![]() ![]() ![]() Nobody packs as much muscle into a sentence as Schow. Lucas Ellington's daughter was trampled to death at a rock concert, so he decides to go after those responsible. But his first novel, The Kill Riff (1988), isn't really horror at all-it's a down-and-dirty revenge thriller. Schow's name from short horror stories and his trailblazing horror movie-themed anthology Silver Scream. You wouldn't believe how many surprises Lansdale packs into this slender, one-sitting read. Richard Dane shoots a burglar during a home invasion and spends the next 190 pages paying for it. ![]() Lansdale's Cold in July (1989) was the first crime novel I read-or least, the first novel where I realized that, "Hey, this crime stuff is cool." I was a huge fan of Lansdale's horror stories, so I happily paid my $3.50 for that Bantam paperback which promised "a breathtaking novel of murder and suspense." Damn, did Lansdale deliver. All you need are flawed human beings making bad decisions on the worst days of their lives. All at once I realized that crime fiction could be as intense as the scary stuff I was digging-you didn't need zombies, monsters, or demons. Three horror writers in particular, though, served as my gateway drug into crime fiction. Stephen King, Clive Barker, John Skipp, Craig Spector and the other members of the so-called "splatterpunk" school were my literary heroes for pushing the boundaries of the genre-and quite often, good taste. ![]() When I was a teenager, I read horror fiction like that kid from The Sixth Sense saw dead people: all the time. ![]()
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