Off Season – Book 1
Overlook Connection Press
ISBN: 1-892595-020-0
211 Pages

Offspring – Book 2
Overlook Connection Press
ISBN: 1-892950-78-2
243 Pages

Reviewed by ED Trimm

Remember people – if I review a book it’s an automatic five alien heads. However, a five header doesn’t necessarily mean I care for the contents of the book, but personal preferences don’t enter into reviewing – at least not for me. I figure my job is to judge an author on his or her ability to produce a book that will rock Apex readers back on their heels and/or scare the hell out of them. In that regard, Jack Ketchum is as smooth and flawless a writer as I have read in a long time. He respects the readers’ intelligence and doesn’t flinch from using words some may not have seen before, which sends “wordophiles” like me running for the dictionary. From that point of view, Ketchem was a pleasure for me to read.

Now, Apex Digest was created for those who read and write edgy horror fiction. Ketchum stalked over to that edge and stepped right off into some dark and putrid other world where all that’s good and decent ceases to exist. Some malevolent creature dwells in the remote recesses of Jack Ketchum’s brain that has given Ketchum a galloping case of the shuddering evils. On occasion, that creature oozes out one seriously hideous tale or another. In this case it has given us Off Season and Offspring. I was deeply honored to have been given a copy of Ketchem’s unexpurgated Off Season. Those who have not yet acquired either the expurgated or unexpurgated copy of the book need to go hunting. Or give the guys at Overlook a massive dose of pleading emails – as in please re-release Off Season. Offspring will make a heck of a lot more sense if you read Off Season first.

With the same finesse and glee demonstrated by his round-the-bend crazies in Off Season and Offspring, Ketchum’s razor-sharp literary knife lifts away the delicate skin of decency even from his “civilized” characters. What is left leering out at the reader is the same fiendish delight with torture and killing shown by even the best-behaved and well-fed of cats. Unlike the well-fed cat that teases and murders then leaves the kill uneaten, these feral animals – really they can’t be called humans – eat the kill, which in Ketchum’s two books is human.

Yes, folks we have gone from Wellington’s hungry zombies to Ketchum’s well-fed cannibals. Ketchum’s two books are filled with people being chased, horrifyingly tortured, hideously murdered, butchered like cattle, their blood drunk, and their flesh eaten with relish (raw or cooked, your choice). Oh, they do jerk some of the man meat for later use. Babies are particularly sought after as are people who happen to be scared shitless. Fear, we're told, tenderizes man meat.

It took me some little time to figure out why, with all the violence and mayhem in both the Wellington and Ketchum books, Ketchum’s was by far the more terrifying and repugnant. I do believe it is because the horror in Ketchum’s books is more immediate and intimate than is Wellington’s. Wellington’s zombies were mindlessly seeking “food.” Ketchum’s characters have all their wits about them, however twisted their logic. This is something you readers will have to decide for yourselves.

Perhaps the fainthearted among you might want to take these two Ketchum books in very small doses. After all, I did consume both in one night thanks to a bad case of unmitigated rage at getting bumped from a Cayman Air flight. Still, if you want to take it all in one bite, step right up to the precipice where Apex's offerings usually hover and I will gladly give you a helpful shove down into Ketchum's quagmire. You “out there” horror lovers are going to revel in these two books. I prefer to stay here, thank you, safely within Apex’s known sphere of the twisted and insane. Of course, that’s what I said about Bryn Spark’s work too, but I grew to appreciate that man’s genius just as I am sure I will come to understand and appreciate what Ketchum has done in Off Season and Off Spring.