And overzealous describes Cantor’s creatures too: if everyday roaches are disgusting, six-inch-long roaches with mandibles of chewing death are immeasurably more disgusting! A swarm of mutated cockroaches has somehow “organized” themselves by some unknowable miracle of evolution into a thinking organism, each individual creature a cell in the larger mass. As a biologist explains to the townspeople who have thus far avoided being roach fodder, “the Yarkie roaches are being directed by what I can only describe as a brain.” Iiiick. (On the attribution page Cantor thanks famed sociobiologist E.O. Wilson for his insights into insect behavior; do you think Cantor sent him an autographed copy of the book? In a perfect world: yes).

I mentioned purple prose; there are so many amazing passages in The Nest, I will only give you a taste of this ripe and rotting fruit:

Having partaken of human meat and drunk human blood, the new cockroach breed was ravenous for more... they could not get enough of the human taste and would seek it endlessly, implacably, and with many more victories... She had to live with the inconceivable sight of great cockroaches coating her husband’s face, a vicious, quivering crust of filth... It was intolerable to watch his companion choking to death because cockroaches were crammed in her nose and throat… to see these scurfy roaches drill into the body of his dear and cherished friend…

How did I discover The Nest, you ask. Why, through the internet, of course, where I stumbled upon its glorious cover art and knew I had to own it (and maybe even read it!) About four years ago I found myself in a Salt Lake City used bookstore, one of those really spectacular ones crammed full of not just used books but also all the dusty ephemera of our pop culture past. Their horror section was overloaded with paperback goodies, and lo and behold, a copy of The Nest was burrowed back in the shelves. When I placed my selections on the counter, the grizzled old owner tapped one nicotine-yellow fingertip on its cover and in his grizzled old smoker’s voice gleefully said, “This book? Scare the shit outta ya!” (I do hope the Valancourt guys see fit to put that blurb on this new edition). He was not wrong, I was delighted to discover, and I am delighted again to present it to you in this reprint line of horror novels under the banner of Paperbacks from Hell.

With its delirious lapses in good taste, The Nest is a shuddering, creepy-crawly scarefest that attacks the reader with one revolting sensation after another. In vintage 1980s schlock-horror, you can’t ask for more than that. So thank you, Mr. Cantor, for your commitment to scaring the shit outta us.

Will Errickson