So reading more of the Paperbacks from Hell series of reissues again. As of tonight I've just finished one right now and this one is called "Hell Hound" by Ken Greenhall.
"Hell Hound" is incredibly strange. The whole plot revolves around a sociopathic bull terrier named Baxter who is seeking a new master after killing his old one. It's very much an animal attack book but it is also something else as well. It also a psychological horror with a very weird surrealist twist.
The story switches from one perspective to another. At one moment it's in the third person for the human characters in the book, then it shifts to first person view for Baxter, or at least his own thoughts. And all of it is very, very disturbing.
"Hell Hound" is very short, but it feels like it lasted way more than that. Greenhall's novel does rely heavily on shock and awe, instead he takes a more slower route that makes everything a bit more creepy and unnerving.
This is a pretty above average novel and I like it very much! Horror that isn't way to over the top and yet it still manages to be very creepy. I could really see "Hell Hound" as a lost classic, along with the previous Paperbacks from Hell reissues that I've previously read, Mendal Johnson's "Let's Go Play at the Adams'" and Joan Samson's "The Auctioneer". And of course I still have another of these reissues that I still have to read right now!
by i-the-muso-1968
1 Comment
that shift between perspectives sounds wild, especially getting inside a sociopathic dog’s head. the paperbacks from hell series has been putting out some genuinely unsettling stuff that got buried back in the day
might have to grab this one, sounds like the kind of book that sticks with you in all the wrong ways