Bargain-Bin Books #1: Slob, by Rex Miller

Something I truly love to do is go trawling through second-hand book stores and car boot sales, scouring for odd cover art or editions of favorites that I've never seen before. Sometimes the books aren't necessarily great; but the art is what drew you to it in the first place, so I find it hard to pass on stuff like this, even if the story didn't exactly set the world on fire. At this point I have a pretty good collection of such bargain-bin finds, so I figured where better a place to share them?

Slob, by Rex Miller (Pan Books LTD, 1988) follows the exploits of a morbidly obese, egg roll-munching, Vietnam vet serial killer, and the detective, Jack Eichord in his search for him before the next victim falls. You get plenty of murders, descriptions of the killers sweaty, hulking body and POV's for the main characters. The climax seemed pretty hilarious to me, and involved puppies. I'll try not to spoil any more than that. Slob was actually the first in a trilogy involving the Eichord character, but I have yet to find any of the others in the series, and unless the cover art was as incredible as this, I doubt I would pick them up. Written in the wave of serial killer stories that followed the success of Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs, it is entertaining enough but is fairly forgettable. It has some strong praise from Stephen King on the front cover though, and was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel, so don't let me put you off it. The cover illustration was by David O'Connor. Ex-disc jokey Miller also wrote a trilogy of novels focusing on the serial killer from Slob, Daniel Bunkowski.