If you are like me you saw Snow Beast in 1977 with Bo Svenson. Pillared for being Jaws on a ski hill, it was remade in 2011. And again, if you are like me, you watched that one too.
So why read a novel from 1984 with the same idea? Because it was written by Peter Tremayne. Tremayne is the pseudonym that Peter Berresford Ellis, renowned Celtic scholar, writes his Horror and Mystery fiction under. The Sister Fidelma Mystery series is going strong but the Horror novels faded with the 1980s. All the same, I love them. The last one I read was The Ants (1979), which brought up all kinds of “Leiningen versus the Ants” vibes.
This time Tremayne is taking on the Yeti. And to his credit, not on a ski hill, not in the Himalayas, but in Scotland. Scotland, you say? The land of bagpipes and whiskey? The land that spawned Sean Connery, David Tennant and golf? Yes, that Scotland.
The novel is set in the Cairngorms. Tremayne weaves a cast of likeable characters, Charles Mitchell, the mountaineering guide, Ellen MacDonald the beautiful newspaper worker who returns home for a holiday, her uncle Doctor Murdo, and other assorted shepherds, innkeepers and such. The scary fun begins slow, with a shepherd named Hughie Fergus’s dog, being killed by the monster.
What monster, you ask? Tremayne has given us the Scottish Yeti, Beathach an t-Sneachda, the Big Grey Man of Ben MacDhui. As Dr. Murdo explains (being an amateur folklorist) all mountain ranges have their snow beasts. Yeti, sasquatch, bigfoot, why should Scotland be any different?
More fun in the mountains when Mitchell leads a group of experienced climbers up Ben Braeriach. Sir John Hastings falls and is knocked unconscious. Mitchell and most of the party climb back down to get a rescue chopper. The American of the group, Tony Glover, stays with the injured man. He thinks he sees something during the night. In the morning he finds tracks. When the helicopter leaves with Sir John, Tony follows the monster’s trail down the mountain.
At the same time, Ellen’s uncle, Murdo is investigating a mystery. Invited to the Trappist monks’ abbey, he has a strange case with Brother Andrew. The man suffers from fevers that come and go. Delirium rakes his brain, making him mumble in Gaelic. His fever warnings seem to be about the snowbeast. The Father Prior tries exorcism but Murdo begins to think the cause is psychological. Under hypnosis, Brother Andrew seems to be reliving some terrible event.
Tony Glover makes it to the abandoned castle and sees something moving around. It’s not a yeti but Ellen MacDonald. The two take a shine to each other. Ellen invites Tony to Bohuntine Lodge for supper. The fact that he is the famous Tony Glover makes him a hit with Uncle Murdo. When Tony mentions his climbs on Everest he says something that twigs for the doctor. He now knows what incident Brother Andrew might be reliving.
Murdo calls in an old friend, Professor Graham Cunningham, a psychiatrist. They are told to go away by the Prior but a letter from the Bishop gets them in. They put Brother Andrew under hypnosis again and soon realize he is Andrew Stewart, a famous climber who disappeared years ago. The man and his Sherpa had encountered a yeti. Andrew tells how the creature got into his mind and tried to communicate and control him. Cunningham is surprised to hear Scotland has its own yeti and wonders if Andrew’s state is somehow linked.
While this is happening, Charles Mitchell is busy working with the police. Hamish Cameron, a neighbor of Hughie Fergus’s is killed by the snowbeast, thrown onto a plowshare. Next Robertson the policeman encounters the beast on his way to find Doctor MacDonald at the abbey. He ends up in a burning pile of wreckage down the mountainside.This draws Murdo and Cunningham away from Brother Andrew, who continues to have repressed memories flood back.
The snow comes and cuts off the valley (creating the perfect bottleneck) and the bodies start to pile up. Tam Clunes, the store owner, then the beast kills the pub owner’s German Shepherd and throws it at his wife. The men, led by Mitchell, grab their guns and go after the monster. Glover tells them about the footprints at Benduff Castle. The men hike up there and find a tall brown beast in the crypt. Mitchell shoots it but won’t kill it. The beast is taken to a cage in the menagerie. Slowly, Ellen and Cunningham realize the animal is a baby.
Knowing this, they wait for the parents, who are larger than seven feet tall. One of the parents bursts into the menagerie and takes the baby and Ellen. The men grab guns and ropes and head for Benduff Castle. In the crypt they find a secret door to a natural cavern covered in natural phosphorus. They see geysers and other volcanic structures. The parents are there with their baby. The yetis are sitting in the lotus position! Brother Andrew is there too, communicating with them telepathically. They explain that the killings were done by the baby in its confusion. Ellen is lying on a rock nearby in a trance.
The men sneak in. Glover collects Ellen but the baby, who has an attachment to the woman, is possessive and attacks. The parents try to stop it but Murdo shoots it dead. It falls into one of the volcanic pits. An earthquake begins to shake the mountain. The parents react, knocking Brother Andrew into one of the pits too. The men start backing out with the parents enraged. A volcanic rip in the floor throws up a fiery wall. The humans escape out the castle but have to take refuge when an avalanche destroys Benduff castle.
Returning back to Bohuntine Lodge, Cunningham and Murdo decide to tell the authorities only half the truth. They concoct a story about an escaped gorilla, killed by the avalanche. Humanity could have learned so much from a more advanced species, but ….
Well, is it a better story than either Snowbeast (1977) and Snowbeast (2011). By far. It gets a little preachy with the yoga-like yetis but this does give the novel some point besides monster attacks. Nothing here is spectacularly new but it all works, even the unlikely bits such as volcanoes under Scottish mountains. That bit reminded me of Ian Cameron’s excellent The Mountains at the Bottom of the World (1972). Would it make a good movie? That I doubt. Meditating yetis in the lotus position, that’s a hard sell.
