4 Stars - Strongly Recommended: grind-zarro, gritty, and features a car that can kick Christine's ass
Pages: 142
Publisher: Double Life Press
Released: May 2015
It was the last god damn time anyone was going to break into his car. Gilbert had had enough.
From gritty cover to grindhouse content, Andrew Hilbert's Death Thing is the best kind of revenge novel. Cleaning up a little blood and gore is a small price to pay for crotchety ole Gilbert, who just about loses his mind when another miscreant breaks into his car. Set on teaching the local riffraff a lesson, he converts his car into a death thing - a booby trapped "bum motel" that will impale and burn his victims alive. Just let them reach in and grab the bait he left on the front passenger seat! And when his wife wakes him in the middle of the night and he hears the screams of the dying, Gilbert know he's on to something great.
And there's only one setback. A minor one, really. As he fine tunes his killing machine, Gilbert becomes the unfortunate recipient of some pretty nasty facial burns when testing the propane trigger. But no matter. This only fuels his (a-hem) fire more, and with his oozey, disgusting outsides now matching his miserable, cranky insides, he enlists the help of his neighbor Larry with disposing of the bodies, which are starting to pile up quite nicely. All seems to be going well until they catch the attention of the local police, which brings with it an entirely new game changer.
An unrepentant gore-fest, Death Thing was an absolute delight to read. Hilbert is like the Simon Pegg of slasher novels. He's grindzarro horror (yes, I'm coining a term, part grindhouse, part bizarro horror), where the characters are actually characters, with, you know, real personalities and stuff, that do some pretty fucked up shit and keep us glued to our seats, turning the pages just to see how much more fucked up things can get.
A perfect debut novel from what I anticipate becoming a new favorite publisher. And a deliciously pulpy start to the summer!
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