Compared to Lansdale's typically high-quality output, this novel is pretty substandard. The characters never quite gel, the dialog is rough around the edges, and the plot's "guess which character is the killer" is the kind of stuff best left to made-for-tv movies. Even the violence and brutality lack that hard edge one expects from Lansdale's books. His later novels delve into the horrors of the criminal mind and the sadness of the troubled soul much more effectively than this rather hackneyed attempt. I would only recommend this to a Joe R. Lansdale completest, and even then, hesitantly.

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