Starred Review for David J. Schow’s HAVOC SWIMS JADED
Early word on David Schow’s newest collection, Havoc Swims Jaded, due in October, is quite good at making the publisher happy:
From Booklist (Starred Review):
“Aside from using sex well, Schow freights his work with world-weariness and graveyard humor that stops just this side of true tastelessness. “Obsequy,” “What Happened to Margaret” (both of which have their share of sex), and especially ‘Scoop vs. Leadman’ risk going over the top and down the drain but finally just knock your socks off. This is flat-out exhilarating reading, the kind that Robert Bloch, whom Schow admires, never wrote enough of. On the basis of these stories, if the pulps were still around, Schow would be their king.”
From Publishers Weekly:
“Like ‘The Narrative of Dr. Shackle and Mr. Lye,’ an invented tale of horror described in one of this book’s 13 stories, the contents of Schow’s latest collection (after Zombie Jam) seesaw between ‘elbow-jabbing one-liners and almost clinically detached slaughter and corpse disposal.’ Most unfold events that are grim and ghastly, but never so bad that Schow can’t tease a thread of graveyard humor out of their horrors… The darkly funny ‘Obsequy’ suggests that having lived a dead-end life is good preparation for returning from the grave as a zombie. In all, this is a solid and imaginatively varied outing from one of horror’s most dependable writers.”