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Offspring Kindle Edition
Jack Ketchum (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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The local sheriff of Dead River, Maine, thought he had killed them off ten years ago—a primitive, cave-dwelling tribe of cannibalistic savages. But somehow the clan survived. To breed. To hunt. To kill and eat. And now the peaceful residents of this isolated town are fighting for their lives…
- Print length300 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publisher47North
- Publication dateMarch 12, 2013
- File size1213 KB
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Dont say your uncle Stevie didnt warn you (heh-heh-heh). -Stephen King --Entertainment Weekly, Nov. 19, 2004
Just when you think the worst has already happened... Jack Ketchum goes yet another shock further! --Fangoria --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
About the Author
From the Publisher
Product details
- ASIN : B00BT6VZZI
- Publisher : 47North; Reprint edition (March 12, 2013)
- Publication date : March 12, 2013
- Language : English
- File size : 1213 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Enhanced typesetting : Not Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Not Enabled
- Print length : 300 pages
- Lending : Not Enabled
- Best Sellers Rank: #68,904 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #776 in TV, Movie & Game Tie-In Fiction
- #1,053 in Psychological Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #1,557 in Psychological Thrillers (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Jack Ketchum "is on a par with Clive Barker (Hellraiser), James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential) and Thomas Harris (The Silence of The Lambs)," and that "the only novelist working today that is writing more important fiction is Cormack McCarthy (No Country for Old Men, The Road). - Stephen King
Jack Ketchum is the pseudonym for novelist Dallas Mayr. He was born in Livingston, New Jersey in 1946. A onetime actor, teacher, and lumber salesman, Ketchum credits his childhood love of Elvis Presley, dinosaurs, and horror for getting him through his formative years. As a teenager, was befriended by Robert Bloch, author of "Psycho" who became a mentor to him. He supported Ketchum's work just as his work was supported by his own mentor, H.P. Lovecraft. This relationship with Bloch lasted until his death in 1994.
A pivotal point in Jack Ketchum's career came while he was working for the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. He met Henry Miller and assisted him as his agent until shortly before his death in 1980. His extraordinary encounter with Miller at his home in Pacific Palisades is one of the subjects of his memoir in "Book of Souls".
In 1980, Jack Ketchum published his first novel "Off Season". Stephen King said in his acceptance speech at the 2003 National Book Awards that "Off Season set off a furor in my supposed field, that of horror, that was unequaled until the advent of Clive Barker. It is not too much to say that these two gentlemen remade the face of American popular fiction." Ketchum has received continued praise by King throughout their friendship.
Ketchum's work is largely based upon true events. The Girl Next Door , for example, was inspired by the 1965 murder of the young Sylvia Likens. In the special edition of the novel, King, who volunteered to write the preface, wrote one of the longest introductions of his career. He later went on to say that the movie adaptation of the book was "the first authentically shocking American film I've seen since Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer over 20 years ago. If you are easily disturbed, you should not watch this movie. If, on the other hand, you are prepared for a long look into hell, suburban style, The Girl Next Door will not disappoint. This is the dark-side-of-the-moon version of Stand By Me."
He has received numerous Bram Stoker Awards for works such as "The Box", "Closing Time", and "Peaceable Kingdom". As his books gained in worldwide popularity, they also began to be adapted into feature films, the first of which was "Jack Ketchum's The Lost" which went on to be a cult success, followed by the highly controversial second film "The Girl Next Door". However, the main launch for Jack Ketchum into international commercial and critical success was the long-awaited release by Magnolia Pictures of the film Red, based on his novel, starring Brian Cox (The Bourne Supremacy) and Tom Sizemore (Saving Private Ryan). After favorable reviews at The Sundance Film Festival, the movie made a critical showing in the United States and enjoyed relative success internationally with subsequent translations of the novel.
The author enjoyed more international succes with the publication and film version of "The Woman" co-written and directed by Lucky McKee in which the New York Times said "in this lean adaptation of a novel by Jack Ketchum and himself, maintains an artfully calibrated pace, investing a powerful parable with an abundance of closely observed details. Like David Cronenberg and Roman Polanski, Mr. McKee is a master at drawing suspense from pregnant silences."
Jack Ketchum continues his rise with the present showing of "The Woman" at the Sundance Film Festival 2011 co-written by Ketchum with director Lucky McKee. The novel is to be released this year.
Kethcum lives in New York City where he continues to write, articles, reviews, short stories, novels and screenplays. For more information go to international website: www.thejackketchum.com.
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The one thing that was killing me with this book is as soon as something big starts happening, the character in the middle of the fight goes off on some memory or tangent and yanks the reader out of the action and down memory lane with them. It happened at least 4 times and it caused me to just start skipping to get back to the literal bloody fight that was happening before the tangent.
Of all the kids and adults that go missing every day, how many wind up this way? Do we want to know, do we really want to know...?
I just discovered Jack Ketchum, read his first book, OFF SEASON, and was blown away by it. Wow, I thought, here is an author who isn't afraid to go the limit. The violence and gore were truly over the top, but what set it off from similiar stories was that no one in the book, absolutely no one, was safe. The prose had a raw, visceral quality that made the reader overlook or at least forgive certain infelicities in the writing (beginning too many successive sentences with the same word, using the "said John" construction instead of "John said", etc.). In short, a masterpiece of the genre, and a truly frightening read.
I immediately picked up OFFSPRING with high hopes. Alas, these hopes were dashed. First of all, the storyline is basically a retread of the original: Ketchum assembles a group of characters in an isolated cabin in the Maine woods and sets his cannibal family loose upon them; these scenes alternate with others that focus upon the police investigation. I don't have a problem with recycling the plot; my complaint is that it's done in such an anemic way. First, the victims are not nearly as interesting as those in the first book. Second, very few of them are killed--in fact, only two out of six actually die. Yes, two of the survivors suffer horribly at the hands of the cannibals, but the final scene shows them sitting in a hospital room smiling, as if all is right with the world once more. A typical Hollywood happy ending. The ones who really get decimated are the cannibals, but with names such as First Chosen, Second Chosen, the Girl, the Woman, it's hard to keep them straight, let alone work up any interest in them. Finally, the prose style is far weaker than in the original: pages of sentence fragments alternate with long run-on sentences that go on forever.
In short, a major disappointment. I had been looking forward to reading more Ketchum, but if this is how he's mellowed, I won't bother. One reviewer likened OFF SEASON to the film director Wes Craven's early work, and I would agree. Unfortunately, OFFSPRING reminds me of Craven's anemic later work, after he sold out to Hollywood.
Sure, parts of it seem like more of the same, but Laymon's "Woods Are Dark" cannibal novels had four in the series plus mentions in other stories and all of those were good as well. Isn't that how most sequels go? Haven't you seen all of those Chainsaw movies that are virtual remakes of each other?
Bonuses for the limited edition of Offspring include the unexpurgated text and two afterwords by Ketchum. I would recommend this one for your Ketchum collection. I'm glad it's back in print again, and hope to see Leisure release a mass market edition.


Top reviews from other countries

It’s helped by the fact that the writing has depth and intelligence and you’re never quite sure what the outcome will be.
A tense gruesome read.



If you like vicious murder, blood-sucking and molestation this is for you
