cover image Lick Your Neighbor

Lick Your Neighbor

Chris Genoa, Eraserhead (Ingram, dist.), $12.95 trade paper (304p) ISBN 978-1-936383-06-1

Just in time for Thanksgiving, Genoa (Foop!) serves up this heavy-handed bizarro satire on the Pilgrims, overstuffed holiday feasts, and narrow-minded hypocrisy. Duxbury, Mass., dweeb Dale Alden is a history buff trying to get his ancestor's secret diary transcribed and published. After Gus, the local celebrity turkey, is lynched on Dale's lawn, he's framed for the killing, fired from his job at Ferdue Poultry, and pursued by mutant turkey-ninja assassins. Fortunately, his drunken brother-in-law, Randy, is on hand to offer lunatic advice and odd weapons from the arsenal he uses to ward off attacks by a crazed clown. As wild contemporary action alternates with portions of the mysterious diary, a tale unfolds of witchcraft, ancestral curses, and over-the-top slapstick. Genoa, like Dale, is his own worst enemy, but the novel is sometimes amusing when it's not straining too hard to be hilarious. (Nov. 25)