Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction

by Grady Hendrix

As the ’80s progressed, supernatural horror felt exhausted, with the same old writers dishing out the same old books. Horror movies were all campy slaughter, aimed at teens in on the joke. But the serial-killer book walked the line between crime fiction and horror novel, bringing in new—and in some cases, better—writers, or at least writers whose tricks weren’t familiar to exhausted audiences. Informed by the splatterpunk movement, these writers felt like they had permission to upset readers. A lot.

Horror was out. Serial killers were in. The horror-fiction market of the late ’80s was glutted, and the inevitable crash was happening fast. Imprints collapsed like punctured lungs, publishers shoveled books onto store shelves faster than readers could buy them, and returns flooded into warehouses. Customers stayed away in droves. Writers begged their editors to market their books as thrillers instead of horror.

The lesson horror teaches us is that everything dies. The horror fiction boom of the 1970s and ’80s became roadkill on the superhighway of the ’90s. Authors disappeared, cover artists found new outlets, and this publishing Titanic hit an iceberg, split apart, and released its cargo into the cold, dark waters to wash up on the shores of thrift stores and used paperback emporiums for years to come.

We know we can’t make these authors famous again. We know we can’t give their titles another chance at the best-seller list. But for those who love these impossible, unpredictable books, it’s enough for us to imagine that somewhere out there, underneath the vast dome of the night, a few people are curled up on their couches, nestled in their beds, riding the bus or the train, holding a copy of When Darkness Loves Us.

We can’t be certain that anyone is reading these books anymore. But we can hope. Because after all the monsters have flown away, hope is what’s left at the bottom of the box.