The man wipes the condensation off the cracked mirror with the threadbare sleeve of his sanitarium-issue sweatshirt. It’s a bitterly cold day and he tries to massage some feeling into his hideous, rubbery face. A face that only a motherfucker could love. A visage that was clumsily stapled back together after it was disfigured with a meat axe in an abandoned factory three years ago.
Free for Kindle readers all weekend, my 2020 book: SLOP SHOP! It has been refreshed with a brand new cover to complement my new book, THE DAMAGE MANUAL.
(Note: if you bought it first time round the cover should update automatically on your device!)
While you are browsing on Amazon, why not check out The Damage Manual and the Hunger anthology from Urban Pigs Press. Here’s what the books look like in real life:
“I’m sitting in a swivel chair that is still greasy from its previous occupant, staring out of a small window that overlooks the back yard of the North Atlantic Video Lounge. Two Cantonese men are unloading soggy-looking cardboard boxes in preparation for one of Barry Balthazar’s notorious ‘Sunday Suppers’. Worryingly, it is only Thursday.”
I’m excited to reveal that my new book, The Damage Manual, is out today!
It’s a brutal selection of Joe Rey case files that have never previously been collected in print. Regular readers may recognise a few of the pieces, but there are also some rarities in the mix.
I’m happy to say that it is available in both e-book and paperback formats.
Here’s the synopsis:
Fresh out of prison and desperate to redeem himself, disgraced private investigator Joe Rey retreats to his shabby office and awaits his fate. Deranged clients with sordid agendas are his stock-in-trade, and there is very little that Rey won’t do for money. He is immediately plunged back into Paignton’s sordid underbelly, where he goes toe-to-toe with molesters, miscreants, maniacs and malcontents. Each case is more unhinged than the last, and his new-found enemies start to take on a hellish quality. Who knows: if he can save enough people, maybe Rey can even save himself? THE DAMAGE MANUAL is a brand new set of Paignton Noir case files from Tom Leins, the author of the cult collections MEAT BUBBLES & OTHER STORIES, TEN PINTS OF BLOOD and SHARP KNIVES & LOUD GUNS.
If you encounter excessive blood flow, apply a compression bandage and seek urgent medical assistance.
Dennis Cafferty isn’t decrepit, but he carries with him the stench of death. His most recent facelift went badly wrong and he now has a permanently haunted expression. His left eye twitches – as far as the taut skin allows. Too much booze and too little sleep. I know that feeling.
“You have plenty of men on your payroll, Cafferty. Why me?”
He shrugs.
“Those boys would walk through the flames for me, but I need subtlety.”
“Like last time?”
He scratches at the livid patch of razor-rash on his throat.
“Yeah, like last time.”
Maybe his faculties are deserting him: last time I did a job for him I was about as subtle as a house-brick in the teeth.
“Just find the bastard who set fire to my daughter, Rey.”
I nod.
2. Wash your hands, and remove any debris from the wound with water – or risk gangrene, necrosis or amputation.
Gary Maguire is a bad man, deep in the grind. He used to work for Cafferty, until he started cutting his boss’s smack with fentanyl – and putting people in the morgue.
When he found out, Cafferty threw him out of a second-floor window.
Maguire waited a year. Picked up Cafferty’s 17-year-old daughter, Denise, at a club. Promised her the world, then took her to a dirty-arse trap-house. When Maguire was done with Denise, he splashed Hennessy on her back and tried to set fire to her.
After Maguire’s boys stomped out the burning, Denise smashed the Hennessy bottle, and jabbed it into his gut. Crawled out of the trap-house naked – left the broken bottle embedded in Maguire’s midriff.
By the time Cafferty arrived, Maguire was long gone – leaving nothing behind except porno on the flatscreen, a pool of blood on the ratty mattress and a cadaverous pair of junkie squatters.
Itchy and Scratchy didn’t know shit, but Cafferty brutalised them anyway. Dumped their smashed bones in a skip two streets away.
Sterilise the utensils you intend to use and soak the wound with a disinfectant solution. If disinfectant is unavailable, you can use high-proof alcohol.
Back-street surgeons in Paignton are usually alcoholic animal doctors or struck-off GPs. Maybe the occasional ghoulish hobbyist. Men with liver-spotted hands and rusted equipment. Unclean rooms and unclean thoughts. Marwood is no exception.
His overgrown front garden stinks of burned plastic patio chairs. There’s an old Toyota on the grass – its roof dented like it has been used as a trampoline.
Marwood is taking a sip of coffee liqueur to tame his maniac tremble when I kick the door off its hinges. He waves his scalpel at me, and I slap it out of his claw-like hand.
I drag Maguire off the viscera-splattered kitchen table by his ankles.
“Careful – his stitches won’t hold!”
Maguire groans as his ruptured flesh snags on the exposed floorboards, leaving a thick smear of ooze in the hallway.
