The Only Criminal
Published on 27. September 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
270 pages
978-1-62601-692-7 (ISBN)
Description
Once upon a time, in a world otherwise much like our own, there is only one source of evil, torment and crime in the entire world. He is known as The Only Criminal.
By extension, he is also the only source of interesting information in print and televisual news. All movies, all TV shows, are made about him. He is also responsible for all the recorded music in the world, brought into being under the influence of illegal drugs.
The Only Criminal is also the only source of fascination for a brilliant young psychologist, Dr. Paul Vaguely - a man driven by his obsession with this one subject, which fills him with fear and fuels his boundless curiosity and imagination.
The good Dr. Vaguely is developing a new branch of psychiatric care, specializing in the treatment of patients whose lives were touched by the peril and plunder of The Only Criminal, but his plans are upset by two things: the discovery of the only known survivor of an Only Criminal attack to have actually seen him and lived; and The Only Criminal's most fiendish coup of all, which steers the world at large toward a collective nervous breakdown.
Decades in preparation, The Only Criminal is many things: a Kafkaesque comic book on the theme of Original Sin; a never-more-relevant love story between two isolated characters fearful of risking human contact; even a fanciful alternative history of how our world may have ended up in such a catastrophic mess. Dark, humorous, erotic and charged with danger, The Only Criminal may be its author's definitive journey into the depths of dark obsession.
"Compulsively, enviably superb. THE ONLY CRIMINAL is a marvel! Tim Lucas brilliantly weaves wit, romance and glorious wisdoms with maestro cool." - R.C. Matheson (Dystopia)
"It's brilliant... one of the most interesting and entertaining things I've read! - Kelley Jones, (Batman, The Sandman)
"This is a wonderful, droll, witty book-a real joy for people with eclectic cinematic and reading tastes. A bedtime book to savor, just like one of the hero's vanilla-flavored cigarettes." - Joan Hawkins (Cutting Edge: Art Horror & the Horrific Avant-Garde)
More details
Language
English
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
443 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-62601-692-7 (9781626016927)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
TIM LUCAS is the author of four well-received novels: Throat Sprockets (1994), The Book of Renfield: A Gospel of Dracula (2005, revised 2023), The Secret Life of Love Songs (2021) and The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes (2022). Throat Sprockets, which is included in Jones & Newman's Horror: Another 100 Best Books and was selected by Rue Morgue as one of 50 essential alternative horror novels, is set to be published in an expanded 30th anniversary edition by Valancourt Books. The revised edition of The Book of Renfield, published by Riverdale Avenue Books, won the 2023 Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Classic Monster Fiction.Tim is now in the fifth decade of his career as a film critic, essayist and journalist specializing in horror/fantasy cinema, which began when his first publication appeared in Cinefantastique magazine at the age of 15. He and his wife Donna (who passed away in 2022) published the much honored and influential Video Watchdog magazine from 1990 to 2018. His writings on film have appeared in other publications around the world, including Sight & Sound (where his "NoZone" column ran for almost ten years), Film Comment, American Cinematographer, Cahiers du Cinéma, Starfix, Metro, Little Shoppe of Horrors, Eyeball and Fear, as well as his long-running blog Video WatchBlog.He has also written two movie monographs, Videodrome (2008) and Spirits of the Dead (2018). A third monograph, focused on Franco's film Succubus (aka Necronomicon), is awaiting publication. He is also the author of Mario Bava - All the Colors of the Dark (2007), a monolithic critical biography on the life and works of the Italian filmmaker heralded as the "Maestro of the Macabre".Well-known as a prolific audio commentator, Tim has produced more than 150 lecture tracks released on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray discs all over the world.His work has been honored with two Saturn Awards (for Mario Bava - All the Colors of the Dark and his commentary for Kino Lorber's Blu-ray release of Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat), the Independent Publishers Bronze Medal Award and the International Horror Guild Award. He additionally holds a record 22 Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Film Awards, including their Legacy Award; in 2011, he and Donna were inducted into their Monster Kid Hall of Fame. Tim is presently working on a number of new book projects, including an intensive study of the Adults Only films of Joe Sarno.