Subterranean Press is reporting that the distributors have not been kind to Joe R. Lansdale. In the past few weeks, they’ve been hit with a larger than expected number of returns of Act of Love, his seminal serial killer novel. Our edition features the novel proper, a brand new 12,000 words story about Marvin Hanson, the protagonist, and roughly twenty full-page black-and-white interior illustrations by Glen Chadbourne.
Subterranean Press can’t sell these dinged copies as new, so they’re on the site, while the limited supplies last, at only $10 per copy.
Description: In 1981, Joe R. Lansdale, then a noted short story writer, published his first novel, a paperback original entitled Act of Love. A ferocious account of the search for a killer known as the Houston Hacker, Lansdale’s debut was written years before the Hannibal Lecter phenomenon left its mark on American popular culture, years before the “serial killer novel” became a distinct — and highly marketable — publishing category. Thirty years after its initial appearance, this pioneering novel continues to exert a raw but undeniable narrative force.
Set in the vividly evoked urban squalor of Houston, Texas, Act of Love moves with great authority between the disordered mind of a compulsive killer and the increasingly desperate perspectives of the policemen who hunt him. In the process, it offers a detailed portrait of a complex murder investigation and anatomizes a city under siege, a city held hostage by a latter day Jack the Ripper.
You can pick up a copy from Subterranean here: Act of Love
