Son of Retro Pulp Tales
Starred Review. Father and son Lansdales pack their second anthology of modern pulp stories with plenty of thrilling, chilling and nail-biting action tales. Supernatural notions abound, from Joe Lansdale's "The Crawling Sky," about a hard-boiled minister who discovers the so-called village idiot's story of a lurking evil is true, to Cherie Priest's standout "The Catastrophe Box," which mixes fact and fiction into a tale of terror. David J. Schow's "A Gunfight" is straight-up action written as a quasi-tribute to Donald Westlake, Timothy Truman's "Pretty Green Eyes" is classic love and revenge with a vicious twist and "The Lizard Men of Blood River" by Stephen Mertz revels in dialogue and a premise straight out of the 1930s. Science fiction is almost absent, but space opera fans will devour Harlan Ellison's sharp "The Toad Prince or, Sex Queen of the Marian Pleasure Domes." This is a must-have for anyone nostalgic for the glory days of pulp.