RATMAN'S NOTEBOOKS

by Stephen Gilbert ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 7, 1969

This is a beastly business which will make your flesh creep for fair--these note books, written with unemphatic precision by a youngish man who has been bullied by his mother and exploited by his employer Jones. They begin when he saves the large family of rats he had planned to exterminate and when one particularly alert, bright and congenial specimen, Socrates, wins his otherwise unaffiliated heart. The others, increasing and multiplying by the dozen, become his confederate-killers; he directs them to the tires of his employer's car and they claw and gnaw their way through them. In time, after his mother's death, he devotes his entire interest and insufficient income to sustaining them while committing crimes in order to do so. Finally when Socrates is killed (viciously by Jones) he organizes a (still more vicious) vendetta and then withdraws. . . . But then there's the glowering, beady-eyed Ben and a crepitant rustle which must be more than the pages turning, fast. . . . A magnificently malignant horror story to which you will be unavoidably committed.

Pub Date: May 7, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1969

Categories: FICTION