Claw Hammer by Paul Dale Anderson

[seizure]

Claw Hammer by Paul Dale Anderson

Pinnacle (1989)



blurb...
Something hunts the night.
Relentless, inhumanly cunning, it stalks the serene streets and elegant houses of the quiet Illinois suburb, shattering its victims' skulls and flaying the flesh from their still-living bodies in a maniacal, blood-drenched frenzy.
Now a dedicated cop and a brilliant young doctor will risk everything to run an elusive, insanely savage horror to earth. Their only clue : a beautiful girl, scarred body and soul by a hideous past she can't escape and by an evil that possesses her still. Their only hope: untangling the dark, terrifying secrets of her past in a desperate race to uncover the truth. But very soon their quarry will make them the hunted, trapping them in a nightmarish choice between an unspeakable death – or endless, mind-ripping agony...

Another gem of a nasty from Pinnacle. A little girl survives her fathers attack on her with a claw hammer after he does away with her mother. Years later, still bearing the scars on her body from the attack she is invited to the school prom by the head jock. Now a killer is stalking her friends and family and despatching them in gruesome ways with a claw hammer.

[andydecker]

Paul Dale Anderson – Clawhammer (Pinnacle Books, 1989, 288 pages)


Cover by David Mann

As the cover is gone, here is a replacement.

P. D. Anderson wrote reviews for Fantasy Reviews, some short stories and a few novels. Some stories were collected by Miscatonic Press and not picked up by a mass market outfit. Pinnacle published two of his novels, the rest appeared after a hiatus of 25 years or so as Ebooks only. Despite the nice cover - Pinnacle even went the embossed way for this priduction - this is billed as a thriller and police procedural.