Skullcrack City

Skullcrack City by Jeremy Robert Johnson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Corporate slave S.P. Doyle, whose best friends are his pet turtle and his Hex addiction, sees conspiracies everywhere linking his bank to some unspeakable evil. When he's framed for murder, his conspiracies don't seem so far fetched anymore...

First off, I really hate elevator pitches but this is Office Space meets Breaking Bad meets Cthulhu.

I've lost some of my bizarro sensitivity over the years but this one was pretty strange. Doyle takes the mind-warping drug Hex and soon finds himself involved with a sinster corporation and the extra-dimensional evil it's linked to. Jeremy Robert Johnson takes some urban fantasy tropes and burns them into a fine ash before snorting them.

The writing is several notches above most bizarro fare and it has a lot of momentum once it's revealed Doyle is actually on to something and not just a burned out addict. Doyle reads like a drug-addled version of Arthur Dent, kind of a clueless guy in way over his head. There was some insta-love I didn't care for but the supporting cast was interesting when they weren't dying in horrible ways.

Aside from the previously-mentioned insta-love, the only part I didn't really care for was the end. All things considered, Skullcrack City was a cracking good read. Four out of five stars.

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