It's easy to draw parallels to the noir greats here, but since I just finished reading several Cain novels I will repeat what I wrote in my review for Double Indemnity because it applies just as well here: It all starts with a delicious chill up your spine, your eyeballs riveted to the page, your breath held, the "gotta know what happens next" monster rattling the bars of his cage. I blasted through this book in a two days, starting deep into the night and finishing just minutes ago.

It is a great and fun read that is really messed up, but all the while it touches on so many truths. Narrada en un tono cómico negro, cáustico, que evidentemente hace una crítica brutal sobre las Sectas y de lo que las rodea, el fanatismo desmedido. However, while certainly highly aware of how the genres he uses are structured and how they function, Evenson doesn’t burden his work with extraneous, ‘clever’ information. He's then approached by a cult who believe that amputation brings one closer to God, and is forced to solve a murder in their midst.The Brotherhood of Mutilation” is about Kline’s introduction to a sect which practices the voluntary amputation of limbs and the more limbs you’ve amputated, the higher you are in the hierarchy of the sect. I do not want to give anything away but I want to emphasize that Evenson uses gore and mutilations/amputations, in a way that will leave most people saying Holy Shit! Or is it the moment when voices suddenly fade away and stop talking altogether, leaving you utterly alone? Sure, the thriller elements are most definitely present, and the novel is inspired by the classic noir detective fiction (the blurb mentions the author's fascination with Dashiel Hammett's Red Harvest).

This is actually one of the first books I bought on Kindle, and it’s taken me literally years to read it. Of course, by Evenson's own reckoning, he wanted to take traditional elements and put the knife to them. Furthermore, it’s a narrative that demonstrates how hilarity and snarky dialogue can be used effectively even when a story is pushing at the edges of its genre’s darkest, most emotionally gritty and grotesque boundaries.Kline’s tasked with solving the murder, but his investigation stalls because the deeper he digs the more he’s given the runaround until he begins to question everything. This was my first Evenson and I picked it up originally because one of my favorite authors, Peter Straub, wrote the introduction for it. In religious contexts, acts like the brotherhood’s are frequently viewed as sacrifices, but sacrifices have a goal, while these particular ‘sacrifices’ are not for anything.

The reader is dragged through all of it by the powerful, gripping prose, the speed at which the story propels forward, and a main character whose strange motivations and thirst for answers are both incredible and strangely understandable. His relentless Last Days is a stark existential noir from hell inspire by Hammett’s equally relentless Red Harvest and the art of Joel-peter Witkin and Odd Nerdrum and more than equals its influences.The first part honestly feel more like a horror novel and the second part feels more noir (particularly of the Mickey Spillane violent variety).

The horrific nature of the brotherhood’s customs and the often very funny dialogue of some of its members makes for fascinating reading. He uses dark, disturbing content that would be more at home in bizarro/horror fiction as spice, and sometimes as misdirection, for a story that is both an existential journey of discovery and rebirth, as well as an indictment of religious fanaticism.

They are filled with short sentence and quick dialogue that wouldn't feel out of place in a James Ellroy novel (the longer, more detailed descriptions are used sparingly and only for horrific effect). Lisp and Low Voice do not take no for an answer and Kline finds himself being transported to the compound of the “Brothers of Mutilations,” a religious cult founded on the premise that chopping off your body parts makes you holey holy and makes God happy. As Kline descends into a haze of carnage and chaos, you have to wonder that even if he does survive, would he be better off dead?