Last Days

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Taking the framework of a hardboiled mystery, with its star, the gritty, amoral detective, Evenson completely stands your expectations on their head.

Lisp and Low Voice do not take no for an answer and Kline finds himself being transported to the compound of the “Brothers of Mutilations,” a religious cult founded on the premise that chopping off your body parts makes you holey holy and makes God happy. But, for the rest of you scaredy-cats, too frightened to crack open the spine, yet still curious to know “What, in God’s holy name, was the moral of the story? It’s both painful and dangerous to one’s long-term health to do so, risking inflammations and other problems, which is all the more reason for members of the brotherhood to adore someone’s undertaking of such an act.Kline, a former police officer who specialized in infiltrations, under cover work, is forced to cut off his own hand with a clever. At times, the story flirts dangerously close to parody: it's so over the top in places that you can't help but wonder if Evenson is just pulling your leg. The first part of the book finds Kline trying to read his environment which is saturated with signs and which rings with the sibylline pronouncements uttered by the man who summoned him. The Brotherhood of Mutilation makes for a great foil, probably because the idea isn't that far-fetched. The pervasive ruthlessness and mutilations are so well done, so ubiquitous throughout the story, that it’s easy to overlook the plethora of things the author does very well in this book.

aspects of the plot are so over the top that they're almost a farce but the whole thing absolutely works, and brilliantly! German blogger, musician and novelist Daniel Kulla wrote a song ( Der Tausch) the refrain of which, loosely translated, starts like this: “nobody needs to force you / if you join in of your own accord”.In fact, it is a surprisingly complex, frustratingly inscrutable, and uncompromisingly disturbing story full of gore, religious fanatics, and blood.