The Least of My Scars edition by Stephen Graham Jones Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks
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You haven't heard of William Colton Hughes. Or, if you have, then you're not telling anybody. Not telling them anything, ever. He's not the serial killer on the news, in the textbooks. He's the one out there still punching his card, and a few other people's too. He is a nightmare come to life, waiting in his apartment for you to knock on his door. William Colton Hughes is living his fantasy his victims are delivered to his apartment every few days. But when he's suddenly alone, no visitors, nobody to talk to but himself, he begins to lose what little of his mind he has left. Has his benefactor, his employer, been his prison warden all along? His apartment complex a hospital? Is he going to have to go back to heaving dark plastic bags into dumpsters when nobody's looking? Or will Dashboard Mary, a mysterious woman hell-bent on revenge, get to him first? This is William Colton Hughes. Come and knock on his door.
The Least of My Scars edition by Stephen Graham Jones Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks
(Original review appears in Pantheon Magazine at http://pantheonmag.com/book-review-the-least-of-my-scars-by-stephen-graham-jones/)What one realizes soon after starting Stephen Graham Jones’s The Least of My Scars, is that based solely on its subject matter and physical length, economy of execution must rule the day, or it won’t work.
Said length is a tight 183 pages. Said subject matter is murder and body disposal, with a little cannibalism thrown in to lighten the mood.
Our perpetrator is one William Colton Hughes, serial killer and unreliable narrator extraordinaire. Unreliable because one is never sure when he’s speaking to us, himself, or any one of the bodies he keeps in his near-labyrinthine apartment complex which functions both as his home and office.
Whoever his audience of the moment, the reader won’t be able to resist listening.
The plot is as basic as it is wonderfully lurid. As Hughes tells us early on, he’s been killing for sixteen years until he got “saved” in the thirteenth when, in the midst of cutting up a yoga instructor inside a public storage unit, he’s interrupted by a debonair man named Singer, along with his two armed goons. The yoga instructor turns out to be Singer’s wife, whom he tracked there by the microchip implanted in her dog as a means to check whether or not she’s been cheating on him. Singer is not the least bit distraught by what he finds, and instead offers Hughes a deal: if he would become Singer’s personal, in-house murder-and-disposal man, Singer would house and keep him secure, as well as feed his appetites by sending right to his doorstep a steady stream of failed employees, witnesses, and overall impediments to his criminal enterprise.
After some grizzly coercion from Singer which is meant to test Hughes’s skillset, along with his survival instincts, he’s soon set up in the fourth floor of one of Singer’s fleabag apartment buildings called the Chesshire Arms. Here the unit above Hughes, the ones to either side, and the two below are kept empty in order to stave off noise and suspicion so that he can do his work with a minimum of worry.
What follows is a series of murder-and-disposal vignettes of various unwitting folk sent by Singer under false pretenses, though as witnessed through Hughes’s psychopathic lens, come off mostly as monotonous chores after the initial thrill of the actual killing passes. Much time is spent with Hughes engaging in self-conversation and proto-philosophical musings.
All the things you pray for when you’re young, they don’t turn out to be exactly what you really wanted after all.
Jones depicts him as a man who’s his own best audience, with the justifications of his nature being one of his preferred topics.
“Some of the people you escort out of the world, it’s just a job, something to occupy your afternoon. Others, though, others you learn a little something from. So it’s like they never die, really. At least not until you do. And in spite of what they said with their eyes right before their pupils went all fixed and dilated, focused on something I always thought was right behind me but never could turn fast enough to see.”
The central conflict of the book emerges when a mysterious woman starts engaging Hughes through the cell phone of one of his first Chesshire Arms victims, a young man who may or may not have been her boyfriend. Hughes, who refers to the woman as Dashboard Mary throughout, spends a great deal of time trying to ascertain her true motives. Sometimes she leaves him clues at his doorstep, or in the corridor outside. Once even inside one of the empty neighboring apartments. Is it vengeance she’s after, or something more elaborate? All Hughes knows for certain is that she’s fully aware of who he is and what he does.
As he engages Dashboard Mary in increasingly tense verbal chess-matches over the phone, he starts to piece the clues together. By the time Singer returns to the picture, Hughes has assembled something that approaches coherence in his mind regarding all parties involved, at which point Jones skillfully pulls the rug right out from under both Hughes’s and the reader’s expectations, yielding a resolution that’s at once surprising, dubious in its probability, and yet somehow heartbreaking.
