David J. Schow - Crypt Orchids

[andydecker]

David J. Schow – Crypt Orchids (Subterranean, 1998, 235 p. HC)

Crime. Psychos. Trashed relationships. Tainted Love. Murder. Sinister plots. Evil connivances. Men in Suits with a Plan.

Bizarre flap copy.

Not to mention hustlers, lovers, losers, cutthroats, gun fetishists, homicidal hitchhikers, demented road-hogs, serial killer impersonators, dead baby artisans, toxic waste dumpers, government torturers, and a Ripper named Jack.

Vaudevillians (shudder).

Welcome to Crypt Orchids, where you'll also meet a cantankerous celebrity man-fish, a horror movie host who deals with the real thing, an innocent victim of a TV test screening, persnickety aliens with testicle-heads, a werewolf with a prosthetic claw, a Mickey who does, in fact, hate everything, a hit man named Mister Bart, and a temperamental geezer with a lot to say about the environment and skinning people alive.

Crypt Orchids is the new collection of short stories by award-winning multimedia author David J. Schow, a gathering of foreboding fiction that grabs the cutting edge barehanded, damsn the spray of blood, and stays right in your face "until you want to go down on your knees and mumble for mercy", according to best-sellung authro John Farris.

As Robert Bloch once said … it takes balls to make Crypt Orchids.

Enter and be enthralled. The Management assumes no responsibility for parts you left behind.

Content:

Introduction: Look Out He's Got a Knife - by Robert Bloch
Action (1992)
Pick Me Up (1991)
Dusting the Flowers (1997)
Gills (1998)
Seeing Things (1997)
(Melodrama) (1996)
Scoop Bites the Dust (1991)
Final Performance (play) (1998)
Jeff and Linda (1998)
A Punch in the Doughnut (1996)
Refrigerator Heaven (1995)
Penetration (1993)
The Incredible True Facts in the Case (1998)
Afterword: Look Out He's Got a Knife ... Again! - by Robert Bloch


I used to be a fan of Schow and bought a lot of his books. But along the way my taste changed a bit, I thought the grimdark/killer tone more and more forced and tiresome, and when he published only in the speciality press and then went the crime gangster thriller way, I phased out. Even if the novels nowadays get a moderate priced Kindle along the hardcovers.