Rating: 
Summary: Must be Jack Ketchum's worst book yet!
Review: Unless your sole purpose for reading this book is to hear 1,000 descriptions of people killing each other with knives, guns, household items, etc., skip this one. Every other Jack Ketchum book I have read (The Girl Next Door, Stranglehold, Off Season, Joyride) is MUCH better than this one. This book's plot is as follows: one night of everyone killing everyone else in a small portion of New York City because of a chemical spill that makes all the women become psychotic foaming-at-the-mouth brutal killers. That's it. There's no sub-plot, definitely no character depth whatsoever, and you end up not caring whether these people die or not. I purchased this book anticipating another great story on a par with Girl Next Door and Off Season, and it's hard to believe that the book is even by that same author. Frankly, watching "Night of the Living Dead" was a better time investment than this book was (cheaper, too). I kept reading only because I was expecting the plot to eventually develop and get some depth - it never happened. Come on Jack - you can do better than this. Maybe you should stick with books based on true stories because they seem to be your only strong point.
Rating: 
Summary: Perfumed Pleasures and the Teeth They Possess
Review: When certain chemicals are applied to the opposite sex's visage, specific emotions are brought into fruition. Sometimes its a feeling of heightened bliss and attraction, other times its love and devotion, and still other times its safety and a feeling somewhat like home. When chemicals that have been manufactured for warfare are applied, however, all deals are off and, for the men of New York City, its run for your lives time. Basically a B-movie in practice, this story focuses around the lives of one character, Tom Braun, and the people surrounding him as all the women that come into contact with a certain mystery chemical become primal killing machines. These individuals include his son, his wife, his infatuation, the bartender he keeps to cope with his infatuations, and other people met along the way, all struggling for some way out of the nightmare that has fallen on them in a twenty-four hour period (and that smells like Cherry lollipops, for anyone interested in holding their breath). It is because of this that I thought the book was good but, at the same time, that it also lacked in some regard as the streets slicked with gore. The characters were noticeable and the effects were gruesome and sometimes even applaudable, but the outside world ramifications weren't really focused on at all. The setting sometimes teemed but more than often were just barely touched, and some of the momentum is lost toward the last portion of the book. Still, the last statement made in the book was something that, in many ways, I found to redeem much of that. For someone looking for a quick read that is slicked with the internals of the unfortunate, this might be something that you might be interested in. It has quite a few little deaths that seemed, well, painful, plus it goes into detail about random acts of violence going on all about the city. If you need the backgrounds painted for you and the city described in more than a minimalist perspective, it might be something that you might want to save for later.
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