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Fear And Loathing In The Bookstore

The Damned Highway:Fear And Loathing In Arkham, Brian Keene and Nick Mamatas; Dark Horse Books, $14

This is one seriously funny and twisted novel. I'd like to thank Ritchie Yates for bringing it to my attention.

If you were alive, politically aware and reading Hunter Thompson in "Rolling Stone" in '72 you won't be able to put it down.

Brian Keene and Nick Mamatas have written a novel featuring all the boogey men from my teen and early adult years. Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, Thomas Eagleton, Ed Muskie, they're all in here. It is a wonderfully fictional memoir written as only Uncle Lono could have written it. Except he didn't write it. He narrates it. Keene and Mamatas successfully channel H. P. Lovecraft in an effort to bring us Hunter Thompson the way he would want to be remembered.

Ever wondered what would have happened if Thompson had been on the trail of Cthulu instead of every two-bit politician who wanted to be or control the President in the ‘70s? This book answers that question.

Ever needed a good laugh and were tired of watching "The Presidential Debate of the Week?" Read this book.

Want to see what a couple of Gonzo novelists can do to the old counter-culture myths of the 60s and 70s? Read this book.

Come to think of it, the blurb on the back jacket sums it up best. After all, that's what jacket blurbs are supposed to do, right?

The authors "filter the cracked brilliance of Hunter S. Thompson through the genre-defining mythos of H. P. Lovecraft in a tale of drug-fueled eldritch madness from the blackest depths of the American Nightmare." I couldn't have written it any better myself. If you ever lived in a small town and read a Lovecraft tale by flashlight while hiding in your pup tent in the backyard on a summer night, read this book.

If you don't have a well-developed sense of humor then don't attempt to read this book.