by William W. Johnstone
Zebra Books 1989
A sequel to Cat's Cradle, this installment mostly abandons the original premise and brings the story in line with his other Devil books.
A quick recap of that series (Devil's Kiss, Heart, Touch, Cat, Laughter) - Satan periodically picks a random American town and seduces almost all of its inhabitants. The teenagers start being rude to the elderly, talking back to their parents, having orgies, killing babies, etc. Then Beasts (stripped down werewolves) and the Undead (stripped down vampires) roam the town, and a hero ordained by God and a small handful of pure souls fight back with machine guns and grenades to a convoluted finish.
We start off with a bodyguard (the son of the hero in the first book, who evidently went through a lot in three years) being hired to protect his author daughter by a rich developer. Unexpectedly, the rich guy is a conservationist, which is a good thing here. And the town Sheriff is corrupt and worthless, also a big switch for Johnstone.
Johnstone does not work from an outline, and it shows here. It shows real bad. We start off with some bad slapstick. Animated corpse parts kick people in the butt like an Army of Darkness schtick, and Satan himself catcalls characters with a disembodied voice.
The incoherence becomes an asset as Johnstone picks up steam. Satan frees some prisoners who go on a raping spree. Their rape victims become lizard women. At some point Johnstone tries to shoehorn in a lot of the Satanic Panic nonsense floating around at the time. There are over 100,000 satanic covens in America, about five times more than Catholic churches. Almost the entire town is part of a coven, but they hide their heavy metal posters when the police get a search warrant. It's not really a conspiracy anymore if 90% of the town is part of it.
Parenting advice: If your child listens to hard rock music, kill them and burn the corpse.
The bodyguard and few remaining non-Satanists mow down coven members, living dead, flesh eating maggots, etc, with a cache of grenades and flame throwers, the end. This is the best book ever.
There is no cat baby.
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