Published by Subterranean Press on April 1, 2024

Edgar Allen Poe is credited with creating the first fictional detective. Some years ago, Joe Lansdale contributed to a collection of new stories about Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin. Lansdale brings Dupin back in the novella-length The Unlikely Affair of the Crawling Razor.

A young man named Julien has been investigating the catacombs in Paris. A series of gruesome murders has coincided with his investigation. Pieces of one victim’s body were scattered in the catacombs. A disemboweled victim was found on the doorstep of Julien’s sister Aline. Fortunately for Aline, Julien has paid a tavern owner to lock her inside her room at night. Unfortunately for Aline, Julien has disappeared. She visits Dupin in the hope that the famous solver of mysteries can find her brother.

The story takes on an air of the macabre when the tavern owner explains how he was chased by a demonic entity on his last visit to lock Aline’s door. Julien has a collection of books that describe portals to supernatural dimensions. He seems to have made a particular study of the Lord of the Razor (who happens to be an early Lansdale creation). If one of the Razor’s sharp instruments causes someone to bleed, the Lord of the Razor enters that person’s soul.

Dupin and his assistant (the story’s nameless narrator) embark on a search for Julien that takes them on a couple of trips to the catacombs. Bones and skulls and rats provide an appropriate setting for a confrontation with a demon.

Lansdale is a versatile writer. He dabbles in crime, humor, science fiction, and westerns, often mixing genres in original ways, but he is also one of the better horror storytellers in the business. The Bottoms is one of the most frightening books I’ve read. This novella is a bit too conventional to be truly scary, but the Lord of the Razor is sufficiently creepy to inspire a few chills.

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I look forward to every new Lansdale but this one didn't work for me. It's clearly a work of passion and well put together, but it leans heavily into the Gothic territory.

Imagine Sherlock Holmes investigating Hellraiser-esque alternate dimensions and monsters/gods that defy the laws of nature, and you've got some idea of what Joe Lansdale has cooked up for you in this novella. Poe's Auguste Dupin delves into murderous mystery and shades of the occult, traversing through the streets and catacombs of Paris to take down a terrifying foe. 112 pages of mojo storytelling, fun, and intrigue as only Joe Lansdale can do it.

I loved this novella. Though I like Edgar Allan Poe, I was not familiar with his private detective Dupin. I started this story with a blank slate. It began reminiscent of a Sherlock Holmes story. I was immediately drawn in. I loved the fantasy elements. The evil God of the Razor was well-described. The Parisian Catacombs were the perfect backdrop to the tale. I am definitely intrigued by Dupin. Dupin's assistant is a mystery though. The novella has an action-packed ending with a mix of magic. A great read.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Subterranean Press for the ARC.

This has a great overall mystery element to this book, it had everything that I was hoping for from the description. The characters were everything that I was hoping for from this universe and thought it worked with the horror elements. I was hooked from the first page and thought it worked everything that I was wanting. Joe R. Lansdale has a great writing style and I thought it worked well overall with the genre and was strongly written. It uses the elements perfectly and thought the mash-up worked with everything that I was expecting. I hope there is more in this world.

First off I want to say that my review copy has horrible formatting - the title is randomly inserted on every other page. It often interrupts a paragraph so that half is above & half is below the paragraph, and it was very disruptive during my reading. There also weren't any indentations for speakers and/or new paragraphs, which was annoying in it of itself but added to the title being thrown on every other page - sometimes it was hard to tell if I was reading a new paragraph or if it was just interrupted by the title. Formatting issues aside this read very much like the first draft.

As for the story, I found Dupin annoying and a copy-paste of Sherlock Holmes (he specifically reminded me of Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal of Sherlock in the Sherlock show). These Sherlock-esque scenes also only happened a couple of times throughout all of Dupin's interactions, making it seem like Lansdale was actively thinking of Sherlock and trying to make Dupin appear like him in those scenes only. He was relatively more laid back throughout the rest of the story so his characterization felt inconsistent.

The villain was also confusing to me - I thought he was a real person using a razor to murder his victims but he is actually some sort of spectral being from another plane or dimension. I guess this is on me since this book is labelled as Sci-Fi / Fantasy but it still confused me when he was being described with these gruesome fantastical details. Once I got over that I did like the God of Razor's descriptions, he sounds terrifying and I hope to never be visited by something like him in my nightmares.

Would I re-read? No, probably not.
Would I read more from this author? IDK, I liked the idea of this story but the execution was lackluster. The formatting issues also left a bad taste in my mouth.

Joe R. Lansdale isn't referred to as the Champion Mojo Storyteller for nothin'!

Here, the indomitable Lansdale creates an awesome mash up of Poe's detective, C. Auguste Dupin, and Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. But then, he Lansdales it up with a gruesome villain: The Lord of the Razor. How could this be anything but phenomenal?

This novella sized bit of goodness only lasted me an hour or two, but I was relishing every moment of it. I'm not sure what goes on in Lansdale's head that he can even come up with a story like this, but I'll be honest here: I would read his grocery list and love it at this point.

