I made it a point to track down OFF SEASON and the other four novels-HIDE AND SEEK, COVER, SHE WAKES and THE GIRL NEXT DOOR-Jack Ketchum had published up to that point, a gambit, believe it or not, that was relatively easy and inexpensive (now, of course, those books in their original editions are costly collector’s items). I considered myself then, as I do now, to be pretty knowledgeable about genre fiction, yet here was an intriguing-sounding horror novel written by an author I’d never heard of that purported to be a sequel to a decade old novel-OFF SEASON-that I’d likewise never heard of. It was then that I happened upon a paperback novel called OFFSPRING during a trip to New York. My own history with Ketchum dates back to 1992. The kinds of books I like to read…I’m damned if I’m going to write something just for the money or so some editor can be flavor of the month with the boys on publishers’ row.” As Ketchum wrote in his 1997 story “The Work” (about a character who was doubtlessly more than a little autobiographical), “I write what I like to write. This meant, of course, that Ketchum never attained the fame and fortune of his longtime friend Stephen King, but I don’t think he minded. Ketchum wrote exactly what he wanted, never softening the harshness of his prose for the edification of the marketplace nor turning to other, more profitable genres (as so many of his fellow horror scribes did in the nineties) when the horror boom went south. I also admire the way Ketchum handled his career: with fortitude, tenacity and a commitment to his own particular vision that’s virtually unheard-of, especially in the horror-sphere. Furthermore, for all the over-the-top grue for which he’s known, the violence, like most everything else in Ketchum’s fictional universe, is for the most part spare and non-excessive. Few of his novels exceed 250 pages, and fewer still can be accused of being overwritten. His ultra-spare prose remains unique in and out of the field-he was the undisputed master of the single-sentence paragraph-and that minimalist tendency extends to his narratives. Ketchum/Mayr’s writing talent was undeniable, and a primary reason I hold him in such high regard. His Janudemise was an incalculable loss to the field, and this reader in particular.

Dallas Mayr, better known to us as Jack Ketchum, was a novelist who during a career that spanned nearly four decades wrote some of the most powerful and disturbing horror fiction in existence. Certainly there have been a lot of famous people deaths that have affected me, but this one impacted me especially.

Hide and Seek by Jack Ketchum