The Nightrunners
Joe R. Lansdale
TOR Books, 1989
ISBN: 0-812-52123-4
Ah, yes Texas. Where everything is a little wild, a little weird and fairly dangerous. It's a place of individuals, good or bad. Who do what they want, whether that’s living a peaceful life or serving an ancient evil called the God of the Razor and slashing people to bits. That’s the kind of place where a horror novel should be set. It just makes sense.
Joe R. Lansdale is something of a renaissance man of a writer, a mojo storyteller who’s written just about everything you can think of. Comic books? Check. Horror novels? Check. Westerns? Check. Mystery and Suspense fiction? Check. Episodes of Batman: The Animated Series? Check. Works with Conan the Barbarian, H.P. Lovecraft, and Tarzan? Yep. He’s an incredibly gifted writer who gained authorial “respectability” with some of his more modern award winning novels, but still writes whatever wonderfully weird thing that pops in his head. He’s a personal hero and probably my favorite writer of all time. I guess that might be a spoiler for the rest of the review.
But back in the 80s when the splatterpunk movement was gaining momentum he was on the ground floor maybe even a little ahead of the game, since The Nightrunners was originally written in the late 70s, he wanted to scare the pants off people. Unsurprisingly, no publisher would touch it at the time, it was far too graphic and shocking. And, well terrifying. After his first novel, the serial killer shocker Act of Love, found a home at Zebra, Joe was off and running. The excess of the 80s was growing and the Splatterpunk genre was gaining steam, so it was time to unleash The Nightrunners.
With his beloved gang leader dead, Brian is soon visited by his old buddy and The God of the Razor (the dude on the cover) and told that he needs to up his rampaging game and so Brian deceneds into brutal madness. Him and the rest of the boys haunt the night in their black ‘66 Chevy, out there lurking in the darkness for fresh victims to destroy. But their number 1 target his a woman named Becky who they had previously assaulted and by extension Monty, her boyfriend who probably isn’t up to the task of taking on a gang of possible demon-controlled teenagers who
want to cut out Becky’s heart. What follows is a novel that owes just as much to the hardboiled crime novels of the 50s/60s as it does to horror, as well as being an exploration into peoples nature when pushed to the absolute extreme.
This is one of the most brutal novels I have ever read, terrible, horrible things happen to characters and it’s told in stark detail. This is as extreme as Lansdale ever got. It’s got that nasty 70s thriller/horror vibe from Straw Dogs or Last House on the Left, but with no MPAA to deal with. Because it’s a little unclear whether the supernatural element is real or just a figment of crazy ‘ol Brian’s imagination. The book always keeps you on your tippy-toes, swaying back and forth in absolute darkness.
I’m a fairly hard-boiled reader (yes, I’m THAT cool) but this is really one of only a couple of books that have left me with chills. That being said, this one has all the ear-marks of an early novel by a talented writer. There’s a little bit of wonkiness in the characters. Some things might be too simple, characters may seem closer to one-dimensional, but there’s a heart and head behind the words and it’s not just a cash-grab-job. Lansdale WANTED to write this book and in many ways it seems like he NEEDED to get this one out of his system, because he never really fully went this dark again. His next works in the horror genre go a little funkier, with stuff like The Drive-In and his short works like Bubba Ho-Tep. His most wonderful gift as a writer is giving absurd situations and characters weight and depth.
The Nightrunners is a stone-cold classic and it’s not for the squeamish. It’s got terrible stuff, that honestly most of the time I don’t care to read about, so fair warning. But if you can handle it, hold onto the book tight or it’ll get ya.
Roy Nugen is an award-winning writer, producer, property master, plus actor. He comes from a family of musicians, engineers, wildcatters, cops, lion tamers, and carpet salesmen. Evil Dead II changed his life and he once partied with Lloyd Kaufman.
He has written 15 short films including Bag Full of Trouble, Potboiler, Handle With Care, Death in Lavender, Hole in the Ground, and the feature film Arrive Alive, many of which have played across the country. He has been the property master on 17 short films and 2 feature films.
Roy is also a prolific book reviewer and collector of vintage pulp paperback books. You can read his reviews on his blog Bloody, Spicy Books and multiple magazines including Paperback Fanatic, Hot Lead and Sleazy Reader. He has also written afterwards for novels and for various websites. He lives in the only city that once arrested L. Ron Hubbard with his wife and cats.