The Least of My Scars is simple and taut in its execution, following a straight-forward linear structure—something of a departure for Jones whose previous novels tend to play with and juggle multiple timelines, though rarely ever in any detracting way. Jones is highly gifted in characterization and language, and in this book he maximizes them in order to skate the fine line between genre exploitation, and simply going too far. As stated earlier, economy is crucial when dealing with a main character bereft of empathy and concrete motive, and if not for Hughes’s unintentional humor—by way of Jones’s deft language—he would be almost impossible to endure.
If one of Jones’s main themes is a loss of innocence (Growing Up Dead in Texas, Flushboy), then The Least of My Scars represents the polar-extreme conclusion of this loss. Even with the dark humor braided throughout, this is a dark, nihilistic, and challenging read. For those expecting justice or pat conclusions, it is recommended that you look elsewhere. Jones is a writer who delves—albeit intelligently—in horror, crime, and all its subgenres from the bizarre to the grotesque, where elliptical conclusions and unresolved paradoxes are the norm. If one is willing to allow the unnerving to linger long after the book has been shelved, then by all means proceed with all your senses open.
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The Least of My Scars edition by Stephen Graham Jones Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks Reviews
You're out at a bar. It's late. You wonder what you're waiting for when you feel a pat on your back, swivel around on your bar stool and shake the hand of a guy you've never seen before, but you know you're meant to. He nods and bares his teeth in a farewell smile. You look down at your palm and read the note. 'Something-something-something Chessire Arms.' An apartment complex. You head there the next day, stroll right up to the door, and knock. You're there for a reason. It could be you stepped on some toes or know too much of the wrong thing, but what matters is you're there now, looking at that door. And whatever you think is on the other side - that answer to your persistent question, the psychological evaluation your promotion hangs on - it's not what you think. You've knocked, and William Colton Hughes is turning the knob.
A serial killer with a busy schedule. All his kills are delivered to his front door like a pig waddling its way to a butcher, laying its pink self beneath the knife. Then one day, this seemingly endless stream of cattle ends. The victims are out of stock, it seems. What will Billy do?
This book puts you into the grotesque mind of a bastard, who quickly becomes a very likable bastard, from a distance. His often hilarious views on the world will keep you chuckling, his violent past and present will keep you cringing, and his spiraling predicament will keep you guessing. What will happen next? He's twisted, and you should hate him, but he is what he is. And, somehow, you'll be thankful he is.
Premise a serial killer in his own apartment complex where his victims some to him. Kind of like Patrick Bateman's personal paradise. Or is it?
I almost NEVER give the 5 star review, but I just felt like this is one of those special novels that was more than 4. If I could I'd put it at 4 1/2, because I don't know if it would fall into the category of my favorite novels ever, but 4 alone just doesn't do it justice.
There's something so eerie, so strange, so... realistically terrifying in the narrative of this story. I don't know how Jones was able to tap into such a thing, and I can't imagine it was easy. It reads likes it was written in a single sitting while locked in a concrete room and peaking on some terrifying drug, hearing sounds where there are no sounds and seeing visions in the stillness around you.
I've read a few of Jones short stories, so this is my first novel experience with him. I wonder if the others will hold up compared to this one or if I just spoiled myself and started with the best. Time will tell because this book has hooked me in as a fan for good.
For those looking for a fun romp through the mind of a killer, look elsewhere. Like an abyss, this books looks into you, pokes at those thoughts and feelings you didn't think were there, like an old scar you don't remember getting in the first place. Reminded me of the same dread and uncomfortable feeling I got while reading Come Close.
It's truly amazing and I could barely pull myself away from it. Bravo to Stephen Graham Jones for constructing such a horrifying work and additional kudos for Broken River Books to publishing it (they've done some amazing stuff, so far as I've read).
(Original review appears in Pantheon Magazine at http//pantheonmag.com/book-review-the-least-of-my-scars-by-stephen-graham-jones/)
What one realizes soon after starting Stephen Graham Jones’s The Least of My Scars, is that based solely on its subject matter and physical length, economy of execution must rule the day, or it won’t work.
