Product Description

Rutger Van Trout has worse problems than his mundane existence in the all-consuming, all-suppressing Vulgaria of Grand Rapids, Michigan. It's not that his son might be turning into a werewolf, or that his daughter might be a nymphomaniac. The problem does not lie in his obsession with transforming his middle-class estate into a three-ring barnyard, nor in the shrunken head collection under the bed. He doesn't even mind his wife's (possibly) haunted skeleton or the freak-of-the-week superheroes and window-jumpers populating his neighborhood.

The complication has invaded his community in the form of a new breed of serial killer, one who stalks from house to house throughout the Vulgaria leaving a bloodbath that would make Jack the Ripper himself blush. The killer's name is Mr. Blankety Blank, and Rutger Van Trout's neighborhood is on the wrong end of a killing spree...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2465787 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 188 pages

From Booklist
With three offbeat story collections and the indescribably madcap Dr. Identity (2006) to his credit, Wilson has been duly anointed as speculative fiction’s most unpredictable stylist. Here he flouts all novelistic conventions and propriety in recounting the misdeeds of a serial killer known only by a name written in blood on the walls of his victims’ manicured homes—Blankety Blank. In the mid-twenty-first century, the American landscape has morphed from suburbia into “vulgaria,” featuring neighborhoods replete with shopping malls and oversized McMansions. Quiggle Estates resident Rutger Van Trout just wants to enjoy his newly built silo in peace, without the added distractions of a nymphomaniac daughter, a werewolf-obsessed son, and a wife haunted by her own skeleton. Then Blankety Blank leaves his trail of blood across vulgaria, and it’s up to Rutger and Quiggle Estates’ odd assortment of faux superheroes to save everyone. Wilson sprinkles his rapid-fire narrative with glib aphorisms, absurdist pseudo-historical tidbits, and outlandish digressions that leave a reader breathless. Although this isn’t everyone’s cup, iconoclasts will relish every word. --Carl Hays

Review
In Blankety Blank fact and fiction don't so much blur as they collide like lovesick Sumo's fired at each other from cartoon cannons, resulting in a pseudo-biographical romp interspersed with fictional histories, strange quotes, haikus, and plain ludicrously fun happenings. --Fractal Matter

Wilson sprinkles his rapid-fire narrative with glib aphorisms, absurdist pseudo-historical tidbits, and outlandish digressions that leave a reader breathless. Although this isn't everyone's cup, iconoclasts will relish every word. --Booklist, August 2008

Review
Take an existential dive into the near-future's "irreality" before the author sells out to Hollywood over a seemingly inevitable Gamehater movie

Customer Reviews

Blank
Today's bizarro genre is a hell of a thing. A definition for the indescribable and, its authors are hit or miss, a talented creator or a weirdo with a thesaurus. D. Harlan Wilson is a bizarro talent, a creator of odd and strange worlds and denizens that mirror our own, smudging the fine lines with fingerprints. Inside Blankety Blank is a tale that is unique, a land that is familiar yet unknown and characters that live next door but came here through a portal from another dimension. Wilson writes like a drug addict on a binge, throwing curveballs and random, sporadic sub-stories that manage to help construct the puzzle being erected. D. Harlan Wilson is like no other author; he is a creative talent in bizarro that is a pleasant welcome and with Blankety Blank he has found a land for us all to migrate to in our search for entertainment outside the mainstream.