The Pack By William Essex

The Pack
By William Essex
1987 Leisure
Paperback, 384 pages

                                                    

    Horror author John Tigges adopted the Essex moniker to delve into the nastier side of horror fiction and produced three thrilling ooze-fests. The Pack was the first one and it comes highly recommended by me for all lovers of killer animal books and stories taking place in Iowa.

    A pair of abused and underfed dogs break out of their junkyard confines, tasting freedom for the first time. Five years later, they roam the plains and cornfields of Iowa and their numbers have grown, adding other wayward pups along the way. The black mongrel from the junkyard is the leader and he does not want to ever be hungry again. After feasting on a few farm animals, they finally taste the best meat of all. Scrumptious human!
    
    Pete Reckels is a veterinarian who discovers a few of his clients, both animal and human, have been killed, gutted and eaten. He also got a fleeting glimpse of a pack of dogs in the distance, some 30 strong. He works with the local authorities to try and find the dogs and figure out how to stop them, all while the dogs move closer to the city seeking human meat, particularly penises and breasts. It should be pointed out that most of the humans in the book, Pete included, make a lot of bad choices.

    That is the entire book in a nutshell. I mean, Pete has his relationships with his girlfriend, ex-wife and daughter thrown in there for some pathos and fringe characters get a few pages of introduction before becoming dog chow, but the bulk of this fine piece of literature consists of the dogs stalking and killing and shredding and eating their human prey all the while wreaking havoc of the most explosive kind. Like many Leisure novels, it is a bit padded out (“Make ‘em thick, like Stephen King books!”) and repetitious in parts but that does nothing to detract from the fun. These dogs aren’t rabid, they’re just hungry. And they will eat.

    The sketchy wraparound cover art by Brian Kotzky is more than fitting for this book, with fun little details to be admired. Not as clean as his young adult horror covers for Christopher Pike, this portrait of a blood-drooling canine is perfect. Anyone who sees you reading this one on the subway will stay far away from you!