Road Kill BCA Edition: Amazon.ca: Jack Ketchum: Books

Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Sex, murder and mayhem are stock in trade for the vastly popular Ketchum (The Girl Next Door), and so are odd coincidences, which abound in this gory reissue. Wayne, a bartender and would-be killer who always chickens out at the last minute, nearly chokes his girl-friend to death while on a hike. After she runs off, he happens to see a couple committing a brutal murder and recognizes one of them as a regular at his bar. The dead man, Howard-done in by his ex-wife, Carole, and her new lover, Lee-is found in a stream by a Boy Scout who is dispassionately curious about the stinking corpse. The pathways coalesce when Wayne forces Lee and Carole into a meaningless drive inevitably complete with senseless murder. These are the actors that make Ketchum's melodrama compelling, nasty but peculiarly irresistible.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Ingram

Hoping to escape from her abusive ex-husband, a woman and her lover successfully carry out their plot to murder him, only to find themselves at the mercy of an obsessive, twisted stranger who witnessed the crime. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Tag this product

(What's this?)

Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.

Customer Reviews

2 Reviews

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

Average Customer Review

4.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most helpful customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Fasten your seatbelts for this joyride, Jun 17 2006

By	Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Joyride (Paperback)

Jack Ketchum knows how to write a good horror story. There is nothing exceptional or highly original about the plot of Joyride, but it is a very satisfying read. The book opens with a murder. Carole has been a victim throughout her entire life; her ex-husband Howard had abused her just about every way possible. The only way to finally get rid of him, she and her new man Lee decide, is to kill him and make it look like an accident. They think they pull off a perfect crime, but they do not realize at the time that someone else has watched the whole thing, someone even more evil and perverted than Howard. Wayne Lock has killed things throughout his life, but he has always stopped just short of killing a human being. He sees Carole and her ex-husband as his deliverance, kidnapping them, trying to learn from them what murder feels like. The end result is a murder spree of epic proportions, with Carol and Lee his reluctant "witnesses."

One criticism Ketchum is vulnerable to is characterization, but he does a pretty good job of it in this novel. Oddly enough, this is most evident in the character of the policeman pursuing the mass murdering Wayne Lock. He knows Carole's history, and she reminds him a lot of his own ex-wife; it is he, however, who makes the most significant realization about himself at the novel's conclusion. We get snips and pieces of Wayne Lock's history, enough to explain the murderous intensity of his personality but not enough to truly understand his reasoning. Carole and Lee are not developed fully in my mind, but this seems to me to be a positive in the context of this novel. I never felt strongly negative or positive toward them; they moved in a haze of contradiction where good and evil continuously wove in amongst each other.

There is plenty of carnage in this book--that's pretty much a given with Ketchum. Another given, and this is what makes Ketchum such a great horror writer, is a brutally honest plot that will not cheat the reader at the end. It is hard to predict a Ketchum ending, which is the main reason I respect him greatly as an author. The cavalry doesn't appear magically over the hill to save the day--instead, things happen the way they would most likely happen in real life--good and evil are second-string players in this game; reality itself determines the fate of Ketchum's characters. This makes for a gripping read, even in a case such as this where the storyline is nothing remarkably original.

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

4.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing and Scary, Jun 28 2004

By	Joshua Koppel (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Road Kill (Hardcover)

Earlier this week I read the scary little novel ROAD KILL by Jack Ketchum. I was first introduced to Ketchum through his novels OFF SEASON and OFFSPRING which concerned a small town haunted by a cannibalistic family descended from shipwreck survivors. But ROAD KILL hits much closer to home and is thus not suitable for everyone.

A woman decides that the only way she can be free of her abusive ex-husband (one who has scarred her and been unrestrained by restraining orders) is to kill him. She and her new boyfriend come up with a plan and carry it out one dark night. By they were not alone. Their actions were witnessed by a man who became fascinated with what they had done. He has often wondered what it would be like to kill someone, but has never had the courage to follow his desires.

Obsessed with this couple who have done what he cannot, the man tracks them down. He wants to talk to them to see what it was like. He wants all of the details. But his obsession grows and soon he has killed his first victim. He is ecstatic and drags the couple around on a killing spree. But the police manage to track him down rather quickly and put and end to the short-lived horror.

ROAD KILL is an excellent example of psychological horror. The reader is drawn into the mind of a slightly twisted individual where they can then see the complete breakdown piece by piece. The terror lies in just how easily the deterioration progresses. The victims are random and could be anybody. It manages to convey the ides that we live in a very dangerous world where anything can happen. But at the end of this novel we find out that justice is not completely blind and that the sword of justice can be blunted with compassion. And that can give the reader hope.

Road Kill BCA Edition (Hardcover)

Product Details

Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Ingram

Tag this product

Customer Reviews

Feedback

Your Recent History