Michael Slade – Shrink

Michael Slade – Shrink  (NEL, 1998)

 Chris Moore

Blurb:

Once your head’s cut off, that’s the worst that can happen to it, right?

Wrong…

Over a decade ago, Michael Slade exploded onto the international psychohorror thriller scene with Headhunter. Now comes SHRINK, his latest soul-searing exploration of the most chilling reaches of perverted lust and multiple murder.

The Special X unit is mailed a shrunken human head by a crazed killer out to taunt them. A grisly campaign of terror in which male victims are hunted down and viciously brutalised before being beheaded is underway. And as the slaughter continues, it becomes apparent that more than one psycho is at work.

Robert DeClereq, Zinc Chandler and other members of the Special X team find themselves embroiled in a complex case of nightmare horror come to dreadful life – a case with its twisted roots in a dark past of obscene, sadistic ritual where the screams of the damned echo eternally through the most labyrinthine dungeon of all; the human mind ….

Michael Slade – Cutthroat

Michael Slade – Cutthroat (New English Library, 1993)

Chris Moore

In 1876 naturalist Francis Parker makes an extraordinary discovery before losing his life – and the evidence – in the horrific carnage of the Little Big Horn.

In 1987 Judge Hutton Murdoch is addressing the American Bar Association when his brain is blown apart by a high-velocity bullet. Two days later a second judge is pondering a complex point of law when a masked intruder slits his throat from ear to ear.

The hunt for an ingenious and brutal killer soon becomes a desperate search for the missing link between these apparently unconnected events. A search that will lead to a company engaged in bizarre genetic experiments, a sinister Chinese family with a centuries-old obsession – and ultimately to the horrifying secrets of man’s earliest beginnings.

‘There is no safety for the reader in a Michael Slade book’ – Vancouver  Magazine
‘A master of horror’ – Toronto Sunday Sun

Michael Slade – Headhunter

Michael Slade – Headhunter (New English Library, 1993)

Chris Moore

Blurb from NEL edition of Cutthroat:

By the time the second mutilated body was found, the press were talking about the Headhunter and the city of Vancouver was ready to explode with fear.

And then the photographs arrived. Carefully posed shots of the women’s heads stuck on poles. Enough to convince Superintendent Robert DeClercq that they were dealing with a very special kind of killer. A killer who inhabited a bizarre world of cannibalism, torture and sexual perversion.

A killer who was only just beginning …

‘Bizarre … full of tension and mystery with unforget­e scenes and weird happenings’ – The Scotsman
‘Well  written, very well researched … a gripper’ – Daily Mail
‘Macabre … a very polished tale’ – Sunday Telegraph
‘A thinking man’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ – The Vancouver Sun

Michael Slade – Zombie

Michael Slade – Zombie (New English Library, 1996)

Chris Moore

Blurb:

WHAT THIN RED LINE FROM THE HEART OF DARKNESS CONNECTED THESE HORRORS ANCIENT AND MODERN?

A murderous battle against overwhelming odds in Africa over a hundred years ago and a crazed killer on a mission of primal vengeance today … bloody age-old rituals of unspeakable mutilation and their grisly echoes in a series of atrocities in a bustling modern community … the invocation of sinister spirits from the shadowlands on the borders of life and death and a heroic lawman on trial for an especially bestial and sickening slaughter …

Once again, detectives Robert DeClercq, Zinc Chandler and their colleagues in the Special X unit find themselves up against a fiendishly complex case of violent death and occult terror rooted in a nightmare past of blood and butchery. Here is a story of homicidal madness and uncanny dread to bring the dead themselves to screaming wakefulness …

Michael Slade – Ghoul

Michael Slade – Ghoul (New English Library, 1993)

Chris Moore

Blurb:

A violent spectre is haunting London.
Dressed in a grey cape and a top hat, with a bone-white face and a madman’s eyes, the Ghoul crawls from the London sewers to kill – bloodily, perversely and inexplicably.
For Detective Chief Superintendent Hilary Rand, an am­bitious woman in a man’s world, the carnage must stop or her career will be finished. But hunting the Ghoul means stepping into her worst nightmare …

‘As alarming a piece of Gothic as I’ve read in many a black moon … treads a perverted fantastic with droll skill’ – The Times

‘Slade runs a three-ring circus of suspense, salting the plot with red herrings and keeping the reader guessing until the truth is revealed in a grisly, sensational climax to which is appended yet another gut-wrenching revelation’   – Booklist

‘Ghoul almost finished me … Here’s a book that gives you real shock value for the money’ – Robert Bloch, author of PSYCHO

See also the Ghoul thread on Vault Of Evil