Penetrate the sub-dermal layer of skin with your needle and sew away from yourself. The edge of the wound will be numb, and can be pierced with minimal discomfort.
We’re in an anonymous room in an abandoned office block. It’s neither up for sale, nor scheduled for demolition, so there’s no reason for anyone to disturb us.
There’s a thick fug of cigarette smoke, and a juicy body odour tang, and I suspect that Cafferty has used this place before.
Even soaked in blood and viscera, his clothing looks expensive. Black leather jacket, polo-neck jumper, smart slacks and designer plimsolls.
At his feet, Maguire’s face has already been reduced to a splintered mess of bone.
“Are you not curious to see how this plays out?” Cafferty asks me.
I glance down at the contents of his dented metal tool-box, which have been laid on a plastic sheet in order of pain management potential.
“I’ll read about it in the Herald Express – like everybody else.”
He shrugs.
“Have a nice life, Rey.”
“Life is just different ways of not dying, Cafferty.”
He grunts, and I leave without another word.
Zig-zag your way across the open wound and tie it off with a strong knot.
If you enjoyed this story you can buy my books here (UK) or here (US)!
“Sharon told me that he met her at Lymington Road coach station. Another Northern runaway heading for the English Riviera. Took her for sausage and chips at a greasy spoon in Torre and offered her a job as a glass collector in his club. When she said no, he offered her a cigarette laced with Donkey Dust and waited until she passed out.”
I have a brand new piece of flash fiction online at Shotgun Honey today: Disco Blisters.
I think it’s the ninth story I’ve had published by Shotgun Honey (starting with There’s A Place In Hell For Me And My Friends back in March 2013), but I might be wrong! After almost a decade it’s still a thrill to be featured on the site.
“It’s Christmas Eve and I’m standing in the middle of a stash house in Hookhills, bleeding from one ear and trying to work out which one of the hired hands I should shoot first: the skinny guy in the soiled Sexy Santa minidress or the fat fuck in the scuffed-looking ballistics vest.”
It’s time for the fourth part of my ’12 Crimes of Christmas’ trip down memory lane, and a visit to the Punk Noir Magazine archives. Jingle Bells, Shotgun Shells was written in time for Christmas 2018 and The Naughty Listappeared in 2019.
As I’ve noted before, the Joe Rey stories can often be categorised as either rampage stories or mysteries – although the lines generally blur before each story reaches its blood-soaked conclusion! Jingle Bells, Shotgun Shells is definitely a rampage story: Rey is hired to retrieve a kit-bag full of Fentanyl from a stash house, and shit inevitably goes sideways.
A reworked version of this tale (retitled as Stash House) went on to appear in my brutally enjoyable short story collection Ten Pints of Blood (or ‘ten bloody readers’, as it should probably be called!). Ten Pints of Blood also includes Spine Farm, a grisly cold case investigation that takes place at Christmas – making it my most Christmassy book yet!
I love the cold case storylines, as they are a welcome change of pace, and the stakes are generally very different. As is the case with a lot of my Christmas stories, The Naughty List is more light-hearted than my other material and examines the aftermath of a vicious Securicor van robbery that took place in 1991.
“Why was Father Christmas upset when he got a sweater for Christmas?” I shrug. “Because he was hoping for a screamer or a moaner.” Clive Clayhill laughs gutturally, then offers me a nasty grin – his rotten teeth are the same colour as Elaine’s gravy. I push my empty plate away and scuff my chair back on the faded linoleum, feeling strangely nauseated. That’s what happens when you buy your Christmas crackers in the fucking Sex Shop…
It’s time for part two of my 12 Crimes of Christmas countdown!
I might be wrong, but I think Christmas Eve Can Kill You was my first ever appearance at Close To The Bone – an association that ultimately spawned three top-quality books (Meat Bubbles, Boneyard Dogs and Ten Pints of Blood)!
It’s interesting to read Christmas Eve Can Kill You back after all these years (I wrote it seven years ago!). It’s pretty damn hardboiled, but lacks the twisted humour of the later stories, and the protagonist isn’t really reflective of the character Joe Rey became. I think I described it as the Nativity story with added hammers at the time. That just about sums it up!
I think Blue Christmas is probably my favourite of the three – not least because it marked the first ever appearance of Benson & Hedges, a pair of elderly cops who outgrew their light relief bit-part roles and evolved into two of my favourite supporting characters.
“The pub is full of aging hard men, all nursing unfinished pints and festering grudges. The motherfucker I’m looking for is sat at a corner table, wearing more makeup than a mob wife. It accentuates his rubbery, porcine features. His name is Michael Sweetwater, and he was the man the Andretti Family tasked with slashing open the stomachs of constipated drug mules.”
