As we wind down spooky season, I finished John Russo's Limb to Limb from 1981 this morning.
Problem being, the plot as was outlined on the back had next to nothing to do with what actually happened in the book. The back cover makes it sound like a ballerina loses her leg, and suddenly some madman starts cutting off legs of other ballerinas. No, not what's happening.
See, Tiffany Blake is the star of a Pittsburgh ballet company, who's been recruited to dance in New York City. Her dad, who is rich and owns a hot dog company, doesn't want her to go. They get in a fight, she gets run over by a train, losing a leg. A doctor manages to reattach the leg, but it's several inches shorter, and Tiffany will never dance again.
Enter the two nice Jewish doctor brothers, freshly released from prison for running a third trimester abortion clinic, who's father was forced to work with a Nazi doctor in the camps on overcoming organ rejection. They're willing to give Tiffany a new leg, they just need one. Which leads to the kidnapping of Tiffany's two major competitors for Prima Ballerina, in hopes of grafting on of theirs on Tiffany.
In the meantime, the two kidnapped girls have boyfriends who were filming a documentary about Tiffany. One gets involved in the kidnapping plot, the other doesn't. He indeed is the one who gets the third reel horror reveal of what's been going on.
Honestly, while I enjoyed this, it again had nothing to do with what was promised.
Also, John Russo wrote Night of the Living Dead, and wrote and produced alongside Romero quite frequently. Given two of our protagonists work in the film industry, we get more than a few self inserts at various points in time.
My biggest issue in here is that we keep switching focus on characters with no real warning, and the transitions can be like grinding a gear trying to shift. But once you get used to it, it's a good read.
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