Ghoul

Rating:
Summary: My first brush with Slade
Review: This was my first Slade book and I still have a special place for it. I've been around the block a few times and have to say that no one can write quite like Slade. I looked around and burned my way through several horror fiction writers before stumbling across this one quite by accident. I was browsing through a bookstore and kind of liked the skull hologram on the book's front. I hadn't even heard of the guy. Great book great writer/s...somehow though, this one is still the best, none of the others seem quite like it.

Rating:
Summary: Alice Cooper was right!
Review: This was the first Michael Slade book I picked up - a friend of mine recommended it to me. And it blew me away! In depth characters, drama, GORE, complete INSANITY...I loved it!

Rating:
Summary: Some reviewers here just didn't GET IT...
Review: WARNING! If you are reading ANY Michael Slade book, BE AWARE that most, if not all, are meant to be READ IN ORDER from the very first book! If you read a book in the series out of order, you may well find referrences or statements that will RUIN THE PLOTS and ENDINGS of his PREVIOUS NOVELS should you decide to read tham!

To all those complaining and waffling about the mutiple-personalities angle - *THAT* folks, was the POINT of the whole book!

WHAT would we find if we could get inside the mind of a hardcore psychopath? WHAT do we get when we rip away the mask? WHO do we find behind that mask? And the answer will scare the HELL out of you!

Frankly, I enjoy matching wits with a talented mystery writer and, like virtually everyone else who read Slade's first novel HEADHUNTER, I was led around by the nose to the very end.

Ghoul however - while a great read - didn't remotely replicate that mental challenge of HEADHUNTER. I snapped to the gimmick relatively early (Still, no easy trick) and it was simply a matter of watching the crafting of the story and further clues to validate my theories. Slade writes like a DEMON in every novel and readers will seldom be disappointed in his(their) prose or pace.

Unfortunately, I need to say something bordering on "Sladist" blasphemy here. The Slade group, when they are on top of their game, simply can't be beat! They make Silence of the Lambs and PSYCHO look like psychological tinker toys. Unfortunately, that "Got game!" scenario has become the exception rather than the rule - especially since Jay Clark began writing with his daughter. Uninspired is the word that springs readily to mind.

The FIRST FIVE novels were super, even though there was a slight amount of plot and writing "slippage" becoming increasingly apparent between books. As Slade is a formula writer - ala apparently unrelated past/present connections - it becomes far too easy to quickly guage the overall quality of writing and plot between any book and the ones before it. Evil Eye, to my thinking the absolute WORST book in the series, Slade apparently just gets LAZY and leaves readers with an unfair "It's either ____ or ____ who's the killer. Oh, okay it's ____. The end." ending in which the reader has no way of deducing from the clues which person was the actual killer. He just picks one of two suspect's name and fills it it in. No excuse for that.

For those who genuinely enjoy a dark jaunt into the minds of ultra-violent psychopaths, Jay Clark should know the subject about as well as anyone. He's a former DEFENSE ATTORNEY for the CRIMINALLY INSANE.

Bottom line: BUY THIS BOOK! But buy HEADHUNTER and read it FIRST!
After book five, expect a major change from stellar brilliance to ho-hum/Please God, let the NEXT ONE be better!

Rating:
Summary: Burke and Hare woulda loved this!
Review: What an amazing book! Though I know that the depiction of a multiple personality in this novel is not actually the way such things work, it was easy enough to suspend disbelief, because of the completely captivating story and the concise prose style of the three people who write as Michael Slade. I found this thing in a used bookstore not too long after it came out (lucky me), and noticed a blurb on the back that said it had Cthulhu Mythos content. That was good enough for me to shell out the few shekels and bring the thing home, especially as there wasn't anything else very interesting on the shelves...and was I ever glad I did. Couldn't figure out til the very end which one of the personalities was actually responsible for the wanton destruction depicted in this book, though I had my suspicions. The suspense was unbearable for me, and I stayed up all night to read this thing in one sitting. While doing research for a book of my own, this book popped up and said "Read me". So I did, repeating the experience all over again. I hadn't exactly forgotten about Saxon, but time and the load of many other fine books had dulled the memory a bit. Not now. It will be quite a while before I forget, and btw, I read it while listening to the earlier work of Alice Cooper, who had a recommending blurb on the edition I have. Nice combo-I recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Burke and Hare woulda loved this!
Review: What an amazing book! Though I know that the depiction of a multiple personality in this novel is not actually the way such things work, it was easy enough to suspend disbelief, because of the completely captivating story and the concise prose style of the three people who write as Michael Slade. I found this thing in a used bookstore not too long after it came out (lucky me), and noticed a blurb on the back that said it had Cthulhu Mythos content. That was good enough for me to shell out the few shekels and bring the thing home, especially as there wasn't anything else very interesting on the shelves...and was I ever glad I did. Couldn't figure out til the very end which one of the personalities was actually responsible for the wanton destruction depicted in this book, though I had my suspicions. The suspense was unbearable for me, and I stayed up all night to read this thing in one sitting. While doing research for a book of my own, this book popped up and said "Read me". So I did, repeating the experience all over again. I hadn't exactly forgotten about Saxon, but time and the load of many other fine books had dulled the memory a bit. Not now. It will be quite a while before I forget, and btw, I read it while listening to the earlier work of Alice Cooper, who had a recommending blurb on the edition I have. Nice combo-I recommend it.