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!

From Below By William Essex

From Below
By William Essex
1989 Leisure Books
Paperback, 359 pages

    Every once in a while, it happens. You fall upon a book that seems as if it was written for you. While there is no “perfect book” (other than Eat Them Alive!), when you find one that is this close, it makes life worth living. For a while, anyway.

    An electrical storm hits a power station, sending shit-tons of volts into the ground, flash-frying most living things but super-charging the local leeches. (Shades of Jeff Lieberman’s Squirm- 1976.) They reproduce overnight and the ever-expanding wave of 18-inch (3 feet in some descriptions) long, meat-eating, blood-drinking killers grows by day. They strip bodies, both animal and human, down to messy skeletons in a matter of minutes. Driven by hunger, they spend their days in the sewers and travel up toilets and pipes to seek more food.

    Our hero is Ben, journalist in Iowa (!) who is trying, along with the cops, to figure out why there are so many clothed skeletons turning up. Most everyone around him is an idiot or a narrow-minded fool, leaving him to his own devices to crack the case. His girlfriend Norma is a newsletter publisher. At one point she gets to interview horror author John Tigges. Ben and Norma have this exchange about this Tigges guy’s talent…

Ben: “Better than King or Straub?”
Norma: “I’ve read two of Tigges’ and I’d have to say he’s probably the best.”

    William Essex, the author here, is John Tigges. Reference is also made to Tigges-as-Essex’s earlier novel The Pack in a news story as well. I got a good chuckle.

    So, yes, this book delivers everything you need. Huge print, lots of empty pages between chapters and a brisk, humorous writing style make this 359-page wonder whiz by. Of course, we’re here for the gore and we get that in spades! Leeches attack everything with gusto and seem to prefer human genitalia. The science isn’t important here. Essex gives us basic leech science but then tips it on its end because these guys are super-charged and flesh-devouring.

    My only quibble would be that some repetition creeps in. Ben seems to be the only one who considers that the killer might not be a who but a what… and he keeps bouncing that theory around every chapter as if it just came to him. But I can forgive that. This book kicks ass. When I’m on my deathbed, this will be one of the few tomes on my bedside bookshelf, right next to Eat Them Alive!, Slugs, Night of the Crabs, and The Rats.