“For hammer-to-face smashing, nothing could be better than Sharp Knives & Loud Guns. Viciously brutal and wickedly funny, to my mind this is the best Tom Leins book yet.” —Rob Pierce, author of the Uncle Dust trilogy
“Imagine Jim Thompson and Edward Lee had a baby and that baby did a bunch of steroids and meth. That’s what Tom Leins’ powerful pulp is like. Nobody, and I mean nobody, writes like Leins. He is the master of his own genre.” —Andy Rausch, author of American Trash and Bloody Sheets
New book time! Sharp Knives & Loud Guns is out today, via All Due Respect and Down & Out Books!
Synopsis …Sharp Knives & Loud Guns is the brand-new collection of Paignton Noir Case Files from cult crime writer Tom Leins, featuring the novelettes Slug Bait, Smut Loop and Sweating Blood.
Traumatised and brutalised after a grisly encounter with a warped sex killer, Slug Bait finds cut-price private investigator Joe Rey licking his wounds at a decrepit caravan park on the cliff path high above Paignton. Violence has a way of finding Rey, however, and an altercation involving local amusement arcade tycoon Raymond Coody sees him dragged back into town—where his name is now on all of the wrong people’s lips. Rey’s reckless disregard for his own safety quickly wins Coody’s trust, but his new associate harbours some dark secrets, and things are about to get very bloody, very quickly.
Joe Rey has been hired by so many queasy middle-aged men in his time, an assignment from Frank ‘The Wank’ Farris barely registers. In Smut Loop Rey is forced to get reacquainted with Cherry, a middle-aged sex worker who has more unsavoury connections than he does. When she proposes an elaborate blackmail scheme, Rey is suckered in, but the job quickly spirals out of control—and they are forced to perform an unhinged job for an extremely powerful man. Rey is out of luck, and out of his depth. With friends like this, who needs enemies?
After a series of violent misadventures, Joe Rey has blood on his hands and murder on his mind. Now working as a security guard at Paignton Cliffs Caravan Park, Rey finds himself dogged by unhinged cop Carver, who is desperate to know where the bodies are buried. When a sinister figure from Rey’s past re-emerges, determined to force him to participate in a sick new game, Rey is forced to confront his past—if he still wants to have a future. As the temperature rises, so does the body-count, and Rey finds himself Sweating Blood. Will he see it through to the bitter end, or has his luck finally run out?
“The sky above the Dirty Lemon is the colour of diseased lungs. Fat clouds swirl above the pub, and the bronchial sky erupts as I push through the double doors – bullets of rain thudding into the wheelchair ramp behind me. Remy Cornish is sat adjacent to the cigarette machine, perched awkwardly on his mid-range mobility scooter. He chose the meeting place – the only pub in Paignton with a wheelchair ramp – but it was no hardship on my part. I was coming here anyway.”
I’m delighted to reveal the front cover artwork for my new book, Sharp Knives & Loud Guns!
The book will be released by All Due Respect (an imprint of Down & Out Books) in December, and includes three interlinked Joe Rey novelettes.
I will share more details in due course. In the meantime, here is the synopsis for each story:
SLUG BAIT
Traumatised and brutalised after a grisly encounter with a warped sex killer, SLUG BAIT finds cut-price private investigator Joe Rey licking his wounds at a decrepit caravan park on the cliff path high above Paignton. Violence has a way of finding Rey, however, and an altercation involving local amusement arcade tycoon Raymond Coody sees him dragged back into town – where his name is now on all of the wrong people’s lips. Rey’s reckless disregard for his own safety quickly wins Coody’s trust, but his new associate harbours some dark secrets, and things are about to get very bloody, very quickly.
SMUT LOOP
Joe Rey has been hired by so many queasy middle-aged men in his time, an assignment from Frank ‘The Wank’ Farris barely registers. In SMUT LOOP Rey is forced to get reacquainted with Cherry, a middle-aged sex worker who has more unsavoury connections than he does. When she proposes an elaborate blackmail scheme, Rey is suckered in, but the job quickly spirals out of control – and they are forced to perform an unhinged job for an extremely powerful man. Rey is out of luck, and out of his depth. With friends like this, who needs enemies?
SWEATING BLOOD
After a series of violent misadventures, Joe Rey has blood on his hands and murder on his mind. Now working as a security guard at Paignton Cliffs Caravan Park, Rey finds himself dogged by unhinged cop Carver, who is desperate to know where the bodies are buried. When a sinister figure from Rey’s past re-emerges, determined to force him to participate in a sick new game, Rey is forced to confront his past – if he still wants to have a future. As the temperature rises, so does the body-count, and Rey finds himself SWEATING BLOOD. Will he see it through to the bitter end, or has his luck finally run out?
“Some people have a sociopathic disregard for fear. Not me. When I get scared, I feel it all the way down to my fucking ball-bag.”
These two crime fiction anthologies edited by John Bowie are out now via Bristol Noir. The second volume (Savage Minds & Raging Bulls) includes my story ‘The Proper Disposal of Body Parts‘.
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