Are you tired? Old? Sick and tired of being old? Are you constantly worried about your demise and final last breath? Well thanks to Johnson and Johnson, you no longer have to! Youthimax is the new drug on the market and can literally save your life…over and over and over….No more fatal accidents leaving you dead or worse disfigured and paralyzed, with Youthimax, one injection will insure your recovery to a younger better you! So what are you waiting for? Don’t let death lead YOUR life!
What an amazing drug! Now if I get shot, maimed, stabbed, etc. alls I need to do is get me some Youthimax and I can return to my daily activities. What could be wrong with such a miracle drug? In Patrick Malloy’s BANG BANG…a lot. Especially for two funeral home workers who begin to see a decline in business ever since Youthimax hit the market. At first, Max and Bligh just started going through the motions; Max with his steady upkeep of a funeral home that never saw a service, and Bligh steadily keeping up his drunkeness with enough whiskey to take down an elephant. Both realized that this new drug had taken away business and what’s bad for business is bad for O’Rourke Funeral Home and it’s two employees… three if you count Bligh’s free spirited, loud mouth, red headed train wreck of an awesome daughter, Grace, who mainly struts around the funeral home in her trashy but classy outfits being lude and young. You see, Grace is of a generation that never knew death. Never had to go through or experience the grief of death first hand and as we all know the younger you are the more invincible you believe yourself to be. When there is no death there is very little to life itself when you know it can’t be taken away. This is a theme that is well illustrated throughout while maintaining that black humor that drives the plot along.
With no clients coming through the door, Max and Bligh come up with an idea to bring people to them. Working in the funeral industry, that can really only mean one thing…MURDER!!! What starts off as a plan to bring business to the funeral home unravels into a much more deeper meaning for the murders being committed by Max and witnessed by his drunk oafish friend Bligh whose only real contribution is to bring the Vaseline for the silver hammer that’s wielded into the heads of each random victim. Random is key, because Max does not view himself as a killer rather as the bringer of death to a generation of people who deserve it. It’s a balance and Max is bent on restoring it ever since he himself lost the love of his life, Kelly. When Kelly was unable to be brought back with the drug, Max had not been able to accept her death and throughout the book his constant grieving over her is apparent and haunts him. So what happens when a generation of people who have never experienced death before are thrown into it’s midst? A myriad of strange characters from mafia mobsters like Vinny the Fist, the punked out invincible teens of Youthimax called The Hammerheads, to the Ever-Olds who would remain old forever despite the drug administered to them. No one is safe from the silver hammer.
Max and Bligh set out to bring death back to life but what they end up doing is stirring up a hunt for The Walrus and The Carpenter…yeah…nobody said it was a good name for a pair of serial killers which is what they become as the body count rises. When the F.B.I. gets involved, Max begins to slip into a savior complex and, “that’s the thing about having a savior complex, man. Saviors get crucified.”
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I could see this being made into a dark comedy film easy. the characters alone are engaging. Their interactions with each other solidifies your love for them and keeps you cheering on throughout their mishaps and triumphs. Grace is obnoxious and loveable and Bligh’s drunk oafish demeanor adds humor to Max’s dark side. I love Max’s transformation from the beginning to the end. I have very little negative things to say about this book
Except for one….
I should preface with I myself am a funeral director as well as went to school for embalming. So this is literally me being picky and douchey if you will, but there is a scene where after they kill someone, since they didn’t bash in the front of the face of the victim, just the back, that the face would be viewable and allow for an open casket; along with this bit of misinformation, it is stated that Bligh was to get the guy out a few hours before the visitation in order for the body to return back to it’s “natural” unnatural skin tone from blue to normal….granted this made me laugh hard. Just something to point out that that is not at all how to prepare a body for viewing and nine times outta ten any blunt trauma to the head will result in an unviewable face without some restorative art.
K, now that I’m off that soap box, being serious, this book was kick ass. I wasn’t too sure about the ending but I’m pleased with it…I think i would be more pleased if we get another book starring Max and his silver hammer.
Meet the Author!! : Patrick Malloy is a strikingly handsome young writer with great hair from the borough of Narberth, Pennsylvania. Novelists are required to have at least two dogs and mention them in their bio, and as a result Patrick currently lives in Havertown, Pennsylvania with his wife and their two dogs. Having initially gained sub-mediocre internet fame as the sole writer for ManlyWeddingBlog, Patrick now casually blogs over at his author’s site TimeSpentWasted. His first novel, Bang Bang, is available from Bedlam Press, an imprint of Necro Publications. When not writing, Patrick enjoys craft beer and Catholic guilt. For more information, visit www.timespentwasted.com or follow on Twitter at @bpatrickmalloy.
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