Review: Sideshow PI: The Devil’s Garden by Nathaniel Lambert and Kevin Sweeney

Graveside Tales, 2009
ISBN: 0980133858
Available: Paperback

Sideshow PI is an acquired taste. It’s the tale of a group of sideshow freaks who have settled down in New Ramoth, a seedy city on the edge of a clone recycling plant, and it’s rude, crude, violent, and disgusting. It’s almost like the characters want the reader to know they deserve to be society’s outcasts, and for more than just their deformities. Eddie Gnash is the wolf-boy parental figure that keeps them all together. Following a long depression after ending the show, Eddie rediscovers himself by becoming a P.I., and helping his friend Cletus hunt down whoever is killing johns on the city streets.

Sideshow PI boasts some amazing writing; splendid wrapping on a decent package. The vivid descriptions of vivisections and sex can go overboard, distracting even the characters from the plot. The book will certainly not be to everyone’s taste; it’s best for readers who love extreme horror and wallowing in the ultra-pits of human despair.

Contains: sex, violence, rape, mutations, cannibalism