Knuckle Supper opens on a scene where a pair of drug-dealing Los Angeles vampires are killing a pimp in their house. They lock his twelve year old prostitute in the bathroom and kill him with an massive overdose of heroin. Then they pull his arms off, snap one finger off of each, and drink the blood from the pimp’s arms via the knuckle, in a way that I imagine might be like drinking from a bong – or something. The heroin in the veins of the now-dead pimp gets them high. During the entire scene, the vampires squabble like a stereotypical pair of junkies (a la Sid and Nancy). It is mentioned that this vampire drug-running gang call themselves “Knucklers” after this method of getting high. Later the head vampire, RJ, decides to take the young prostitute under his wing, and chaos erupts. Or maybe I should say that more chaos erupts.
Obviously, this is just a summary of the first few pages of the book, but to cut to the chase, if what I just described to you sounds interesting, then you might want to check out Knuckle Supper. Knuckle Supper by Drew Stepek is what I like to call a “shit sandwich.” Don’t get me wrong – saying that something is a shit sandwich isn’t in and of itself a bad thing. There are any number of great pieces of literature that are shit sandwiches. Take The Bungler by Patricia Highsmith for example, or basically all of the good output of James M. Cain or Jim Thompson. Shit sandwiches are books where shitty people do shitty things to other shitty people (and themselves) and eventually things turn out more shitty or less shitty, but usually more shitty. These novels very often include drug use and/or dysfunctional love affairs. Not to get all literate on everybody, but I classify The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles as the big daddy shit sandwich of all time, at least in book form. That was one big stinky, bad-tasting crap-fest camouflaged as a falafel sandwich or something.
I’m trying to come up with some shit sandwiches in the horror genre. The best I can do right now is The Cipher by Kathe Koja
At best, shit sandwiches make us care about the people in them and maybe shine a light on what it means to be human. The main peril of a shit sandwich is that the reader can get alienated, annoyed, or decide that they simply don’t care about the shitty people or what shit happens to them, and the shit they are doing. I think that this ends up being one of the biggest problems with Knuckle Supper. By the end, I had stopped caring about all of the shitty people in it.
If I had to describe this book by comparing it to some others, I would say “Imagine The Basketball Diaries meets Sid and Nancy but with homicidal drug-dealing post-punk vampires in LA.” Indeed, like the first, there are drug-motivated capers that end badly. Like the second, there is a lot of drug-motivated squabbling that can be amusing. There is some humor. There is a lot of graphic violence. Even more potty humor. Some annoying people get offed. Our protagonists swirl down the drain in a spiral of bad decisions, compulsive behavior, and self-sabotage. There are many sub-plots:
- Our hero, RJ, happens upon a large bag of heroin while killing some crooked cops and decides to deal it himself instead of turning it over to the kingpin vampire of LA.
- RJ decides to take in the young prostitute with the idea that he is going to rescue her.
- Although he didn’t really go looking for it, RJ finds out where came from.
- RJ and another head vampire are forced by a band of rogue Catholic priests to kill a band of transvestite prostitute vampires.
Here is where I run down what kind of vampires we’re talking about here:
- Good Looking: No
- Superhuman strength: Yes
- Changeling: No
- Sparkles: No
- Erotic neck biting: No
- Drink blood: Yes
- Can turn victims into more vampires: No
- Must be killed by decapitation or stake through the heart: Yes
- Reflection in mirrors: Yes
- Scared of crosses and/or garlic: No
- Burn in sunlight: Yes
- Goth nightclub visit: Yes
Ah! I love classifying vampires. Regular readers will note that there is no weird eroticism in this book and will know that I am always disappointed when this is the case. Sigh. A vampire without the sexy might as well be a giant mosquito. I mean really!
By now you’re all like “OK OK already. Did you like it?” I kind of did and kind of didn’t. It was different. Let us see the numbers, shall we?
Creepy Factor: 2 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 2 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: -1 out of 5 (yes: repulsive)
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 4 out of 5
Final result: It’s complicated. I thought Knuckle Supper was one of the most purposefully offensive books I’ve read recently, and after a while a monster gets tired of it, and the shit all gets kind of meaningless. There were some good things. There were some annoying things. Some of the violent stuff didn’t make sense, like sometimes it didn’t seem physically possible. Like for example draining the blood from a severed arm through a finger knuckle. Like I said above, it was different. I think a lot of people will be glad to be reading vampire fiction where the vampires are actually monstrous. Different tends to be good, but I was left feeling only lukewarm about the book.
Knuckle Supper by Drew Stepek – Alphar Publishing – 2010
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