When Aussie (transplanted to Aotearoa) author Garth Jones offered me an early look at his latest short story collection Black Pills, I said yes faster than Bob Hawke could sink a yardie (11 seconds apparently).
Having imbibed Garth’s previous books aka the Home Brewed Vampire Bullets trilogy and enjoyed them immensely, I was quietly confident I was in for another wild ride through a heightened, hilarious, surreal and satirical version of Australia (with a brief stopover in New Zealand). Spoiler alert: I was.
Garth’s (presumed) influences seem to range from Ozploitation films, Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S Thompson and an unhealthy dose of debaucherous Oz rock like AC/DC, Skyhooks et al. But these are just touchstones to help set the scene. Garth has his own voice - wordy and literate but injected with an extra large syringe of larrikin spirit. In other words it will keep you on your toes and put a big ass grin on your dial. Special mention (and top marks) has to be made of his character names with such colourful nom de plumes as Fridge Dunning, Marcus Discharge, Donk Cowie and Old Mangled Jizzy among a plethora of others.
What about the stories you ask? Well, readers of Home Brewed Vampire Bullets will be pleased to catch up with drug-addled ex-rocker Johnny Platinum in The Insatiable Sexual Witches of Wriggler’s Bend, an absolute tear of a yarn featuring excessive drug consumption, biblical floods and indeed the titular sexual witches.
Science fiction rears its head in a number of stories, though that head has been reconfigured into Garth’s patented mongrel punk gospel and all the better for it. Horizontal Ballerina is a quick jolt of sleek future shock, whereas the dual sagas of loveable middle aged bogans Rennie & Rell takes in time travel and some severe genetic mutations along the way.
The whole collection rocks and also acts as a great primer before diving into the three headed beast that is Home Brewed Vampire Bullets. I hate to pick favourites but if Mick Dundee had his big ass knife to my throat I would have to go with The Case of the Feral Pig Down at Coffin Creek, a creepy but also hilarious splicing of Razorback (aka killer pigs) with Black Sheep (the NZ film).
I highly recommend you neck (or shelve) some of these Black Pills when they are released on April Fool’s Day this year.
Get it HERE.
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