I recently stumbled on the award-winning horror anthology series Dark Delicacies and ordered the 2005 debut collection. Dark Delicacies is also the name of a Burbank, CA bookstore that specializes in macabre fiction. Owner Del Howison is co-editor with his buddy Jeff Gelb of all three anthologies in the series. Because Howison’s store boasts signings by the top writers in the genre, he and Gelb have friends in very scary places. DD I boasts short but potent contributions from Ray Bradbury, Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, Whitley Streiber, Gahan Wilson, and F. Paul Wilson, among others. I tore through most of it in one sitting the other night and highly recommend it.
Among the best stories are Barker’s lurid, stomach-churning, but satisfyingly EC Comics-ish “Haeckel’s Tale,” in which a 19th century narrator recounts a night spent in a graveyard with a mysterious woman whose erotic tastes run toward the undead. In Campbell’s intense and nightmarish “The Announcement,” an obscure novelist believes his work is being publicly trashed by a more successful writer via a van with a speaker on top. The vehicle travels the streets at night and blares cryptic, coded announcements like: “All hype. He’s a liar, a con, he does dire joyless horrid hellish crap.” John Farris’s darkly humorous “Bloody Mary Morning” – nominally inspired by Willie’s tune – recounts a crooked Texas businessman trying to flee a gory murder scene through all kinds of bizarre complications, including a tiny dog attached to his face. (You’ll just have to read it). Perhaps the most jolting tale is Roberta Lannes’s “The Bandit of Sanity,” in which a chic L.A
. psychotherapist finds himself indulging in extreme and criminal sexual acts thanks to the manipulations of a sadistic, amoral adolescent patient. I plan on ordering the other two Dark Delicacies anthologies soon.
