Here is but a small taste (haha) of what you’ll find in Off Season: This is the version I read.Īlthough graphic violence is common in today’s horror, Ketchum’s book still has an edge. It also included an Afterword by Ketchum. In 1999, an unexpurgated version was released that restored some of the violence and the original ending. The Village Voice accused Ballantine of publishing “violent pornography.” Ballantine withdrew its support of the book, although it continued to sell well through word of mouth. Even so, when Off Season was released it was was immediately controversial. Ballantine fought relentlessly with Ketchum over its violence (Ketchum described the tête-à-tête with his editors as, “I’ll give you this bludgeoning if you give me that beheading”), and a good amount of the book’s gore was trimmed and the original ending changed. Getting the book published, however, was an ordeal. I thought ‘that’s not been done before.'” And, to get up close and personal with the actual violence. What if I don’t do this? What if I do a book that’s set in real time, sort of the way that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was and the way Night of the Living Dead were? It gives you the illusion of real time. It is inevitable that Off Season sometimes evokes those films, as they were its inspiration. In an excellent interview for Dark Scribe, Ketchum explains: “Even Steve would turn away from the really down and gritty stuff. More recently than that, we have Tobe Hooper’s infamous 1974 film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Wes Craven’s 1977 opus The Hills Have Eyes.

Tales of savage cannibal families preying on civilized folk go back centuries to the myth of Sawney Bean, a Scot who supposedly cannibalized over a thousand people with his family sometime during the 13th-16th centuries. Thirty-eight years since its publication, the story feels familiar. What follows is some of the most ferocious horror ever put to paper. Unfortunately for them, the cabin is being watched by a clan of inbred cannibals living in a cave nearby. She invites her sister, their friend Laura, and their respective boyfriends to join her.

Carla, a successful editor from New York City, rents a cabin in the town of Dead River, Maine during the off season to work on her writing. Following his death, I read several glowing assessments of his work and decided to try his debut novel, Off Season, first published in 1981 by Ballantine Books. Ketchum (1946-2018) was a highly respected name in horror, described by Stephen King as “the scariest guy in America” and the winner of four Bram Stoker Awards and the World Horror Convention Grand Master Award. Before his death earlier this year, I had not read anything by Dallas Mayr, better known by the pseudonym Jack Ketchum.

Offspring ketchum