Michael Panush (aka Phillip Pan) is a master of mixing genres. His latest submission, Blood-Spiller's Quarry: A Novel of the Stone Law (published by Airship 27 Productions), is another brilliant case in point, which presents a macabre, prehistory mystery.
The story starts with a dead member of the Cro-Magnon tribe, The Heap, found near a river. The tribesman appears to have been stabbed. A Heap leader, Red (a Broadhead/Neanderthal exile, promoted to a Fang, so that he might maintain law and order) investigates who may have committed the "Wrong Death," offering an engaging, first-person account, which sheds light upon a morbid and fascinating community characterized by mammoths, wolves, tribal fury, psychedelia, puppetry, cannibalism and an economy based on the convenient exchange of teeth.
Red's female compatriot, Star, assists with his investigation, as well as his intersecting friends, Bug Eyes, Gummy, Autumn, Spinner and Mouse, but the case grows ever stranger, with perplexing clues of soil and seed, insinuating a ritualistic killer. This killer comes to be called The Blood-Spiller, a "Night Demon" of extrapolated, social cause, who wears an ominous, simian-skull mask. Red is determined to capture the fiend, but is he, in fact, hunting the killer or is The Blood-Spiller hunting him?
Blood-Spiller's Quarry combines the best, adventurous elements of J.-H. Rosny's The Quest for Fire, Jean M. Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear, Jack London's Before Adam, Richard A. Colla/Lane Slate's The Tribe, Ralph Bakshi/Frank Frazetta's Fire and Ice, and Hanna-Barbera's Korg: 70,000 B.C., but with a C. Auguste Dupin bent that differentiates the yarn from the aforementioned. That makes Panush's novel avant-garde yet traditional in its execution: a clever combination.
To embellish Panush's nimble narrative, illustrator Earl Geier grants a bold cover (pigmented by the dexterous Rob Davis) and earthy, Thomas Yeates-esque interiors, which dispatch a gallery of distinct, aesthetic mystique.
I'm glad to have experienced Blood-Spiller's Quarry, which is far too good to stand alone. I've a hunch Panush has more cases prepared for Red, and I, for one, anticipate reading them.
Order Blood-Spiller's Quarry at
https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Spillers-Quarry-Novel-Stone-Law-ebook/dp/B0C7YB1BSC/ref=sr_1_4?crid=3F09ZIO2HNGAT&keywords=michael+panush&qid=1686946047&sprefix=michael+panush%2Caps%2C542&sr=8-4
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