Set in the mid-90’s on the stand up circuit, a trio of comedians set off on a tour of smaller comedy clubs in Canada. Dale is an old hand at the job who needs some extra cash, Rynn is an ingenue from Ireland with a big future ahead of her, and Hobie is their driver, built like a refrigerator, he wants to make it in comedy too, but he isn’t very funny. He also seems to be enacting some kind of violent revenge, unbeknownst to our two heroes. As the blood starts to spatter, can our heroes survive?

The book is written by Brent Butt, who was nominated for an Emmy for the tv show Corner Gas, and who works as a screenwriter and a stand up comedian. The book has a certain imagery and pacing that feels potentially cinematic, the writing is quite visual and works well for this horror/comedy genre. The opening scene feels very much like the first scene in a movie of this genre. I do like that it drops you right in on the action.

For me, this book was a little cringey. And that really took me out of the moment a lot and made it a bot of a slog to read at times. I felt a bit like the bad guy getting his revenge on bad club owners and shady people felt like the authors personal revenge. Not so relevant or meaningful to the reader. Stand up can be brutal, we get it.

The other two characters. Firstly, Rynn, who is attractive and young, looks up to Dale, and does not have normal female reactions to events as they unfold. She would be so nervous around Hobie in real life. And Dale, who is a Gary Stu (a male Mary Sue). He has a habit of saying the ends of the sentences in his head out loud. It’s annoying. His wife left him. No fault of his own, of course. His daughter is disappointed in him, he always lets her down. She is his main motivation, which begs the question as to why he lets her down so often. In one scene, he’s so professional that he turns a crappy job into an amazing set, everyone loves him and the cute, younger female bar tender throws herself at him, but he politely refuses. It feels so on the nose. He tends to not like other characters who put women down or make sexist jokes, yet he makes a jokes based on people’s appearances all the time, including calling one woman a steamer trunk because she’s fat. He basically has Nice Guy vibes. He’s one dimensional.

It’s odd. A book written by a comedian should be funny. The scenes of the set ups for the comedy sets feel like we’re watching from the outside. We’re not getting drawn into the internal world that much, how it feels up there. But we are getting a description of what it looks like. The jokes that the comedians tell are really bland and not at all funny. I felt like I was reading a description of what stand up looks like, rather than a story about it.

What I did like was the plot and the pacing. It moves along at a nice pace and there was a shift in gears to higher tension at just the right moment, which I really liked. I liked the concept of the three being thrown together and how Hobie was just this big guy who wants to be in comedy, and that the other two don’t know what’s up with him. The killings were not too gory, but just right for the tone of the whole. I think this part or aspect of the book works really well. In fact, if this were a movie, I’d probably watch it.

I did think the ending could have been tightened up a little. There’s a big scene at the end, and we get Hobie’s back story, which feels irrelevant. People have been a lot worse than him who had better childhoods, it’s not the motivation that the author thinks it is. And he’s not our MC so we don’t care. A lot of this feels kind of tacked on and not important. Also, while Hobie has his final scene, Rynn and Dale appear to just be sitting there. Waiting til they’re needed for the story again.

In essence, they say write what you know. Clearly our author knows this world, but that’s no excuse to bore me with it. A comedian writing should be funny. Passages about Dale knowing all about comedy theory are dull. Perhaps write a memoir? I was reading this book for violence and jokes. It did not really deliver for me.

Read It If: I think there is some good stuff here. There’s a great premise and the plot works well. It just gets a bit bogged down and those characters really needed some more depth. I wonder if this was originally planned as a screenplay and ended up being a book?

Thank you to the publisher for the copy of this book for review.