The literary equivalent of an 80’s slasher film.

Do you like your horror rough and gritty? Are you a fan of delving into the details and minutia of a kill, or a raunchy sex scene, or even a trip to a convenience store for a bottle of sweet tea? If so, have I got a book for you.

In a lot of ways, “Boondock Butcher,” the first standalone novel from veteran serial writer Chuck Buda, feels like reading two screenplays, one for a vintage horror film of the 1980’s and another for a 1990’s psychological or supernatural thriller, that were thrown into the air and zealously combined together as their pages were eagerly gathered up and reassembled. That might be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your own personal taste but the end result is a book that frequently shifts between the methodical, building tension of a mystery thriller and the over-the-top gusto of an extreme horror, splatterpunk gore fest.

I’m not gonna lie. There are parts of this book that I genuinely didn’t care for, like the occasional reliance on a few negative and outdated stereotypes as a substitute for proper character and narrative development. In particular, I disliked the “horror movie” logic applied to the words, thoughts, and actions of pretty much every character at one point or another. I quickly lost count of the number of times someone said or did something, not because it was anything likely to occur in any version of reality, but because it served to move the plot forward in an obviously-contrived manner. Of course, one could certainly make the argument that this may have been an intentional homage to the sort of brain-dead behavior exhibited by characters in the aforementioned slasher flicks, but I still found it jarring and off-putting enough times to note it.

There were also some pacing, tonal consistency, and technical issues throughout the book that, while individually minor, did cumulatively diminish my overall enjoyment of the experience as their number built to a total that became impossible to ignore completely by the end of the read.

All that said, I did ultimately end up enjoying “Boondock Butcher” for what it is: a fun, well-intentioned romp through the backwoods of Eastern Tennessee that’s certainly worth experiencing for fans of the genres it embodies.

A final note regarding my score: For me, this was more of a 3.25 or 3.5 but I didn’t want to under-rate the overall effort with a 3 as I feel that would have done it a disservice. I could absolutely see this book garnering anywhere between 2 and 4 stars, depending on a given reader’s personal preferences and tolerances, but I felt compelled to round my score up as I truly believe those interested in what “Boondock Butcher” has to offer will inevitably find a lot to like within its pages.