cover image Weed Species

Weed Species

Jack Ketchum. Cemetery Dance Publications, $35 (86pp) ISBN 978-1-58767-154-8

Gratuitous sex and violence overwhelm the slight plot of this shocker about sociopaths and their malignant influence. Its principal characters, Sherry Jefferson and Owen Delassandro, are a pair of perverts who get their kicks from kidnapping, raping, torturing and occasionally killing young female victims before a brush with the law predictably ends their spree. Ketchum (Off Season), who is usually more adroit at using hardcore horror as a vehicle for social commentary, spends most of the story describing the couples' exploits with pornographic abandon. His half-hearted efforts to show how problems ranging from domestic violence to depraved social indifference stem from the same root cause as Sherry and Owen's kinks get totally lost in the story's excesses.