case histories, featuring pathological and brutal departures from normalcy in the area of sex. She never missed a weird movie. Terror in any form excited her physically....
Helen Lathrup had a curious twist in her imagination ... a twist that needed an outlet in real life. Close friends found themselves drawn into a nightmare world of terror and guilt. Finally one violent act triggered an explosion.
She's the kind of woman who can make a man hate and despise himself—and hate her even more for making him feel that way. I'm not the only one she's put a knife into. Do you hear what I'm saying, do you understand? I'm not her first victim. There were others before me, so many she's probably lost count. But she'll do it once too often. She'll insert the blade so skillfully that at first Number Fifteen or Number Twenty-two won't feel any pain at all. Just a warm gratefulness, an intoxicating sort of happiness. Then she'll slowly start twisting the blade back and forth ... back and forth ... until the poor devil has been tormented beyond endurance. He'll either wrap a nylon stocking around her beautiful white throat or something worse, something even uglier, will happen to her. I know exactly how her mind works, I know every one of her tricks. I keep seeing her in a strapless evening gown, with that slow, careful smile on her lips. She's very careful about how she smiles when she has the knife well-sharpened. It's a wanton smile, but much too ladylike and refined to give her the look of a bar pickup or a hip-swinging tramp. Brains and beauty, delicacy of perception, sophistication, grace. But if she were lying in a coffin just how many of those qualities do you think she'd still possess? Not many, wouldn't you say? Not even her beauty ... if someone with a gun took careful aim and made a target of her face.