Books like Sins of the Flesh

This is one of the books that has stuck with me for 30 years. I was a wee lad in my local B. Dalton Bookseller at the mall and had some birthday money to spend. I caught a sinister, shark-like eye staring at me from the shelves. Taking a closer look, the eye was part of a magnificent cover design that exploded in your face as you opened the insert, with some grisly naked wolfman thing flying out of a root cellar or something. You could see the unreasoning hate and viciousness in that face, feel the sting of those talons, and smell the musk of a predatory animal and the stench of death surrounding this beastly presence that you just know you have zero chance of surviving. It was one of the most horrific images I had seen to that date. I had never read anything that would have been considered a true "horror" novel to that point, and I figured this would be a great place to start. So I stealthily brought it up to the register and made my purchase before my mother could inspect what I was buying. Did I want a bag or a receipt? No thank you--It remained in my jeans pocket until I got home, and after that, it kept me up for several nights straight.Reading it again after all these years really reminds me of how effective stories from the heyday of paperback horror can be. There was just such an explosion of creativity that it's a shame so much of it is out of print. This novel is about a Wendigo, but blends that legend with werewolf sensibilities in a clever mishmash of familiar tropes. More gruesome than gory, it is competently written and well paced so you are never bored and usually kept in anticipation of what awful things the villain, Jessie Sikes, will do next. Sikes himself is one of the more formidable figures I've encountered in horror. I am surprised this never got optioned for film, since it lends itself so well to both the creature feature and slasher subgenres, though it may have been written a bit too late for that, since box office interest in such fare was already waning at the time of publication (with the exception of "Pumpkinhead" perhaps).So this was my first horror novel experience, one which started me on a journey of fandom I have continued to enjoy. And I think most horror fans will like this too. I highly recommend you get your hands on it.