RED DELICIOUS

Another wisecracking supernatural horror yarn (Blood Oranges, 2013) expressed in what used to be known as splatterpunk mode.

Tierney brings new or forgetful readers up to date with a memorably pithy page-and-a-half recap. The ballsy, profane, in-your-face narrator is Siobhan Quinn—don’t, whatever you do, call her Siobhan—ex-heroin addict, now both vampire and werewolf. Her employer, the devious human she calls Mean Mr. B, has been hired to locate the missing daughter of a prominent local necromancer. Unfortunately, Mr. B’s investigator, Shaker Lashly, has also gone missing and soon turns up with bullet holes. Quinn’s job, then, is to find out what happened to Lashly and locate the missing girl. Naturally, the case turns out to involve something else altogether, namely, a MacGuffin that’s actually a transcendentally powerful and valuable dildo. No, that’s not a misprint. Three demonic entities desire to possess the item: the infernal brothel-keeper Drusneth, the succubus Yeksabet Harpootlian, and Magdalena Szabó, a demoness from an alternate world who may or may not even exist—all of whom will stop at nothing to acquire it. Not only must Quinn survive the attentions of these three formidable females, but also the determined assaults of defrocked priest Father Burt Rizzo, whose self-appointed mission is to rid New Providence of its supernatural badasses.

Another defiantly over-the-top yarn that breaks every rule in the book, mostly with advance warning, and succeeds by being even more flagrantly disgraceful than its predecessor.