Amazon.com Review
This ninth installment in the Hot Blood series shows no sign of flagging imagination on the part of the contributors--not surprisingly, because the concept of erotic horror encompasses everything dark and sensual that can happen between two beings (human or otherwise). In fact, in a time when only a few original (or mostly original) anthologies are published each year, Jeff Gelb's and Michael Garrett's has become one to bank on. The 13 stories in Crimes of Passion include three reprints (all from relatively obscure publications such as The Ontario Review) and 11 original tales, by such authors as Ramsey Campbell, Greg Kihn, Lawrence Block, Brian Hodge, Brian Lumley, Tom Piccirilli, and Joyce Carol Oates. There's not a bad story in the bunch, and several are strikingly effective--such as Kihn's acid-tripping nightmare in late '60s San Francisco, Hodge's Bram-Stoker-nominated tale about a woman who dives so far into submissive prostitution she seems to break through into an alternate reality, and Oates's superb portrait of a promiscuous drifter on a mission from God. --Fiona Webster