Publisher: Merricat publications
Price: $10.00
104 pages


Pick your poison: a shooting, a bludgeoning, or a zombie attack? These are only a few possibilities used to seal poor Jack Haringa's fate in Jack Haringa Must Die , edited by Nicholas Kaufmann. With an all-star cast that includes Brian Keene, Christopher Golden and Jack Ketchum, this series of cheerful blog posts has spawned into a one hundred page chapbook to benefit the Shirley Jackson awards.

So, just who the hell is Jack Haringa? Why, he's a reviewer and editor in New England, who's admired by all of his peers. Can't you tell by the title? When you're finished the book, feel free to create your own Haringa slaughter scenario in the little black pages at the end of the book.

Following the light-hearted novels of Christopher Moore and Jeff Strand, humor has become an increasingly popular trend in horror fiction. Kaufmann's collection blends Strand and Moore's comedic horror with heady doses of the dark and twisted. Also, Paul G Tremblay's introduction offers enough insight into Jack Haringa's character, and his relationship with his peers, to keep these plots from becoming an inside joke. Each scenario offers a cheeky depiction of Haringa, which trigger's his killer's motive and finishes with a creative demise. Breaking up the monotony, the collection also uses poetry and the screenplay as a stage to bury poor Jack.

Editor Kaufmann was gracious enough to allow Haringa to write a posthumous afterward, to haunt his killers, and to set the record straight regarding his most irritating habits.

Flash fiction is a tricky art, mostly because a writer must successfully condense the plot, in keeping with a beginning, middle and end, while fully demonstrating character motivations. At least a handful of these tales do not fully realize their plot, and feel rushed, even for flash pieces. Consequently, the reader might miss the motivation for Haringa's killing, or not find it believable. However, some of the collection's shortest tales are skillfully written and say everything that must be said in under a paragraph.

After the first twenty-five pages, I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. Jack Haringa Must Die is easily the most amusing read I've sat down with in ages. If ever I need a text to dissuade me from misplacing my semicolons, or ending a sentence with a preposition, this is it! An overall recommended book from this montage of Haringa's colleagues.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?