A dark stranger pulls into a seedy strip club parking lot dressed to the nines with devilish good looks and a briefcase packed to the gills with cash. He starts spreading the wealth amongst the entertainment and clientele, but a few brave souls see through his facade. This man is an agent of evil and with his mere touch the demon within comes out to play.

This is my first experience with John Skipp and as I read the other reviews here I find that The Long Last Call is sort of a "welcome back to the splatterpunk genre" release. The book was graphic and entertaining enough, but more importantly it has sparked an interest for me to go back and look for some of his earlier work to see how it compares. I would recommend this book to fans of extreme horror. ( )

dude. was i ever happy when Skipp re-entered the horror scene. primarily writing with Craig Spector, he was one of most deranged, hip, and visceral authors and anthology editors of horror in the late 80s and early 90s. (Note that i said "visceral," not "gory" or "gross" -- sure, you'll find gorier works, but that's about all they have going for them. Edward Lee and John Pelan write ridiculous ditties for masturbating 13-year-old boys. yeah, i said it.)

Skipp, with a banshee scream, was instrumental in ushering in splatterpunk, which is still reverberating strongly in several genres today. splatterpunk's changed the face of the avant garde literary scenes for ever (Dunn, Homes, Leroy... yep), and we can confidently blame Skipp for this delicious transgression.

Skipp wrote the novella "The Long Last Call" in 2k6, and regaled us with it in novel form, along with the bonus short "Conscience" at the end of the book. ("Conscience" was somewhat of a meandering let-down). he'd been away for far too long. i loved TLLC, and read it in one sitting. while it didn't sucker-punch me quite as much as many of his earlier works with Spector, it still sucker-punched me. Skipp writes, hard, fast, and with no holds barred. more, John. more. ( )

First the positive. I gave this book one star because the story had a very creepy feeling and could have been good... in the hands of any other writer than John Skipp. I've only read a few of his stories but so far all have sucked. This story specifically lacked any kind of climax, and his detail of gore or any kind of horror was lackluster. He also lacked to have you identify with any character by making them all revolting people you could care less if they lived or died. I would like to note that at this time I feel he is the worst writer that I have ever read. ( )