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Razor's Edge
Blood Rite
There seemed to be no rhyme nor reason to the series of grisly murders plaguing Orlando. The victims were old and young, men and women, well-off and destitute. Only two shocking similarities connected the unfortunate deceased: before dying, each one had been horribly brutalized... and they were all found with large portions of their scalps removed with surgical precision!
Slice of Death
Medical examiner Dr. Dean Grant had had considerable success helping police hunt down serial killers in his native Chicago. And with Central Florida's best investigative minds baffled by an elusive trophy-hunting murderer--or murderers--the "Windy City" coroner flies down to the southern vacation capital to lend a hand...and a scalpel. But a maniac is lurking in the shadows, secretly studying the m.e.'s every move. And if Grant doesn't crack the gruesome case very soon, he could end up losing his hair prematurely...and his life as well!
There seemed to be no rhyme nor reason to the series of grisly murders plaguing Orlando. The victims were old and young, men and women, well-off and destitute. Only two shocking similarities connected the unfortunate deceased: before dying, each one had been horribly brutalized... and they were all found with large portions of their scalps removed with surgical precision!
Slice of Death
Medical examiner Dr. Dean Grant had had considerable success helping police hunt down serial killers in his native Chicago. And with Central Florida's best investigative minds baffled by an elusive trophy-hunting murderer--or murderers--the "Windy City" coroner flies down to the southern vacation capital to lend a hand...and a scalpel. But a maniac is lurking in the shadows, secretly studying the m.e.'s every move. And if Grant doesn't crack the gruesome case very soon, he could end up losing his hair prematurely...and his life as well!
- GenresHorror
318 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1989
334 people want to read
About the author
Robert W. Walker
184 books77 followersAka Geoffrey Caine, Glenn Hale, Evan Kingsbury, Stephen Robertson
Master of suspense and bone-chilling terror, Robert W. Walker, BS and MS in English Education, Northwestern University, has penned 44 novels and has taught language and writing for over 25 years. Showing no signs of slowing down, he is currently juggling not one but three new series ideas, and has completed a film script and a TV treatment. Having grown up in Chicago and having been born in the shadow of the Shiloh battlefield, near Corinth, Mississippi, Walker has two writing traditions to uphold--the Windy City one and the Southern one--all of which makes him uniquely suited to write City for Ransom and its sequels, Shadows in White City and City of the Absent. His Dead On will be published in July 2009. Walker is currently working on a new romantic-suspense-historical-mainstream novel, titled Children of Salem. In 2003 and 2004 Walker saw an unprecedented seven novels released on the "unsuspecting public," as he puts it. Final Edge, Grave Instinct, and Absolute Instinct were published in 2004. City of the Absent debuted in 2008 from Avon. Walker lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
Master of suspense and bone-chilling terror, Robert W. Walker, BS and MS in English Education, Northwestern University, has penned 44 novels and has taught language and writing for over 25 years. Showing no signs of slowing down, he is currently juggling not one but three new series ideas, and has completed a film script and a TV treatment. Having grown up in Chicago and having been born in the shadow of the Shiloh battlefield, near Corinth, Mississippi, Walker has two writing traditions to uphold--the Windy City one and the Southern one--all of which makes him uniquely suited to write City for Ransom and its sequels, Shadows in White City and City of the Absent. His Dead On will be published in July 2009. Walker is currently working on a new romantic-suspense-historical-mainstream novel, titled Children of Salem. In 2003 and 2004 Walker saw an unprecedented seven novels released on the "unsuspecting public," as he puts it. Final Edge, Grave Instinct, and Absolute Instinct were published in 2004. City of the Absent debuted in 2008 from Avon. Walker lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 2, 2024
Dr. Dean Grant goes to Orlando and falls in love! There is also a hairy dwarf who dresses "like a Dickensian street urchin" and worships Satan when he's not beating his brother with a bullwhip woven from human hair. Did I mention he loves Bob Seeger? Takes a time-out for Dr. Dean Grant to explain to a tough lady cop that she would be more attractive if she smiled more. Delirious, crazy-making trash heaven. Nirvana achieved.