Said length is a tight 183 pages. Said subject matter is murder and body disposal, with a little cannibalism thrown in to lighten the mood.
Our perpetrator is one William Colton Hughes, serial killer and unreliable narrator extraordinaire. Unreliable because one is never sure when he’s speaking to us, himself, or any one of the bodies he keeps in his near-labyrinthine apartment complex which functions both as his home and office.
Whoever his audience of the moment, the reader won’t be able to resist listening.
The plot is as basic as it is wonderfully lurid. As Hughes tells us early on, he’s been killing for sixteen years until he got “saved” in the thirteenth when, in the midst of cutting up a yoga instructor inside a public storage unit, he’s interrupted by a debonair man named Singer, along with his two armed goons. The yoga instructor turns out to be Singer’s wife, whom he tracked there by the microchip implanted in her dog as a means to check whether or not she’s been cheating on him. Singer is not the least bit distraught by what he finds, and instead offers Hughes a deal if he would become Singer’s personal, in-house murder-and-disposal man, Singer would house and keep him secure, as well as feed his appetites by sending right to his doorstep a steady stream of failed employees, witnesses, and overall impediments to his criminal enterprise.
After some grizzly coercion from Singer which is meant to test Hughes’s skillset, along with his survival instincts, he’s soon set up in the fourth floor of one of Singer’s fleabag apartment buildings called the Chesshire Arms. Here the unit above Hughes, the ones to either side, and the two below are kept empty in order to stave off noise and suspicion so that he can do his work with a minimum of worry.
What follows is a series of murder-and-disposal vignettes of various unwitting folk sent by Singer under false pretenses, though as witnessed through Hughes’s psychopathic lens, come off mostly as monotonous chores after the initial thrill of the actual killing passes. Much time is spent with Hughes engaging in self-conversation and proto-philosophical musings.
All the things you pray for when you’re young, they don’t turn out to be exactly what you really wanted after all.
Jones depicts him as a man who’s his own best audience, with the justifications of his nature being one of his preferred topics.
“Some of the people you escort out of the world, it’s just a job, something to occupy your afternoon. Others, though, others you learn a little something from. So it’s like they never die, really. At least not until you do. And in spite of what they said with their eyes right before their pupils went all fixed and dilated, focused on something I always thought was right behind me but never could turn fast enough to see.”
The central conflict of the book emerges when a mysterious woman starts engaging Hughes through the cell phone of one of his first Chesshire Arms victims, a young man who may or may not have been her boyfriend. Hughes, who refers to the woman as Dashboard Mary throughout, spends a great deal of time trying to ascertain her true motives. Sometimes she leaves him clues at his doorstep, or in the corridor outside. Once even inside one of the empty neighboring apartments. Is it vengeance she’s after, or something more elaborate? All Hughes knows for certain is that she’s fully aware of who he is and what he does.
As he engages Dashboard Mary in increasingly tense verbal chess-matches over the phone, he starts to piece the clues together. By the time Singer returns to the picture, Hughes has assembled something that approaches coherence in his mind regarding all parties involved, at which point Jones skillfully pulls the rug right out from under both Hughes’s and the reader’s expectations, yielding a resolution that’s at once surprising, dubious in its probability, and yet somehow heartbreaking.
The Least of My Scars is simple and taut in its execution, following a straight-forward linear structure—something of a departure for Jones whose previous novels tend to play with and juggle multiple timelines, though rarely ever in any detracting way. Jones is highly gifted in characterization and language, and in this book he maximizes them in order to skate the fine line between genre exploitation, and simply going too far. As stated earlier, economy is crucial when dealing with a main character bereft of empathy and concrete motive, and if not for Hughes’s unintentional humor—by way of Jones’s deft language—he would be almost impossible to endure.
If one of Jones’s main themes is a loss of innocence (Growing Up Dead in Texas, Flushboy), then The Least of My Scars represents the polar-extreme conclusion of this loss. Even with the dark humor braided throughout, this is a dark, nihilistic, and challenging read. For those expecting justice or pat conclusions, it is recommended that you look elsewhere. Jones is a writer who delves—albeit intelligently—in horror, crime, and all its subgenres from the bizarre to the grotesque, where elliptical conclusions and unresolved paradoxes are the norm. If one is willing to allow the unnerving to linger long after the book has been shelved, then by all means proceed with all your senses open.
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