Joe R. Lansdale's The Lords of the Razor (USA 2006)

From the Publisher:
He is a tall, dark, top-hatted figure with stickpin teeth and skulls for shoes. He is the King of Shadows, the Lord of All Things Sharp, and he has an insatiable appetite for pain, terror, death, and despair. He is the God of the Razor, one of the most memorable and nightmarish creations of Joe R. Lansdale's distinguished career.

Lords of the Razor is a stunning new anthology in which ten gifted writers (among them Chet Williamson, Thomas Tessier, Bradley Denton, Christopher Golden, and the late, great Hugh B. Cave) offer their own eclectic visions of this dark icon of modern horror. Bookended by a pair of chilling Lansdale stories (the 1985 tale in which the God makes his first appearance and a superb new novella written expressly for this volume), Lords of the Razor is both a lovingly wrought act of homage and an enthralling collection filled with horrific encounters, sharply etched characters, and moments of surprising, sometimes demented, humor.

The stories (each accompanied by a striking black and white illustration by award winning artist Glenn Chadbourne) range in setting from Boston to Vietnam, from Texas to the American Midwest, from the poverty stricken rural South to the stately homes of England. Throughout, these vastly entertaining stories manage, somehow, to remain true both to their original source of inspiration and to the individual sensibilities that produced them. The result is a unique collaborative effort, a feast of pure storytelling, and a fitting tribute to the imaginative genius of Joe R. Lansdale, (hisownself).

Joe R. Lansdale's The Lords of the Razor. Edited by Bill Sheehan and William Schafer. Dustjacket by Timothy Truman. Interior illustrations by Glenn Chadbourne. Subterranean Press, ISBN: 9781931081344 (August, 2006), 281 p., $100.00.