The Disassembled Man

Jon Bassoff

Down & Out Books

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Frankie Avicious is a hard-luck fellow with a sordid past. Living in a dreary meatpacking town, stuck in a loveless marriage, and spending his days slaughtering cattle, Frankie has nothing to look forward to but his next swallow of bargain whiskey. His wife is threatening to leave him, and the local sociopath is threatening to kill him. And then there’s Scarlett Acres, a stripper with a heart of fool’s gold. Frankie can’t stop thinking about her…

With the encouragement of a mysterious traveling salesman, Frankie sets out to reverse his destiny through a series of bizarre murders. The consequences of his brutality turn out to be far worse than even he could imagine.

Praise for THE DISASSEMBLED MAN:

“The Disassembled Man is lean and mean—with the emphasis on mean—a true psycho-noir novel that leaves the reader to work out the truth behind events we can only see from the point of view of the protagonist. The twist that comes maybe two thirds of the way through the book ups the stakes even more and those last few pages are a real mindbender. Taken as a whole, The Disassembled Man is a damn fine read; a brilliant and raw example of the Psycho Noir genre.” —Russel D. McLean, Crime Scene Scotland

“For the first third of Jon Bassoff’s beautifully ugly first novel The Disassembled Man, I felt the presence of Jim Thompson. Nothing wrong with that, the tone and feel of Thompson are appropriate to the material. But then Bassoff gets going on his own and you realize that while he uses the same kind of Swiftian tone Thompson did, every nuance of ugliness writ large—I always had the feeling that Thompson used it as comic relief, a kind of fabulism if you will. Laughing past the graveyard that would all too soon claim you. I don’t get that feeling at all with the Bassoff novel. The power of this book, and it has considerable power, is that Bassoff never apologies for his people or their story. An impressive and imposing debut.” —Ed Gorman, Ed’s New Improved Blog

“Jon Bassoff’s The Disassembled Man is one strictly for the purists, the basement crazies, the inmates that are so fucked up that they don’t even know they’re in the asylum—much less able to run the fucking thing. The story of a nasty fucker who only gets more pit-bull-snarling-fucking mean as the story progresses, this shit ain’t for the casual crime fans. No sir, dear readers, The Disassembled Man is for the folks who want their pulp served rare, as in still pumping steaming hot fucking blood. So yeah, you could say I dug the holy fuck out of Jon Bassoff’s debut.” —Peter Dragovich, Book Central Station Review

“Bassoff has written sheer, nasty beautiful prose with this book. The wince factor is high and the characters horridly riveting. The envelope has not just been pushed, but set on fire.” —Jennifer Jordan, Crime Spree Magazine

“The Disassembled Man is remarkable for its ugliness. It’s hard to think of a book with a character as despicable as Frankie Avicious. This Jim Thompson on mescaline story is not for the faint of heart.” —Nathan Cain, Independent Crime

“Jon Bassoff’s novel The Disassembled Man is a wince-inducing front row seat to a soul shredding. It’s so unrelentingly dark, so hopeless and dank, that when the humor rears its fugly head you’ll want to wretch because you laughed. You will hate yourself for those laughs. But you will laugh. Whatever literary tag it’s given, The Disassembled Man is a hell of a statement.” —Jedidiah Ayers, Hardboiled Wonderland

“Bassoff is good, and the things that are at the heart of a good psycho noir—great characters, lurid action and a propellant plot—are all here in abundance.” —John Kenyon, Things I’d Rather be Doing

“Jim Thompson’s psychotic hell brutally collides with Bruce Jay Friedman’s absurdist humor in this shotgun blast of a novel.” —Dave Zeltserman, author of Small Crimes

“Having read quite a number of psycho noirs, I’d have to say this one’s a bit special. Jon Bassoff really nails it.” —Allan Guthrie, author of Slammer

“This is strong stuff, definitely not the kind of thing that you’re going to find from a mainstream publisher. If you have a taste for the off-beat, this might be just what you’re looking for.” —Bill Crider, author of Murder in Four Parts

“Flexer’s gritty, nasty tale in the classic dime-novel tradition moves like a bullet from a Beretta.” —Mike Segretto, author of The Bride of Trash

“The Disassembled Man is the most horrifyingly funny, perverse and shocking crime book I have ever read–and that’s saying something. It pushes way past Jim Thompson territory. It’s also amazingly well-written with characters who are utterly unique. And like the greatest noir books and films, it’s also a razor-sharp commentary on certain unsavory aspects of contemporary society.” —Ethan Goldman, screenwriter of Warner Brothers’ The Breaks