Tyler Knox – Kockroach
Jerry Blatta used to be a cockroach. His story opens with him waking after his fantastic transformation into a human, learning through the clues in his 1950’s slum hotel room to be a person; from using a toilet to eating human-food to walking upright. He eventually feels safe enough to walk amongst us and stumbles into a life of crime. The story is told from the point of view from three people; Blatta’s, Blatta’s right-hand-man Mite, and the love interest, Celia.
Kockroach is billed as a parody of noir, and perhaps it is based on the protagonist magically becoming a crime lord after once being an arthropod. However, noir is more of a writing style than a thematic device, and therefore falls nicely into the company of recent neo-noir juggernauts as Kiss Me, Judas and The Contortionist’s Handbook. Aside from being transported into the grimy alleyways of 50’s Times Square, the readers is entertained by jags of scientific explanations that serve as comical comparisons between the pesky insect and the human race, as a tongue-in-cheek anti-human-race mission statement.
The gimmick behind the story is amusing and adds a new dynamic to a tried and true story, but if you remove the element of the lead being a bug in a former life, you’re still left with an amusing romp into the world of loneliness and family as the characters all strive to satisfy their deepest desires. Blatta himself only wishes to sate his unquenchable greed and fear; whether he is buying a new piece of real estate, mating with a new hooker in his team of street walkers, or diving into a fresh bowl of shrimp. Celia wishes to be the woman that is ingrained in her DNA from birth: marry, breed, and care for her loved ones. Mite, perhaps the most entertaining of all of the characters serves as the prodigal son in this demented family, wishing to please the father-figure and destroy him all at the same time.
The writing is solid with a couple only slightly distraction of ill-timed references, including that of a comment about The Ramones, a punk band that didn’t get it’s start until the 1970’s. Granted, the overall story is being told by Mite in the past-tense, but by the conclusion of the book it’s only the late 1960’s. Aside from those mis-cues however, the dialogue is sharp, the prose fast-paced, making the 384 pages move as fast as the cockroach itself. There are some rumblings that Tyler Knox is actually a false name for a previously well-known author, that he felt Kockroach deserved to stand alone from his other works, and after you read it, you will agree.
Release Date: February 26, 2008
Order: HERE
Official Website: HERE
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I loved this book, too. The perfect combination of literary/commercial fiction. And yeah, Tyler writes genre stuff under another name. So strange, cuz it seems that authors usually do this for the opposite reason, when they wanna go slumming.