Andrew Gallacher’s Snake Jaw is quick, effective, and deeply disturbing. I loved it, actually. The story is part psychotic detective mystery and part surgical horror. It’s here to show you things that are unspeakably gross, things that are so perverse and squirm-inducing that you’ll hardly believe it all happened in such a fast read. The story revolves around a surgeon named Gerald Phalanx and his obsession with giving women a completely new physiology. Phalanx is utterly insane, and his latest patient, a junkie named Vanessa, is taken to his dungeon to learn just how crazy he is.
While a stalwart detective searches for Vanessa, Phalanx puts her through the process of becoming his ideal woman. Vanessa experiences an agonizing metamorphosis that changes her into a grotesque freak. And she does it all because Dr. Phalanx has her baby. Vanessa does something horror victims rarely do: she resigns herself to her fate. She logically believes that she and her baby will soon die. If only that were true. Gallacher pushes the story into further depths of depravity, and the ending has a twist you won’t see coming. When the detective finally catches up to Vanessa, well, only the strong of stomach need apply. Personally I’m hoping for a sequel.
The comparison of Snake Jaw with “Human Centipede” is apt if only because this book evokes the same sort of bodily revulsion. But there’s also some serious Texas Chainsaw-style insanity coming from Dr. Phalanx. Included throughout the book are strange and violent sketches of his other visions of the perfect female form, none of them very appetizing. In my opinion, this is a great debut from an author who knows how to tell a compelling stomach-churning horror tale. Those of you who love a sickening moral component to your guts-n-gore, look no further.
Get it here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0980593875/ref=cm_cr_mts_prod_img
David W Barbee 