June 24, 2024
I finally got my hands on a bona fide title from Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction via natural means: it was on a table of used books in a bank, going for $1 a pop to raise money for cancer. I'm usually against cancer, but a deal is a deal. This book's cover, with all its horrifying gender-based violence, appears near the end of that must-buy encyclopedia in a section discussing how at the tail end of this particular horror paperback boom, the trend was for serial killer stories devoid of supernatural doings.
I want to note that the book reeked of cigarette smoke, and after my first reading session I had to restrict myself to reading it outdoors in a breeze. If you are a chronic smoker, please be aware: everything you own stinks to shit, it will never go away, and it's only good for the landfill when you're done with it. You have destroyed yourself and everyone and everything around you. Philip Morris's descendants thank you for their 138th yacht and will reinvest your remaining money into continuously circumventing laws in order to get children addicted to nicotine as young as possible, at which they are wildly succeeding.
So we've got brother serial killers in Orlando, one of whom is a hirsute but bald-headed dwarf who talks to demons and was raised in a root cellar, a medical examiner from Chicago whose wife is traumatized from nearly being the victim of another serial killer (who drowned people so they would float to heaven, except it was a brother and sister, or maybe the same person, and also copycat killers buying into the religion) and he left behind his own lab staff shortly after one jumped off a building because he had AIDS, to go to Orlando to help another ME who is now under investigation for the serial killings by the dysfunctional police chief and police psychologist and there are other hard-boiled detectives, one holding back his own secrets. The Chicago pathologist is pulled into all of this political chaos between the police chief and the mayor, whose estranged niece was a scalping victim. A Black female undercover officer is attacked by the scalpers but escapes, and when she awakes the Chicago guy immediately helps her escape the hospital, tells her she’d be beautiful if she’d just “lighten up a little”, which certainly has nothing to do with her “chocolatey complexion”, and then they immediately go to her apartment to fuck, being fully cognizant of his traumatized wife but she hasn’t banged him in six months, so. And this brings up nearly up to page 100.
No, I don't know how it helps the book to have the undercover cop exclaim later in an argument with the married guy she slept with that she was raped by her own father.
Turns out the scalpers boil the scalps in a pot, also they cut off their victims’ armpit hair and pubic hair and nipples and also put those in the pot, to make soup. But only after they try to stick the scalp onto the dwarf’s bald head so he’ll finally be completely hairy, like his ears already are and also his face and all the rest of him. Then they think adding a baby to the soup is the thing to do because babies have such soft fine hair. Also this will make Satan happy.
The book keeps referring to this other serial killer case back in Chicago so much that I finally caved and looked up the author’s other books. It turns out this one is a sequel. This is not indicated anywhere on or in the book. The series is focused on this Dr. Dean Grant, ME guy. I don’t see why; he’s not interesting, or even particularly capable; he sure doesn’t accomplish much in this book. I’d say the death count is HIGHER because of his involvement.
The police force and medical examiners all keep suspecting each other of maybe being the scalper, because there aren’t 600,000 other people in Orlando, and because the reader already knows the non-dwarf scalper isn’t any of them it’s just a waste of pages and empty tension.
Turns out this crazy hairy short dude who was abandoned in a pit as an infant survived by eating his own poop, and also a hairy beast of some kind came along and suckled him, and also a Black woman showed up sometimes to take care of him, sometimes accompanied by a Black man. Each of these things are mentioned once and never come into the picture again, so I don’t know what the hell is supposed to be going on. But according to the killers, once the dwarf finally gets hair that will stick to his bald head, each of his body hairs will spawn a demon into the world.
