THE PATRICIDAL BEDSIDE COMPANION

First novel about an unemployed live-at-home college grad, his psyche ``tortured by overthought'' (not to mention drugs and booze), who decides to murder his father. As comic-book fiction, it's zany, amusing, and easy to read until the ending, which is stupid. Riley O'Donnough, whose father catches him on Easter Sunday snorting up a quarter gram of dope and threatens to tell his ex- wife (Riley's mother), decides he can't let his mom find out he's a drug user, so he must kill the old man. But spring break is over, and first he must go back to school, where Nietzsche (Riley is an ``avid fan'') puts things in perspective: ``So in other words, if I didn't kill my dad I'd be making him stronger.'' Using quotes from literary heavyweights as epigraphs to each chapter, Haddock provides a play-by-play of life for the X-generation. There are campus scenes, surreal murder fantasies (``the subtle beauty of death by poisoning'') and, after graduation, a stint of working at Papa's immaculate corporate offices (Papa provides ``psychotherapy for business''), where Riley gets his father's secretary (and mistress) drunk and ``rapes her mind.'' Then he meets Tara, love of his life, someone he can relate to ``without having to edit or explain yourself every ten words.'' It is also almost instant lust: ``My tongue etched steaming trails and shot sparks into her ear; her teeth bit gentle vampire eternities on my neck.'' Many road episodes and bar scenes later, Riley's father is found dead, overdosed in a sleazy hotel, and Tara goes insane, is committed, and admits to Riley that she killed his father. A familiar tour of la-la land in a debut filled with ``that feeling of going somewhere, even if it's nowhere.''