Relentless as a Texas Death-Match, GOON is a no-holds-barred festival of body slams; an insatiable orgy of pile-drivers and sexual grotesqueries, of neck-breakers, drop-kicks, and more blood and guts than a fish-market floor...

Six-foot-9 and 400 pounds, hailing from Parts Unknown, he is the one-man walking gore machine of the Deep South Wrestling Conference, and his name is Goon.

But Detective Phillip Straker isn't a wrestling fan. The bodies pile up like dirty laundry: sex-obsessed tramps used as playthings by some unspeakable creature. Straker is determined to solve the rash of mutilation murders with trimmings that beg description. Is it just coincidence, or do all the victims have something in common?

Investigative reporter Melinda Pierce will do anything to find out, by offering herself up as a sexual spittoon in order to infiltrate the arcane and lust-drenched warrens of the backstage of professional wrestling. There in malodorous locker rooms and unsavory motels, she partakes in carnal forays so gross, so downright nasty they'd make a porn star puke.

Goon, this human juggernaut, this masked rack of guts, muscle and mayhem... Is Goon just a wrestler gone insane? Or is he something hideously worse?

It just might leave you down for the count.

This novella marks the first of a string of notorious collaborations with Darkside/Midnight House editor John Pelan, and here's some flap copy: "Relentless as a Texas Deathmatch, GOON is a no-holds-barred festival of body slams and insatiable orgy, of pile-drivers and sexual grotesquerie, of neck-breakers, drop-kicks and more blood and guts than a fish market floor. It just might leave you down for the count..." Lee originally penned a full first draft on his own, for a proposed collection entitled TERRA DEMENTATA, but: "The first draft didn't have that any of that authentic feel to it, plus the ending sucked. It needed to be seriously tuned up, and there was no better person in the world for the job than John Pelan. John's a walking encyclopedia when it comes to professional wrestling." Indeed, GOON involves professional wrestling, in a go-for-the-throat contemporary horror setting with a lot of forensic-tech and police procedural elements. (Don't miss the stomach-emptying morgue scene that features Lee's recurring police pathologist Jan Beck, who makes Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta look kind of like Betty Crocker. Beck is the creative incarnation of Lee's fascination with forensics and criminalistics; she was named after the fingerprint technician who helped convict Wisconsin serial-killer Ed Gein.) Hot-body Melinda Pierce is a journalist who thinks she knows who's responsible for the rash of psycho-sexual serial killings that have recently been plaguing Russell County, Virginia, and homicide cop Philip Straker (Lee makes cruel use of his first pen name) thinks she might be on to something, so the two partner up in an effort to covertly penetrate the backstage realm of pro wrestling. How? By masquerading as "ringrats," i.e. groupies. Their target: a 400-pound grapppler who hails from parts unknown--Goon. Two scenes in this infamous novella won the World Horror Gross-Out Contest two years in a row, so be prepared. GOON made the Preliminary Stoker Award Ballot for Best Long Fiction of 1996. The 52 hardcovers became an instant collector's item, while even the trade paperbacks still fetch tidy sums in the re-sale market. A 2nd edition by Overlook Connection contains eight interior illustrations by Lee pal and sometimes character Micah Hays.