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The Predator
When New York City is terrorized by a series of brutal murders, an ambitious policeman searches for the killer
- GenresHorror
352 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published August 12, 1983
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March 16, 2020
A truly crazy book, The Predator by Anthony John, which is the pen name of Anthony DeStefano and John S. Littell, is a mix of noir, porn, Italian cannibal film, and weird James Bondian villainy that makes for a pretty unique cocktail.
The story tells of a series of unexplained murders in New York and follows Touchetti, a murder detective trying to capture the titular predator. As the story develop and new characters come into play the whole thing takes on a stereotyped but compelling shape, there's the over-sexualized, feisty and voluptuous Latina news-reporter, the tormented priest, the obese coroner and the James Bond like villain anthropology professor, who specializes in feral children, who has also inherited a fortune, who is also paraplegic and has bloodthirsty rottweilers at his beck and call.
The writing style is absolute pulp and in extreme bad taste, a lot of it is misogynistic and borderline racist, but the whole thing is so ridiculous that you kind of let it slide, when the book includes a finale that moves from the Macy's Thanksgiving parade with the predator attacking Disney characters into a subterranean temple/steampunk station hidden under New York. You can almost forgive the scene in which the Predator, who is basically a feral albino human, attempts to rape a female baboon in Central Park Zoo, only to kill her and then masturbate over her dead body...almost. And then there's the flashback to Africa where we see the Predator's origins, in which we revert to a Cannibal Holocaust style setting, and which is nothing if not problematic. This is a hard book to rate. It's just unlike anything, you will stop yourself with a "what the fuck?" every 10 pages or so. In that sense I can't help but recommend it.
The story tells of a series of unexplained murders in New York and follows Touchetti, a murder detective trying to capture the titular predator. As the story develop and new characters come into play the whole thing takes on a stereotyped but compelling shape, there's the over-sexualized, feisty and voluptuous Latina news-reporter, the tormented priest, the obese coroner and the James Bond like villain anthropology professor, who specializes in feral children, who has also inherited a fortune, who is also paraplegic and has bloodthirsty rottweilers at his beck and call.
The writing style is absolute pulp and in extreme bad taste, a lot of it is misogynistic and borderline racist, but the whole thing is so ridiculous that you kind of let it slide, when the book includes a finale that moves from the Macy's Thanksgiving parade with the predator attacking Disney characters into a subterranean temple/steampunk station hidden under New York. You can almost forgive the scene in which the Predator, who is basically a feral albino human, attempts to rape a female baboon in Central Park Zoo, only to kill her and then masturbate over her dead body...almost. And then there's the flashback to Africa where we see the Predator's origins, in which we revert to a Cannibal Holocaust style setting, and which is nothing if not problematic. This is a hard book to rate. It's just unlike anything, you will stop yourself with a "what the fuck?" every 10 pages or so. In that sense I can't help but recommend it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review