Bodyslick

This absurdly gory debut novel from essayist Sibley offers a bleak picture of the United States of 2031. Economic collapse has created new career opportunities for thugs like Malcolm ""Bodyslick"" Steel, one of Chicago's leading black market organ dealers. When the grandson of incredibly wealthy Louis Vanderbilt urgently needs a new heart, Bodyslick is hired to procure one. His efforts are complicated by mob warfare between the Mafia and Chinatown gangs, leading to a staggering body count. Supposedly sympathetic Bodyslick seems incapable of any deep emotion; when a loved one dies horribly, it takes him only a few pages to revert to fantasizing about an attractive robot. The political message is more of a broad parody and the potential of the setting is largely unrealized. Sketchy monochrome illustrations, gratuitous and horrific violence (""He snatched the tiny infant from its dead mother's umbilical cord and... kicked it down the alley"") and endless crude language add nothing but an amateurish air.