Reviews

Classic gore and weirdness-driven horror from the master of upchuck fiction Ed Lee. I've read a fair few of his novels before getting to this one, but missed it because it looked like "The Backwoods" - which is the wrong way round. "The Backwoods" has some similar themes but isn't anywhere near as good. "Creekers" with its red-eyed mutants and disgraced smalltown cop character and an edge-of-nowhere setting that has something in common with his more recent hicksville settings, but they have turned for the most part folksy and with the nature of the tall tale about them in recent years. "Creekers" ain't that. It is flat-out whores 'n' gore stuff with more twists 'n a rattler. Certain themes recur: the big old house in the middle of nowhere with a doorknocker in the form of a noseless and mouthless face (which makes more sense here than it does in other places he's repeated the motif), the down-on-his luck former policeman (makes sense because at some point you know he's going to come out guns blazing, at least metaphorically. In a sense this makes many of Ed Lee's novels Westerns). There is a certain similarity with another of his classic novels but I won't say what as it would give the game away, indeed that work may be here in embryo but it is a mutant and red-eyed embryo if it is. And a point at which he and proto-bizarro novelist Harry Stephen Keeler might have seen common cause: the bordello catering to strange and depraved tastes. And how depraved they are, these Creekers and those who go to them. I am off to Spain shortly in search of a lost race of mountain dwarfs (who seem to be very much a Found Race, I think; the area has adopted them as a motif, though they are all gone). I do not hope to find what is here, there.

mikekaz's review against another edition

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4.0

CREEKERS is one of Lee's novels that is closer in theme to THE BIGHEAD and THE HOUSE than to SLITHER. While there are some demons and a small tie-in to CITY INFERNAL, most of the story has a gritty, intensity of hard-boiled detective mixed with backwoods rednecks. And of course, sex, violence and perversities.

Philip Straker is a big-city detective who ends up framed for shooting a kid and then ousted from the department. Having nowhere else to go, he moves back home to the small Podunk town of Crick City. There he is offered to work on the police force for Chief Lawrence Mullins, the father figure who practically raised him. Chief Mullins wants Straker to find and end the PCP problem that is occurring in town. A problem that Mullins suspect is being run by Cody Natter. The catch? Not only is Cody Natter the leader of a group of inbred hill people with numerous deformities including red eyes, but Natter also runs the town's strip club and is married to Straker's ex-fiancée.

The story has a lot happening in it and is very involving. As in real life, many of the characters are both good and bad and hard to narrow down as to whether you should be liking them or not. Of course, some are pure scum and while they are add considerably to the sex and violence, you also hope that they get their comeuppance. About the only thing that I wasn't too sure about was the ending which took a turn from the rest of the novel. It wasn't off and ridiculous but at the same time it wasn't what I was expecting. If you are a fan of hardcore and intense horror, then you should enjoy the book. It's one of Lee's better novels. If you aren't sure though, try one of Lee's more mainstream books. I would hate for you to get scared off and miss out on a wonderful author.

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