Before this turns into an all-out Lansdale love fest, I'll reluctantly stop singing his praises here. I'll leave it at this: Imagine what Joe R. Lansdale could do with a figure like The Lord of the Razor-from how he would look to the things such a Lord would be capable of. Got that picture in your head? Good, because that should be enough to convince you to read this book!

Highly recommended!

*Thanks to Subterranean Books, NetGalley and the author for the eARC in exchange for my honest feedback. This is it!*

Another very enjoyable read from Joe R Lansdale. Can't remember every reading a bad one from him. Back to the God of the Razer and included Poe's detective Auguste Dupin, this story had a great plot and pacing. Only wish it had been longer. #TheUnlikelyAffairoftheCrawlingRazor #NetGalley

I really tried to like this book I couldn't really get into the writing or the story and I've read something lawrenceville's other books and I figured that I would like his writing in this genre since it was kind of Supernatural / horror but the writing just didn't do it for me or the characters

The Unlikely Affair of the Crawling Razor brings together Joe R. Lansdale's classic villain: The God of the Razor and Edgar Allan Poe's great detective C. Auguste Dupin for a short horror novella set in the streets and Catacombs of Paris. The story was incredibly entertaining from the go (honestly Lansdale never really disappoints me). There's a reason why he's called the champion mojo storyteller after all. And I loved that we learned more about the God of the Razor and his mythology alongside Dupin and his unnamed assistant. I hope that the author will return to the God in the future and maybe even have him take on some original Lansdale creations.

Special Thanks to Subterranean Press and Netgalley for the digital ARC. This was given to me for an honest review.

My thanks to NetGalley for making an eARC of this book available to me.

This was an interesting mashup of Poe, Doyle, and Lovecraft with a Lansdale twist. We have the master logician detective attempting to solve the mysteries of the bloody corpse, the missing brother, and the threatened beautiful young woman. Told from the unnamed sidekick's POV, of course. I would definitely seek out further tales of this crime-solving team.

Poe, Lovecraft, Doyle, and Simon R Green all came to mind while reading this. Which is appropriate, considering how Lansdale works in so many genres, often blending them in fun ways. I was so excited that NetGalley let me read this short story, which was dark and exciting and in a fantastic, creepy location

Joe R. Lansdale’s impressive body of work includes what are sometimes described in popular parlance as “mashups”: homages to the work of other authors that mix and match characters and ideas from a variety of sources in pairings whose incongruity often makes for wildly inventive storytelling. "The Unlikely Affair of the Crawling Razor" is one such story. It features Edgar Allan Poe’s character C. Auguste Dupin (sans his “C”), the amateur sleuth whose adventures influenced Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of Sherlock Holmes, in an intrigue that also ropes in elements of H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos and one of Lansdale’s own contributions to modern horror, the demiurge of bloody violence known as the Lord of the Razor.
The story is set in 19th-century Paris and narrated by the same nameless sidekick who relates the three Dupin tales as Poe wrote them. Aline Moulin, a beautiful but distressed young woman, shows up in their rooms one morning with their latest case. Aline’s brother Julien, a sensitive writer, has begun acting peculiarly since he was first allowed to visit the Paris Catacombs for scholarly research. A series of gruesome murders have occurred around the city since Julien’s first visit—atrocities that have prompted him to have Aline locked in her room nightly. And now, after the latest murder on the siblings’ front doorstep only the night before, Aline’s brother its missing.
The reader will guess fairly soon that Julien’s visits to the city’s subterranean ossuaries have unleashed something nasty. And in time the redoubtable Dupin—who always knows more about such matters than he reveals, initially—proves that he has the mettle to counter it. His course of action will necessitate a brush with the Hounds of Tindalos—extradimensional entities contributed to Lovecraft’s mythos by his friend Frank Belknap Long—and a showdown with the Lord of the Razor, a straight-razor-wielding monster who walks the world in footwear fashioned from the heads of his victims. Lest these elements seem too outré for Dupin’s standard investigations, it’s worth noting that Lansdale cross-pollinated a Dupin pastiche with the Lovecraft mythos a decade ago in “The Gruesome Affair of The Electric Blue Lightning,” written for a Poe tribute volume. What’s more Poe’s Dupin stories “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” rank among his grisliest tales. The story is great fun, pulpy in all the right places, and it shines a light on some of the many influences that Lansdale has incorporated seamlessly into his proliferating bibliography.

I enjoyed reading more about the Lord of the Razor, after having read Joe Lansdale's other short stories about it. This was kind of Sherlock Holmes prelude. It was very entertaining and look forwardto more from Lansdale. I'm providing this review in exchange for the free ebook, thanks to Netgalley and Subterranean Press for another great book. @SubPress

An elegant and succinct reimagination of Poe’s gentleman detective, C. Auguste Dupin, who investigates and battles Landsdale’s own famous creation, the Lord of Razors. Clearly written in Lansdale’s typical smooth and polished prose, the story is effective, even though the twist is quite predictable. Highly readable and fun.