Lest you think he's just a run of the mill hirsute dwarf:
The killers, in search of a baby, stalk an OB/GYN clinic (and seriously, why is this pronounced O-B-G-Y-N when it’s so much easier and comprehensive to just say “ob-guine”, the spelling way takes twice as long) and then try to kidnap a pregnant lady with a 13-year old daughter. It was confusing because I thought they wanted a baby, so why did they go after the pre-teen? But then they scalp the woman and run away, but later it says they cut out her fetus but as the scene was written there was absolutely no time for such a thing. And of course fetuses are renowned for their hair. All of this is to say that the book is very bad and confusing with multiple irritating plot holes. I’m positive it’s a pantser situation, plus a complete lack of editing. There were definitely obvious copyediting errors, like, did you know that “Benjamin” and “Benjamin” sound a lot alike?
Hey, good news, it turns out that if someone stabs you in the forehead with a kitchen knife and it penetrates deep into your brain, as long as it’s perfectly in the middle between the two hemispheres you won’t die! Try this at home.
The ending . . . yeesh. So they’re chasing the hairy dwarf through a swamp, and the dwarf encounters an alligator. Cut away to the pursuing policemen who hear a primal scream in the distance. They and their dogs chase down an alligator thrashing down a meal, but it’s one of the dogs. The medical examiner cuts open the alligator right there and then, because clearly one carries tools capable of doing this when one is a medical examiner chasing a serial killer through a swamp, and finds no human parts in its stomach. But the police are like, “Clearly the serial killer scalping hairy dwarf was just eaten by a DIFFERENT alligator,” and give up the chase. CASE CLOSED.
I want to note that the book reeked of cigarette smoke, and after my first reading session I had to restrict myself to reading it outdoors in a breeze. If you are a chronic smoker, please be aware: everything you own stinks to shit, it will never go away, and it's only good for the landfill when you're done with it. You have destroyed yourself and everyone and everything around you. Philip Morris's descendants thank you for their 138th yacht and will reinvest your remaining money into continuously circumventing laws in order to get children addicted to nicotine as young as possible, at which they are wildly succeeding.
So we've got brother serial killers in Orlando, one of whom is a hirsute but bald-headed dwarf who talks to demons and was raised in a root cellar, a medical examiner from Chicago whose wife is traumatized from nearly being the victim of another serial killer (who drowned people so they would float to heaven, except it was a brother and sister, or maybe the same person, and also copycat killers buying into the religion) and he left behind his own lab staff shortly after one jumped off a building because he had AIDS, to go to Orlando to help another ME who is now under investigation for the serial killings by the dysfunctional police chief and police psychologist and there are other hard-boiled detectives, one holding back his own secrets. The Chicago pathologist is pulled into all of this political chaos between the police chief and the mayor, whose estranged niece was a scalping victim. A Black female undercover officer is attacked by the scalpers but escapes, and when she awakes the Chicago guy immediately helps her escape the hospital, tells her she’d be beautiful if she’d just “lighten up a little”, which certainly has nothing to do with her “chocolatey complexion”, and then they immediately go to her apartment to fuck, being fully cognizant of his traumatized wife but she hasn’t banged him in six months, so. And this brings up nearly up to page 100.
No, I don't know how it helps the book to have the undercover cop exclaim later in an argument with the married guy she slept with that she was raped by her own father.
Turns out the scalpers boil the scalps in a pot, also they cut off their victims’ armpit hair and pubic hair and nipples and also put those in the pot, to make soup. But only after they try to stick the scalp onto the dwarf’s bald head so he’ll finally be completely hairy, like his ears already are and also his face and all the rest of him. Then they think adding a baby to the soup is the thing to do because babies have such soft fine hair. Also this will make Satan happy.
The book keeps referring to this other serial killer case back in Chicago so much that I finally caved and looked up the author’s other books. It turns out this one is a sequel. This is not indicated anywhere on or in the book. The series is focused on this Dr. Dean Grant, ME guy. I don’t see why; he’s not interesting, or even particularly capable; he sure doesn’t accomplish much in this book. I’d say the death count is HIGHER because of his involvement.
