The Cleanup [Mass Market Paperback]

John Skipp (Author), Craig Spector (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1987

His name is Billy Rowe. Yesterday he was just another tragically talented loser the city had chewed up and spat back down on the streets. Billy came to New York with dreams of stardom, and found only a nightmare of obscurity. Frustrated and downtrodden, disgusted with his own failure, Billy spends his days living in Bowery squalor, his ambition skittering away like the cockroaches running up his tenement walls. His roommate can't cover the overdue rent. His girlfriend has no more patience for his self-pity. It seems that things can't get any worse.

Until the night Billy witnesses a murder in the street below his window: a young woman, knifed again and again and left to die, her blood gleaming under streetlight's glare. The killer flees into the shadows. And Billy watches, paralyzed with fear, until it's too late to do anything but scream.

When the police come, their contempt is palpable. And when they leave, Billy is ashamed. In a fit of despair, Billy prays for help, for guidance...for a sign.

And like a miracle it comes, as the mysterious stranger named Christopher. Christopher has come with a message: of the power that Billy has, if he will but lay claim to it.

Billy thinks Christopher is crazy...until he realizes that suddenly he feels no pain. Billy can heal the sick, or clean up the mess of his life. Or the mess of the city's savage streets.

Yesterday Billy Rowe was just another nobody. Now he has the Power. Now the city has nothing to fear. Nothing but Billy Rowe...

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Bantam; First Edition edition (February 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553260561
• ISBN-13: 978-0553260564
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,125,822 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Skipp And Spector "Cleanup" the horror playground., May 22, 2000

By 

"ithios2" (Silverton, Colorado (The film's Locale)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Cleanup (Mass Market Paperback)

Simply put, this is probably the best-written horror story of the mid eighties. The wish-fulfillment fantasy, so long a boring and dreary concept in any genre, suddenly found itself alive and well with the introduction of Billy Rowe. The story deals with redemption, social angst and the question of good and evil. Rowe, a down-on-his-luck muscisian, suddenly finds himself in possession of god-like powers that allow him to "clean" the streets of his city. He does this in a variety of ways, including shaping himself into a woman and burning the word RAPIST into the forehead of one of his would-be sexual assaulters. He loses sight of his humanity, however, and the ultimate price is the forfeiture of his soul. An excellent, if brutal and oft-times gory novel, for any person seeking the ultimate in alternative horror fiction.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Smart, new and makes you want to be there until the end!, August 27, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Cleanup (Mass Market Paperback)

When a down and out man is given powers to make the world a better place by an angel, he begains to drownd him-self in his new power. Now this hero of the night must fight off the scum of the city, the police who want to catch him and his own dark thoughts which are now coming into this head

4.0 out of 5 stars Where Angels Fear to Tred, April 4, 2004

By 

G. West "The Womblereader" (Charlotte, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Cleanup (Mass Market Paperback)

"The Cleanup" was published in 1987 when Skipp and Spector where the whiz kids of the splatterpunk splash in horror fiction. As near as I can determine, the pair collaborated on a mere handful of novels before splitting up, stopped writing, or died - I don't know which. What a shame, because their take on time-honored horror tropes were fresh, and their prose and character development only improved with time. I believe "Cleanup" was their second published novel written while they were still honing their technique; yet for all its minor faults (this is not highbrow literature) I would rank "The Cleanup" second only to "Animals" in thoughtfulness, depth of characterization, and (of course) plain old fun.

Billy Rowe is an idealist and a failed musician. A loser with fading dreams of making the world a better place through his music. The reason for his failure is his unwillingness to compromise, to make his music more commercial in a time when the heady idealism of the sixties is but a fading memory. Billy's life takes a chilling turn one hot Big Apple night when he witnesses a murder while playing his guitar on the fire escape of his seedy apartment on Stanton Street. Someone, some thing, catapults from the shadows and literally guts a beautiful woman before his eyes. The killing itself is traumatic enough for a sensitive soul like Billy Rowe, but worse yet is the fact that the trench-coated murderer looked up from beneath his fedora and saw Billy watching. Now he fears his own life is at risk.

The murder sets off a chain of unlikely events that eventually leads Billy to a rendezvous with an angel in a coffee shop. At this point the narrative cranks into high gear, for the angel's message is both frightening and exhilarating, and appeals to Billy's idealism, his best intentions. And you know what they say about good intentions.

"The Cleanup" is not what you think it is. It dodges and weaves and leaves you guessing while Billy tries to patch things up with his girlfriend Mona and the world entire. As is usually the case in a commercial novel, there are no ugly women in "Cleanup." Even Mona's lesbian room mate is to die for, and Billy himself is no dog either once he cleans himself up. Yet the story turns ugly-as-sin as Billy attempts to make the world a better place using his new-found Power, and digs himself ever deeper into a quagmire he does not understand. "The Cleanup" is populated with characters with hopes and problems we can all identify with; we therefore mourn when they are hurt or lost, not least of all Billy Rowe himself whose idealism is both his greatest strength, and his direst fault. He is a good man with lofty hopes, yet lacks the wisdom to make those hopes fly.