Hell spilling over: Jere Cunningham’s “The Abyss”.

Wrapped up on another reissue from the Paperbacks from Hell series, and it's one of the more supernatural ones in it, Jere Cunningham's "The Abyss"!

When miners working in the deepest coal mine ever created dig far too deep, they end up violating a closely guarded and ancient secret in the earth.

Blood begins to flow from the faucets, and the ground is torn apart by enormous thorns. Hideous creatures, half seen, now terrorize the town, with smell of sulphur filling the air. And Hell's legions raise their dominion over heaven and earth.

"The Abyss" is very close, or just a little bit similar to some of Clive Barker's earlier books in the mid eighties (and this book was published in the early eighties!). The story is a slow mover that builds to where it eventually explodes into complete insanity, which is also something that I often like to see in one! And it's also based on some of things Cunningham had experienced during the writing and, after completing it, publishing this novel, with the setting in his hometown of Tennessee against the backdrop of the Reagan administration.

And that probably does for me right, as far as the reissues go until I nab some more. There's even another novel by Cunningham, "The Legacy", that is also a Paperbacks from Hell reissue that I might also check out. But for now it's time to move on to a different book, until the next time around!