Overview
Deadwood meets Cthulhu in this wild and profane Western romp featuring zombies, werewolves, evil spirits, and one pissed off gun-slinging preacher. The Wild West has never seen the likes of Reverend Jebediah Mercer, a hard man wielding a burning Bible in the battle between God and the Devil—an endless struggle he’s not sure he cares who wins. All five of Mercer’s adventures are collected in this blasphemous volume laced with fast-paced action, non-stop humor, and delectable creepiness. In Dead in the West, a vengeful shaman curses the town by conjuring a seemingly unstoppable army of the undead, while in the short story the “Deadman's Road,” an ill-advised shortcut leads to a bee’s nest of terror. In “The Crawling Sky,” a man stands condemned not for the murder of his wife, but for raising the Lovecraftian horror that killed her. A visit to “The Gentleman’s Hotel” reveals why a woman is attacked by werewolves and left for dead in a ghost town, and lurking in “The Dark Down There” a mining camp faces off with a horde of cannibalistic fiends. These supernatural tales of the old West that never was will have readers cheering for the good guys—if they can figure out who the good guys are.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Rev. Jebidiah Mercer rides through the haunted backwoods of post–Civil War Texas, battling werewolves and eldritch horrors in the name of his cruel and distant Old Testament God in five creepy, gory, and dark pulpy yarns by Southern horror author Lansdale (Bubba Ho-Tep). In "Dead in the West," Mercer fights zombies, a stereotypical "Indian curse," and his own damaged faith, a good bit of pulpy fun spun around a nougat of bitter religion. In "Deadman's Road," the mercenary preacher hunts down a ghoul on a haunted stretch of road; "The Dark Down There" pits him and a boisterous, sensual ex-cook against an army of kobolds; and in "The Crawling Sky" he tackles an eldritch monster. Mercer's talents can only be stretched so far, and the sour god-cursing, monster-hunting, and casual murder become tiresome. (Nov.)From the Publisher
"A folklorist's eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur's sense of pace." —New York Times Book Review"Joe R. Lansdale is one of the more versatile writers in America." —Los Angeles Times
"Lansdale is an American original with a storytelling style distinctively his own." —Publisher's Weekly
"Lansdale's been hailed, at varying points in his career, as the new Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner-gone-madder, and the last surviving splatterpunk. He's none of those, of course; more than any other contemporary writer I can think of, Lansdale is Lansdale, his ownself, sanctified in the blood of the walking Western dead and righteously readable." —Austin Chronicle
"Definitely not for the fainthearted or the easily offended." —Bookgasm