Catacombs of Terror!

Back in print after more than a decade, this irresistible mash-up of noir and gothic horror from Donwood (Household Worms) defines the term “cult classic.” Bath, England, is no criminal hotbed, and the genteel tourist town offers few paying gigs for dissolute PI Martin Valpolicella. Then the detective receives a message warning him that he will be framed for murder. His informant gives him a cryptic tip: he should investigate the archeological dig in the center of town. Valpolicella sneaks into the site and discovers a deep hole leading into a complex maze of tunnels. Later in a pub, a man named Stonehenge tells the detective about the dark secret beneath the town, where the “folks who really run things,” a group known as AFFA, have occupied the ruins of an earlier pre-Roman city. The only way for Valpolicella to clear his name and save an innocent victim’s life is to take a primal, hallucinatory journey down into the underworld. Oh, and the catacombs are guarded by flesh-eating pigs, of course. This is a wild, shambolic ride, but its central idea—of a dark world just underneath our own—is as noir as it gets. [em](Sept.) [/em]