Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #656301 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Private eye Max "Mutt" Mason is enlisted by the sultry Lavinia Tillinghast to locate her errant twin sister, a mystery woman with secrets to spare. He soon finds himself thrust into an unimaginable sequence of events that, if unchecked, will lead to the return of arcane elder gods and the end of the world. Mason's investigation is fraught with chilling family secrets, corpses—both eviscerated and resuscitated— and a full slate of other obscure happenings: kidnappings, giant carnivorous plants, women unwillingly sacrificed to the lusts of extra-dimensional horrors and the resulting half-human offspring of those unions. With its Leviathan-sized tentacled wigglies, diabolic rituals, tough guy fisticuffs, books of forbidden knowledge and even a creepy asylum, this heartfelt geekfest merrily blends the genres of crime noir and H.P. Lovecraftian horror fiction. Marraffino's homage-drenched script shamelessly piles on the clichés and in-jokes (the most groan-inducing of which is a secretary named "Miss Katonic"), while Rausch's jittery artwork achieves the perfect balance between the cartoony and the outright disturbing, resulting in an enjoyable romp. (Apr.)
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From Booklist
The first frame shows a buoy in a big-city harbor; the next, some tall buildings; the next, a shorter commercial building, a shadow in a third-floor window. At the raised sash, we meet Max "Mutt" Murphy, PI, involuntarily bowing. Max likes his Scotch, y'see. A prospective client, a looker, shows up, and Max takes the case of finding her missing sister, who's possibly with her personal physician, Dr. Akeley. He finds her, alright, and much more he hadn't bargained for. The name Akeley and a periodically glimpsed comic book entitled Necronomoman tip off omnivorous pulp fans that this is a Lovecraft parody as well as a noir parody. While Marraffino is no slouch at tough-guy snappy comebacks and portentous innuendos, the star of this series opener is Rausch, who makes the book a disorienting visual extravaganza by merging the wriggling baroque textures of graveyard-humor cartoonist Gahan Wilson, the splatter effects of horror-comics artist Basil Wolverton, the eccentric perspectives of expressionist cinema and Russian constructivist photography, and a lantern-jawed trace of Dick Tracy. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Incredibly Gruesome
The introduction page calls this a "fusion of Chandleresque hard-boiled noir and the weird horror of H.P. Lovecraft". I have not read either Chandler or Lovecraft so can't comment. What I can say is that it certainly is weird! An alcoholic private eye is hired by a beautiful dame to find her missing twin sister. She conveniently leaves out the part about her family being in cahoots with obscure creatures from the underworld. There was a lot of tongue-in-cheek humour and obviously a parody of the genre yet incredibly gruesome. We find man-eating giant plants, an insane asylum, rotting walking corpses, giant boat sinking octopuses and oh so much more. A fun, quickie read.