The Seven Days Of Peter Crumb

'I am not a good man. I am not a bad man. In seven days I will be dead. My name is Peter Crumb. This is what remains ...' Peter Crumb is a man whose life has been derailed by a single, devastating act of violence in his past. Now, in what he intends to be his last week on Earth, he is determined to leave his mark upon humanity - randomly, unjustly, with infinite attention to detail. And Monday means murder ... Shatteringly well written, this is a car-crash-compelling description of a week in the hell inhabited by one splintered and savage soul - an unrehearsed and unputdownable Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for our times.

About the Author :
Writer-actor JONNY GLYNN has written for stage and screen and last year performed in Stratford and the West End as part of the RSC's year-long complete works of Shakespeare programme. This is his first book and he is at work on his second.

Review :
Peter Crumb's intellect, scathing wit and good looks endear him to the reader, acts of mutilation and near-necrophilia aside - for those that can stomach it, the devil in Glynn's details begs to be read Sometimes it's sad. Sometime it's funny. Moreover, it's daringly discomforting, like American Psycho unleashed on middle England. This is not a creation you'll want to turn your back on Horrific but great Packed with ultra-violence, black humour and such attention to surface detail that it will be seen peeking out of designer pockets on public transport this summer. Crumb is a handsome devil who relishes his nefarious activities. Savage and stylish... Glynn writes with verve, panache and a sardonic flair for comedy. Glynn excels at smart, pungent descriptions amid the exuberant narrative... impressive writing... definitely a writer to watch. Gruesome, obscene and utterly disturbing. It is also absorbing and well-written. Reading it, I fought the urge to throw up. Needles to say, I was transfixed. [Crumb's] first-person account is interrupted by a second personality, egging him on. Crumb has little control over where his mind (and thus the novel) will veer at any given point. The result is an elegant contrapuntal stream of consciousness so brutally spiky and internal that the reader (like Crumb's victims) wants to plead for reprieve. The risk of writing an exhibitionist account of serial murders, narrated by the killer himself at close range, is that the reader might quickly see the whole endeavour as gratuitous... Yet Glynn pulls it off. Crumb is engaging... Surreal moments save the book from pure sadism. This vastly impressive novel features as its protagonist a man who, after suffering a terrible loss of his own, has no recourse but to inflict the same senseless violence on others, and in his mind settle some uneven karmic score. And what better way to garnish a Molotov cocktail of terror than with a suicide back? Glynn's grimy but entertaining prose is filled with wonderfully appalling descriptions of chopped flesh and sordid details of debauched sexual escapades-providing a horny combo-plate of cringes and unabashed grins. Engaging, too, are the uncommon quirks of the main character: his detailed rating system for bowel movements, the odd newspaper headline determining his destiny, his complete contempt for everything except his Polish housekeeper (about whom he's masturbated to while she sits scrubbing by page 10-these may sound like spoilers, but we assure you they are not). It's fair to call The Seven Days of Peter Crumb a version of Jekyll & Hyde in bed with American Psycho, though neither work's disdain for humanity shined as brilliantly as in Crumb. Let's say it's more like a murderous Ignatius J. Reilly of A Confederacy of Dunces, enhanced with a multiple personality disorder and a penchant for free-market sodomy. It's the perfect literary antidote to overly obnoxious holiday cheer.