Ink

Distraught after his domineering wife, Shelley, leaves him for her best friend, Jason Harford meets an unnerving stranger in a bar who offers to ink him a tattoo. Only after a long, bloody ordeal does Jason realize what the reader knew from the beginning: that the griffin tattooed on his arm is terrifyingly alive and getting rid of it could prove utterly hellish. Until then, the hero of Grintalis’s disappointing debut remains, all too conveniently for the plot, passive and oblivious to his problems. The stock characters otherwise populating the novel include, in addition to the shrewish Shelley, Jason’s sexist best friend, Brian; his strong, kind father; and his beautiful, understanding new girlfriend, Mitch. The pace picks up near the end, only for Jason’s long-delayed transformation into alpha male to occur in unintentionally hilarious fashion, undermining any sense of gravitas before the gruesome, lurid climax. Agent: Mark McVeigh, the McVeigh Agency. (Dec.)