Review by Valarie Thorpe

I've read a good bit of Tom Piccirilli's work and he can very effectively mix it up amongst the genres, pulling westerns into horror, horror into noir, and pretty much scramble them up into any ol' omelete concoction he wants. But I was fairly sure I hadn't read anything of his that would conveniently categorize itself based on the title of his upcoming novelette Fuckin' Lie Down Already. I'll admit I totally misunderstood the title...yea, ok, little slow. *Ahem* moving right along and trying to direct folks attention to what's out that window over yonder instead of my dirty, filthy mind.

Now, if I'd have just read the synopsis: Clay was an honest New York City cop driven to bring down the mob and make his city a little safer, even when it seemed like nothing he did made any difference. He always played by the rules until a two-bit junkie hit man destroyed his family and left him for dead. But Clay won't let himself lie down until he gets one last thing: revenge.

When you head into the heavily trodden ground of revenge for the deaths of a loved one, you're setting yourself up a tall task. There's a talent to getting it right and a reader instinctively feels it when it's right or when it's not. There's a pretty easy barometer - did it scare you by making you think of your own loved ones? That's it. Sounds easy but it is most certainly not. We don't want to think of something awful happening to our own loved ones. So if a writer doesn't force us to do it, we won't. We're actually looking for an out, some error or miscalculation on the creator's part that lets us off the hook. Then of course we're disappointed in the work but we got out all right.

Remember the gut wrenching first few minutes of The Outlaw Josey Wales when Clint Eastwood's wife and son are murdered? Or in Eye for an Eye, the scene with Sally Field in her car stuck in rush hour traffic on the cell phone with her daughter, who is then brutally killed while they're on the phone? A recent written example of this might be the first couple of chapters in Alice Sebold's Lovely Bones. They work because those moments are desperate and it makes us desperate.

Piccirilli's Fuckin' Lie Down Already will make you desperate. The horror in this tale is suffocating and dead on brilliant. I finished this about a week ago and I'll be damn glad to get the picture of Clay, his family and their car out of my head. It's definitely a claustrophobic work and this novelette from Endeavor Press is the perfect length for it. And since it is a novelette, I'm not going to head down the road to details or it'll end of pissin' you off later when you read it. Just know it'll stick with you and whether that's a good thing or not is totally up to you.

Of course, advance reading copies don't have the treatments limited editions like this book get. There will be a signed limited and a signed lettered edition. And Caniglia will provide illustrations (b&w for the limited, color for the lettered) for it. Caniglia shows a deft touch and real gift for portraying every detail of the grotesque - almost gotta say I'm damn glad I didn't see those.