CATACOMBS OF TERROR!
BY STANLEY DONWOOD
“…I listened carefully. There was a voice. Distorted and broken, as if it was coming through something denser and more evil than fog. I couldn’t tell what it was saying for a little while. And then it started to form itself into thickly-spoken, drooling words…”
Martin Valpolicella is a Private Investigator. He’s down on his luck and seriously out of pocket. An anonymous note sends him on a nightmare adventure that takes in fake informants, Satanic CCTV
operators, flesh-eating pigs, doublecrossing motherfuckers, twisted archaeologists, cocaine-hoovering reporters, hellish psychogeography, genetically-modified killers and murdering global conspirators who will stop at nothing to control the world.
“I’M BEGINNING TO FEEL LIKE I’M ON STAGE AND THE SCRIPT IS – WELL, IT’S REALLY BAD.”
And he’s not wrong there. Written as fast as possible during one gloomy winter month in England, ‘Catacombs of Terror!’ is unashamedly cheap thrilling trash. The pace doesn’t let up for a second, and when you’ve read it you’ll immediately want to, er, go to the pub or something. Stanley Donwood read the worst novels he could find to research the writing style for this one, and wasn’t satisfied until he’d packed in more cliches, more swearing, more unbelievable plot twists than EVER before.
One hundred and forty-four pages of unmitigated pulp trash! Printed on 100% watermarked cannabis-content hemp paper! A cover with the words ‘GUNS! DRUGS! PIGS!’ written on it! More swearing than could ever have been necessary! Full-on action-packed hardboiled pageturning thrills! Tunnel-dwelling flesh-eating pigs hungry for human meat! Unputdownable blockbusting relentlessly depraved prose!
Global conspirators who stop at nothing! And a sacrificial victim tied to an altar of DOOM! Paperback for 13 or hardback for 26! Bargain!
YOU WONT BE ABLE TO STOP READING THIS ONE! POSSIBLY.
“…the smell was back, stronger than ever. It was horrible. Everything was so old it made my head hurt. I’d never been anywhere remotely like this before. It was old like – like a living thing could be old. Not like a place. I could almost feel its wheezing, impossibly aged breath sucking in and drooling out. There was mud and clay everywhere. The walls were made of it. Dirty water dripped onto us from the sloping roof, and mud was scattered around in clumps and splattered on the walls. Pools of brownish, greyish water collected in puddles on the flagstones. And it was cold. The rope from the winch hung down wih a big bucket, a bucket big enough for a body or two on the end of it. I looked at Kafka. His face looked terrible. The yellowish light didn’t help, but he looked really bad. I wondered if I looked as bad as he did. Worse, probably. Yeah, well. I wasn’t aiming to make a good impression anywhere. Not for the foreseeable future. I asked him if he was okay, and he shook his head slowly. He drew his finger across his throat. I knew how he felt…”
Popular Edition: 13.00 isbn 0 9541782 2 X
Library Edition: 26.00 ISBN 0 9541782 3 8
Published on 8th August 2002 by Hedonist Books, 103 Walcot Street, Walcot, Nr. Bath, Somerset
Advance Orders should be emailed to: stuff@waste.uk.com
Orders after 8th August: http://www.waste.uk.com
Read more at: http://www.slowlydownward.com
(thanks to Max K)