by William W. Johnstone
1983 Zebra Books
I hope you brought some Vaseline, 'cause, mercenary, we are definitely going to get it on.
In a small, swampy Louisiana Parish, strange half-human/half-ape creatures called Links have been kidnapping women for breeding stock over the decades. They've interbred to the point that they're almost human, and some of the more human-like offspring are left in the city for humans to care for. Many of the remainder have been driven mad by a form of rabies, driving them to rape and cannibalism.
Linda Breaux's house is attacked by Links and her brother killed. The next morning, mercenary Jon Badon shows up, having been hired by the brother previously to capture three sample Links before slaughtering the rest.
Badon is deputized by Sheriff Mike Saucier and sets up in Linda's house. The governor gets involved, sending in state police as well as his sex-crazed aide Tammy to live in Linda's house, seemingly for the sole purpose of adding sexual tension.
Linda and Tammy both lust after the manly merc, Tammy doing so with less dignity than an 80s phone sex operator. Badon is joined by his scientist friends while the military moves in and the local rednecks posse up. The townsfolk with Link blood start feeling the call of the swamp and turn against the humans.
A Crying Shame doesn't give away much as a title - maybe The Bigfoot Rape Massacre was a little too on the nose. Like a pornier, more violent take on the Boggy Creek movies. In addition to the multiple Bigfeet gangrape scenes we've got many, many "regular" sex scenes as well, and half the casual dialogue sounds like it's from a college dorm room. Butt lube is discussed three times. I'm shocked this happened in Reagan's America.
The action kind of peaks early, so by the time Badon is throwing grenades and mowing down Links with his AK it felt a bit samey, but Johnstone definitely over-delivered on his premise. Maybe my favorite so far, and good enough that I have a hard time believing he wrote the Ashes series.
This is listed in places as being in the Devil series, as number 7 for some reason. It isn't, and in fact, the idiot Lieutenant Governor believes the Links are satanic because he just read a book called the Devil's Kiss, a cute little wink from Johnstone. Watchers in the Woods may be a sequel, and Johnstone did retcon the Cat book into the Devil series, so maybe he pulls out some Crisis on Infinite Earths deal and puts everything in the same multiverse. We'll find out later this year.
Available for Kindle from Amazon.
Click here to read a sample.
No comments:
Post a Comment