Joyride

Rating:
Summary: Ketchum and Serial Killers
Review: "Joyride," another Jack Ketchum book I read recently, is a serial killer novel. I think at some point all horror writers are required to write such a book. It must be embedded in their first contracts with a publishing house-"Thou shalt write a book concerning serial killers!" Obviously, this becomes a problem when it is done to death over a period of time. If you really want to read about serial killers, check out the numerous encyclopedias and collections on real life killers and psychos. They tell you the real story, and most of the writers crib from them anyway. In the case of "Joyride," Ketchum certainly did crib from a true account.

Poor Carole and Lee. They want to be together but Howard, Carole's ex-husband, insists on making his presence felt even when he isn't welcome. Howard feels that his propensity towards intimidation and forcing himself on Carole should merit reconciliation. Lee and Carole have other ideas. After police intervention has no effect on curbing Howard's violence, Lee broaches the idea of killing Howard. Carole goes along with this novel plan and the murder is done. Unfortunately for our two lovers, someone sees them do the deed. Even worse, this someone, Wayne Lock, is a sociopath with his own sick fantasies about murder. Wayne feels a sort of camaraderie for the two, and decides to pay them a visit. The rest of the book concerns these three people as Wayne goes on a killing spree. A subplot involves a local cop and his family problems.

This is a pretty straightforward book. The plot is simple, as is the prose. Surprisingly, for a Ketchum novel, the murders aren't exercises in over-the-top gore. A few of them are upsetting, especially the murder of Howard. But overall, they lack the usual Ketchum punch.

Also surprising is the character development. All of them are well drawn, with the exception of Wayne. Why write a serial killer novel and not develop the serial killer? This is not to say that Wayne isn't developed at all; he is. But not nearly as well as he should have been. More background on why Wayne is the way he is would have helped. How about more details about his messed up childhood? That always has the potential for some serious horror. Alas, 'tis not so.

The ending of the book set off alarm bells in my head. I recognized the parallels to the Howard Unruh case almost immediately. For those unfamiliar with Howard Unruh, let me fill you in. Unruh, a WWII veteran, went on a shooting rampage in his neighborhood. Unruh was settling scores with neighbors who had done him wrong; he even wrote down the various "crimes" his fellow man committed against him (just as Wayne does in this book). Unruh's shooting spree left scores dead or wounded. When the cops finally arrived, Unruh holed up in his house. A reporter called Unruh in order to find out what was going on. Unruh's answer was, "I have to go now, I'm kind of busy right now." Wayne says the same thing when the cops call him at his house.

For a Ketchum novel, "Joyride" is about average. I expected a little more out of it than it delivered. It's still a good way to pass a few hours (the book is very short and a quick read). I'm slowly working my way up to "The Girl Next Door," supposedly the roman-a-clef of Ketchum's literary catalogue.

Rating:
Summary: Definitely not as good as "Girl Next Door" and "Off Season"
Review: After reading "The Girl Next Door" and "Off Season", I can only give this book 3 stars. It's good, but it's not his best, and it gets a little repetitious at times. After what one has to go through to find themselves copies of Jack Ketchum's books, one expects no less than the best.

Rating:
Summary: Fasten your seatbelts for this joyride
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Fasten your seatbelts for this joyride
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: JOY RIDE - A Review By Steve Vernon
Review: Set aside a Sunday for this running slip noose of a novel. You'll read it in a sitting, I guarantee. Forget about the munchies, forget about the customary cold beer. Just dive right in and chew through this nasty little thriller, written with the vigor of a power-diving white shark.

I give this nasty little novel a fast breathless Yowza!!

Buy it. Read it. Catch your breath.

Yours in horror,
Steve Vernon
(author of the wild west horror novella
LONG HORN, BIG SHAGGY
from Black Death Books
Back-from-the-dead mountainmen, carrion stallion and zombified buffalo! You will never look at a severed head the same way again.)

Rating:
Summary: Ketchum's wrote better books.
Review: This book wasn't that great. Ok, it was a good topic, sounded interesting...was interesting but then it just started going down hill. The idea of some weird guy witnessing a murder and being excited about it-is weird enough. Then to have this guy go after the murderers because he was so excited about the murder they committed is crazy. That idea of this sounded like an edge of your seat book. It seemed somewhere in the middle this things changed. It started by diving into the cops mind about his problems when the story was about the murderers and the psycho that kidnaps them. I kept wondering why I was getting so much information about this cop...what role did he play in this? When the ending finally came around I didn't even know it. I turned the page to go on to the next chapter and there were no other chapters. It was over. I did one of those things were you read the last few paragraphs wondering, "did I miss something?" So, the plot was good enough but I can't say this was worth too much of your time.