Filthy Rich by Brian Azzarello and Victor Santos

My review of Filthy Rich is up at bookspot.

Dude that wrote Filthy Rich is the same feller behind 100 Bullets.

It's also the first of two books from Vertigo Crime.

As awesome as that info just provided is, the results were less than boner-inspiring.

Check it out right here.

Pariah by Dave Zeltserman

My review of Dave Zeltserman's Pariah is up and blowing some fucking minds over at bookspot.

Check that shit out right HERE.

If you're short on time, let me save you a click and a peek:

This shit fucking rules.

Catching Up #42: Off Season by Jack Ketchum

Okay so this post ain't exactly noir, but it sure a shit is for the fucking basement crazies. If you're a fan of the more macabre and intense shit (like the great Allan Guthrie's novels) the Nerd raves about, you're gonna love horror writer Jack Ketchum. The guy is hands-down one of the gutsiest motherfuckers working in genre fiction today. Two of his novels (Right to Life and The Girl Next Door) I had to read in single sittings for fear that I wouldn't have the sack to pick them back up again. And make no mistake: the Nerd is not just being characteristically hyperbolic here - the guy's shit is seriously that fucking inense.

Also let the Nerd make clear: this ain't no Halloween-is-coming post either. Just like I don't need a holiday to drink a bunch of booze, I don't need a holiday to make me like horror either. Both are great any time of year.

Off Season, Ketchum's first novel (now available uncut and uncensored!) from 1980, proves that Ketchum has had those globe-sized balls since the beginning of his career. If you like your thrills with a gigantic fucking safety net, then you best leave this one to the fucking professionals.

Off Season tells the story of three NYC couples who go to a remote cabin in coastal Maine for a week of sex and drinking, only be preyed upon by a feral family of cannibals that live in a cave.

Seriously - that's all there is to it. Sounds like the plot of a forgettable horror film that you pop in late and pass out before it ends, never bothering the next morning to see what you missed. But Ketchum makes that shit come alive, dear reader, alive in ways you probably didn't want to ever think about.

Essentially, this is the ultimate Deliverance-style story. You take a bunch of realistic, recognizable characters with common insecurities and problems then throw them into the most extreme situation imaginable and watch all that petty shit melt away till nothing is left but the will to survive. In addition to the struggle of the couples, Ketchum also sheds some light on the lives of the in-bred cannibals, even dropping almost plausible hints as to how such a clan has managed to stay hidden and fed for so long.

Like most of Ketchum's work, there's no supernatural shit going on in Off Season if that kinda stuff bothers you. Basically, this is a disgusting, agonizing story story told breathlessly and without compromise. After all the players are laid out for us, the attack goes down and the second half of the book takes place over just a few hours and good fucking God is it hard to put this beast down once you're in the shit. For a book with a shit-ton of action and suspense, you're never less than completely clear about what's going on and how while also never skipping ahead because you're bogged down in details. You ever notice how in a suspense sequence, authors will always over-explain shit to the point where it takes a lot of will-power to not just skip ahead to see what the outcome of the scene is? That shit never happens with Ketchum, dude is always on-the-money.

And according to an afterword by Ketchum in the edition I read (Leisure Books June 2006 edition), the original version of Off Season did not have the perfect, devastatingly bleak ending that the current version does. So if you read this book years ago, I strongly suggest you pick it up again. You gotta admire a book that, in addition to being about...you know...in-bred cannibals raping, cooking and eating people, manages to have an even more dire climax than you could have ever imagined.

Like I said, dude goes all the fucking way. If you think you've got the stomach for it, the Nerd strongly suggests you follow his ass.

Panic Attack by Jason Starr

I reviewed Panic Attack by Jason Starr over at Bookspot.

Give that shit a look.

In said review I fully admit to being in the wrong.

Intrigued? No? Give it a shot anyway. Don't cost nothin'.

The Silent Hour by Michael Koryta

My review of Michael Koryta's The Silent Hour is up over at bookspot.

You should check out Koryta's shit, dear reader.

He's not much of a curser and he never goes "full dark" as they say, but he kicks Connelly's ass, far as the Nerd is concerned.

Check it out right HERE.

Catching Up #41: Real Time by Randall Cole

Holy shit, dear readers. You should just click over to your netflix account right now and slap fucking Real Time onto the top of your queue (you didn't really wanna watch that documentary on climate change, no matter how good the cheese kid at Whole Foods said it was). Seriously, fuck my review, just do it, done and done.

Okay, so that was rash. Read and cherish every fucking word of my review, then shoot it to the top of your queue.

Why should you do all this shit sight un-fucking-seen, you ask? Well, because I have fucking impeccable taste and you know this to be the scout's-honor-fucking-true. But for the unfaithful: go fuck yourselves. Nah, don't do that - pay someone else to do it for you.

Let's try that again: For the unfaithful, let's sleepwalk through this fucking plot summary dance yet again:

Real Time is a Canadian feature directed by Randall Cole starring Jay Baruchel (Seth Rogen's fellow Canadian roommate in Knocked Up) as a degenerate gambler and Randy Quaid (ummm...if you don't know who Randy Quaid is, see more movies) as the hitman who has come to make him pay. Instead of just shooting Baruchel and calling it a day (the deadbeat owes 68,000 and has sixty bucks to his fucking name), Quaid gives him an hour to make amends, do whatever he wants before he takes one in the back of the head. And it's in, you know, real time (which makes it a short fucking movie, remember when they used to make those?).

Now, I know what you're thinking, you're all like thanks but no thanks, Nerd. I don't fall for high-concept bullshit movies. Well, skeptical reader, you're only cheating yourself because Real Time is hilarious, engrossing and heartbreaking.

And when I say it's hilarious, I fucking mean that shit. It's basically these two dudes running around some Canadian shithole (in other words the shitholiest of shitholes) spouting some of the best dialogue I've heard since In Bruges. Good God, go me! That was a very apt comparison on my part (*pats self on back*). Real Time is very much in line with Bruges, another hilarious off-beat crime film that is both absurd and profound.

I really don't wanna get too much into the specifics of this one because I don't feel like many have seen it and it would be hindered by knowing much more beyond the concept, but come on. I went out there with an In Bruges comparison, a movie I love almost as much as prime rib.

So check out Real Time, a true fucking sleeper that deserves your rheumy eyes and cauliflowered ears for its short, blissful fucking running time.