Finishing Touches by Thomas Tessier

Thomas Tessier has a short column about horror and why he wrote "Finishing Touches," his new book from Leisure, but a book originally released in 1986. Nick Mamatas has reviewed the book. Here's how he sums it up:

At $6.99, and including as a back-up feature the novella "Father Panic's Opera Macabre", Finishing Touches deserves a place atop your commode in the bathroom, if not exactly on the shelf of the best books of the year.

Bookgasm likes it with some reservations:

Tessier’s TOUCHES is a disturbing work and not a predictable one. It will keep you reading, even if the third act is quite anticlimactic and the ending an illogical jumble. The first-person narrative is unremarkable, but that just makes the twists all the more shocking. And the man clearly knows how to write a sex scene, as demonstrated every few pages.

Editor Ellen Datlow has "Finishing Touches" on her Scary Books List (a list, she points out, which needs to be updated.)

Rambles also reviewed "Father Panic's Opera Macabre" in its original incarnation (it is included in the Leisure version of "Finishing Touches.)

Father Panic's Opera Macabre is my first exposure to Tessier's writing and, based on the strength of his build-up and the dramatic execution of his prose, I'm sure I'd like to see more. But Opera Macabre, unfortunately, rushes to the final page and skips whole chapters in the process.

I've only read Tessier's novel "Fogheart" and feel about it the way Mamatas does about "Finishing Touches," it's a good novel, but probably not a great one.