The Disassembled Man
Jon Bassoff
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
4.00
· 2 ratings · 254 pages · Published: 31 May 2015
With the encouragement of a mysterious traveling salesman, Frankie sets out to reverse his destiny through a series of bizarre murders. The consequences of his brutality turn out to be far worse than even he could imagine.
Praise for THE DISASSEMBLED MAN:
“The Disassembled Man is lean and mean—with the emphasis on mean—a true psycho-noir novel that leaves the reader to work out the truth behind events we can only see from the point of view of the protagonist. The twist that comes maybe two thirds of the way through the book ups the stakes even more and those last few pages are a real mindbender. Taken as a whole, The Disassembled Man is a damn fine read; a brilliant and raw example of the Psycho Noir genre.” —Russel D. McLean, Crime Scene Scotland
“For the first third of Jon Bassoff’s beautifully ugly first novel The Disassembled Man, I felt the presence of Jim Thompson. Nothing wrong with that, the tone and feel of Thompson are appropriate to the material. But then Bassoff gets going on his own and you realize that while he uses the same kind of Swiftian tone Thompson did, every nuance of ugliness writ large—I always had the feeling that Thompson used it as comic relief, a kind of fabulism if you will. Laughing past the graveyard that would all too soon claim you. I don’t get that feeling at all with the Bassoff novel. The power of this book, and it has considerable power, is that Bassoff never apologies for his people or their story. An impressive and imposing debut.” —Ed Gorman, Ed’s New Improved Blog
“Bassoff has written sheer, nasty beautiful prose with this book. The wince factor is high and the characters horridly riveting. The envelope has not just been pushed, but set on fire.” —Jennifer Jordan, Crime Spree Magazine
“The Disassembled Man is remarkable for its ugliness. It’s hard to think of a book with a character as despicable as Frankie Avicious. This Jim Thompson on mescaline story is not for the faint of heart.” —Nathan Cain, Independent Crime
“Jon Bassoff’s novel The Disassembled Man is a wince-inducing front row seat to a soul shredding. It’s so unrelentingly dark, so hopeless and dank, that when the humor rears its fugly head you’ll want to wretch because you laughed. You will hate yourself for those laughs. But you will laugh. Whatever literary tag it’s given, The Disassembled Man is a hell of a statement.” —Jedidiah Ayers, Hardboiled Wonderland
“Bassoff is good, and the things that are at the heart of a good psycho noir—great characters, lurid action and a propellant plot—are all here in abundance.” —John Kenyon, Things I’d Rather be Doing
“Jim Thompson’s psychotic hell brutally collides with Bruce Jay Friedman’s absurdist humor in this shotgun blast of a novel.” —Dave Zeltserman, author of Small Crimes
“Having read quite a number of psycho noirs, I’d have to say this one’s a bit special. Jon Bassoff really nails it.