A Sad Last Love at the Diner of the Damned 
By Edward Bryant 
Wormhole Books 
$12.00 PPD from the Web/ $13.00 retail 
www.wormholebooks.com 

Wormhole Books is a new player in the horror small press and, if the first two offerings are any indication, they will be a player indeed. Chapbook number 2 is a signed and limited Ed Bryant story graced with S.P. Somtow's introduction. First, consider the stunning wrap-around cover by David Martin, loving homage not only to Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks," but to the famous Bogart-Presley Dean-Monroe version, and to George Romero as well. Look for the handprints (what a detail!) and a cameo by the author himself. 

The story. What can one say about one of the best included in that famous (infamous?) Skipp and Spector anthology, THE BOOK OF THE DEAD, itself a tribute to the zombie trilogy of Romero? I devoured that book when it came out (get it? devoured? heh!) and it would not be amiss to say that the experience helped nudge me to the hated-but-accurate splatterpunk label in my own then unformed work. I've long considered Ed Bryant a sort of faraway mentor for various reasons, and this story is one of them. It's one of the hardest and most vile stories you'll ever read, and you'll never forget it. You'll also never forget the intense mastery
with which it is told, or the unflinching ending. You'll see how it raised the bar for extreme fiction, and how it helped raise a very good anthology to the level of a classic. 

So it's not at all outrageous to see it presented here in all its gruesome glory, this story of a love and death, hatred and jealousy and revenge, set in an isolated diner shortly after the zombies start to come for the living. It's not outrageous at all to see Ed Bryant's masterpiece of lean-and-mean treated with the reverence Wormhole Books has lavished on this one tale. If I were you, whether or not you remember this story - and if you're a true fan, you do - I'd definitely add this beautiful chapbook to my collection.