Teenager Elsie Kerr is hospitalized with a high fever after being found raped and beaten. When eminent bacteriologist Sir Marcus Levin is asked to consult on the case, Elsie accuses him of the crime, pointing at him and screaming "Devil Daddy!"

Then things really start to get weird: Elsie ages eighty years in a matter of hours, and Sir Marcus finds himself racing to stop whatever killed her from spreading while at the same time trying to clear his name. But the trail will take some unexpected and sinister turns: a grisly corpse half-eaten by pigs, a coven of madmen with a diabolical plot, a grotesque and sacrilegious ritual, and an enigmatic old man who may be unable to die!

John Blackburn (1923-1993) is a master at reworking ancient and medieval legends into chilling tales of modern-day horror, and in Devil Daddy (1972), one of his most bizarre novels, he is at his most inventive. This new edition is the first in over four decades and joins fourteen of Blackburn's other classic thrillers also published by Valancourt Books.