By Bizarre Hands

by Joe R.Lansdale

Review by James R.Cain

'By Bizarre Hands' contains 16 of Lansdale's short stories, and is simply put a great read.  While some of the tales like "Boys Will Be Boys" and "The Windstorm Passes" came across as novel excepts, they were enjoyable regardless.  In saying this though, it should be noted that "Boys Will Be Boys" later became part of Lansdale's novel The Nightrunners, and "The Windstorm Passes" became part of The Magic Wagon.

The book contains the chilling Stoker Award-winning tale, "Night They Missed the Horror Show," a tale about a couple of delinquent youths who get into more trouble than they bargained for.

My personal favourites were "The Fat Man and the Elephant", "By Bizarre Hands", the SF piece "Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back" and "On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks", a tale that's probably the finest piece of zombie fiction I've read to date. 

Honestly, out of the 16 tales, I thoroughly enjoyed 15 of them and out of those 15 at least half I'll be re-reading in future years.  That's saying something considering I very rarely want to read a short story twice.  I get enough of that in my job as an editor.

If you're a lover of short stories and gritty pulp fiction, it's a fantastic buy.

Publisher: Avon Books

ISBN: 0-380-71205-9