Like the first entry, the characters fall completely flat. Also, the protagonist is supposedly an amazing guy, and, because he’s so amazing, he is in a polyamorous relationship with a super hot young woman and a total milf. They take his weed, said veteran decides he’s had enough of being tread on and starts eliminating the party one by one. A writer (see a theme with these weaker entries here?) goes out into the woods with his friends and they stumble across a pot farm being grown by a Vietnam veteran. Think First Blood but written by a guy who is inserting some wish-fulfillment into a tale of survival in the middle of the woods. It’s clear that Ketchum loved his trip to Greece and attempted to recapture some of the sense of place and history he felt while there, but the result is a thoroughly dull book filled with ludicrous sex and violence that drags on for far too long. The violence is often ludicrous, the characters are more caricatures than people, and this also has one of the most unintentionally funny climaxes I’ve ever read in a book (if you’ve read this, you know that that’s secretly a double entendre. Not only is it twice the length it needs to be, at an industry-standard 300 something pages, but it’s just dull. The fact of the matter is, though, that this is his worst piece of long fiction. It’s a simple premise, and one that Ketchum attempts to mine for all its worth by using the history of Greece to tell a tale of supposed supernatural terror a la Stephen King. Things go horribly wrong when a down on his luck writer begins a short fling with a beautiful but disturbed young woman while on a trip to Greece. So, if you’re sensitive to this type of subject matter, I’d advise proceeding with caution. Suffice it to say that we’ll be covering some dark territory with this article. Today, I’d like to rank his long fiction, examining what works and what doesn’t in each book. While his impact on horror will be felt for a long time, not every one of his books was created equal. His best works transcend genre and instead hold up a pitch-black mirror to the world we live in, examining why people do all the terrible things they do. I didn’t get into Jack Ketchum’s work until after he died in 2018, but it’s not difficult to see why he was so respected within the genre.

Jack ketchum dead river series