WETBONES REVIEWS:
Publishers Weekly, May 3, 1999

WETBONES
John ShirleyDorchester/Leisure, $5.50 (353p)
ISBN 0-843904525-7

Previously Published only in two limited hardcover editions in 1991, Shirley's (Black Butterflies, etc) near-legendary horror novel at last reaches a mass readership. Even eight years later, the novel glints on the razor's edge of the field, artfully employing some of the most gruesome imagery ever placed between two covers to catalyze a potent tale of physical, psychological and spiritual depravity and redemption. Of numerous entwined plotlines, three dominate: screenwriter Tom Prentice helps a fellow film scribe search for his missing brother; recovered drug addict Reverend Garner hunts for his kidnapped daughter; and the girl's abductor, Ephram Pixie, able to control her mind through the psychic manipulation of her pain and pleasure zones, initiates her into a bacchanalia of sex and murder. The action centers in L.A., scathingly depicted from its power-drunk Hollywood parties to its crack-blasted ghettoes; the suspense reaches high pressure as the two searches focus on a ranch whose denizens do the bidding of etheric parasitical entities about to swarm humanity. Told in full-tilt boogie prose and packed with shocking violence, the novel slams home its theme of the monstrousness of addiction while ending on a note of hope. This is horror at its most visceral and true.