The police force and medical examiners all keep suspecting each other of maybe being the scalper, because there aren’t 600,000 other people in Orlando, and because the reader already knows the non-dwarf scalper isn’t any of them it’s just a waste of pages and empty tension.
Turns out this crazy hairy short dude who was abandoned in a pit as an infant survived by eating his own poop, and also a hairy beast of some kind came along and suckled him, and also a Black woman showed up sometimes to take care of him, sometimes accompanied by a Black man. Each of these things are mentioned once and never come into the picture again, so I don’t know what the hell is supposed to be going on. But according to the killers, once the dwarf finally gets hair that will stick to his bald head, each of his body hairs will spawn a demon into the world.
Lest you think he's just a run of the mill hirsute dwarf:
Van's lips thrust out now as he hummed the mantra he often used, a low, howling, doglike sound. The lips were huge and deformed and gaping, like the edges of a wound. The little nose was nonetheless too large for his face, with flat and flaring nostrils. His ears were strangely like cabbage leaves, and clumps of hair hung from the lobes like moss. Thick sideburns ran across his lower cheeks to merge into a heavy mustache. The brows were bushy, hiding his eyes. His large eyes were jaundiced and narrowed to pinpoints of coal at the pupils.
The killers, in search of a baby, stalk an OB/GYN clinic (and seriously, why is this pronounced O-B-G-Y-N when it’s so much easier and comprehensive to just say “ob-guine”, the spelling way takes twice as long) and then try to kidnap a pregnant lady with a 13-year old daughter. It was confusing because I thought they wanted a baby, so why did they go after the pre-teen? But then they scalp the woman and run away, but later it says they cut out her fetus but as the scene was written there was absolutely no time for such a thing. And of course fetuses are renowned for their hair. All of this is to say that the book is very bad and confusing with multiple irritating plot holes. I’m positive it’s a pantser situation, plus a complete lack of editing. There were definitely obvious copyediting errors, like, did you know that “Benjamin” and “Benjamin” sound a lot alike?
Hey, good news, it turns out that if someone stabs you in the forehead with a kitchen knife and it penetrates deep into your brain, as long as it’s perfectly in the middle between the two hemispheres you won’t die! Try this at home.
The ending . . . yeesh. So they’re chasing the hairy dwarf through a swamp, and the dwarf encounters an alligator. Cut away to the pursuing policemen who hear a primal scream in the distance. They and their dogs chase down an alligator thrashing down a meal, but it’s one of the dogs. The medical examiner cuts open the alligator right there and then, because clearly one carries tools capable of doing this when one is a medical examiner chasing a serial killer through a swamp, and finds no human parts in its stomach. But the police are like, “Clearly the serial killer scalping hairy dwarf was just eaten by a DIFFERENT alligator,” and give up the chase. CASE CLOSED.
June 21, 2021
Okay. This was a rather bizarre book, however, it was a fun read. The premise is simple enough: There's someone going around murdering innocent sweethearts, and age doesn't matter to him, and he's after one thing in particular...you're scalp. The book gets weird when we start to realize that he's after certain shapes and sizes from the hair, kind of like that weird guy from Silence Of The Lambs, who was cutting the skin from all those female victims. ( Why is it always the girls who are victims to these brutal killers, why, why why!?) The book gets weirder the more you read it, there's a twist, and to this day, I'm not sure if the twist even works, but it was clever enough to give it a pass. I suppose. Then you got the dumbasses on the police team trying to catch this guy, and, well, come on now, you know how that goes...the cops can't be dumber then the criminal, other wise they get away. ( Why are cops always dumbasses in these horror books, why, why , why!?) All in all, it was a silly read, I was surprised at how much it leans away from violence, judging from the book cover. Nothing spectacular, but nothing to kick around as trash either, if you're paying for it, don't bother. If someone gave you the copy for free, give it a whirl. I bought my copy way back in 1989, I wasn't too impressed with it then. Chances are I would be less impressed with it now.
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