One Hell of a Ride
Brett Alexander Savory’s THE DISTANCE TRAVELLED
Review by Garrett Peck
So you’re sitting around your house in Hell, your powerful air conditioner knocking a few million degrees off the outside temperature of four billion plus, munching a bowl of Boo Berry before your scheduled torture session on the rack, and some son of a bitch launches a live pig through your window. Absurd? Disturbing? That’s just the first page of Brett Alexander Savory’s THE DISTANCE TRAVELLED.
Visions of Hell have long been a popular subject in literature. Dante Alighieri’s INFERNO is still widely read and taught, yet very few people bother with PURGATORIO and PARADISO, the other two books in his THE DIVINE COMEDY. Purgatory and Heaven aren’t nearly as interesting subjects, it seems. Several contemporary horror writers have recently released their own visions of Hell, such as Edward Lee (CITY INFERNAL and INFERNAL ANGEL) and Jeffrey Thomas (LETTERS FROM HELL). Now we have a new vision of Hell from Brett Alexander Savory.
Well, not entirely new. THE DISTANCE TRAVELLED was first published as a novelette (Prime Books 2001). This expanded edition from Necro Publications is a full-length novel and takes us down many other corridors of Hell not explored in the original version. It begins and ends the same, but has been greatly expanded in the middle.
The new material finds our anti-hero narrator Stu joining forces with one of the fellows who threw the pig through his window (his name is Aaron, but he prefers the “PigBoy” moniker Stu bestows on him), Gus Henry Vaughn (a desiccated corpse who runs one of Hell’s gas stations), Tom China (a 10-foot tall HellRat) and Tom’s lady friend, Miss Appleton, on an epic quest to find five pieces of a puzzle found in “Oliver’s Great Big Rainy-Day Fun-Time Book of Prophecy.” Their travels take them from a subway to a secret church where some of the Underworld’s denizens still worship God to Hell’s Kitchen, where the food is really, really hot! The result is a richer environment, stronger characterization and even more fun and adventure.
Savory’s narrative is by turns grotesquely humorous and humorously grotesque. His first-person voice is full of noir attitude and never boring. And you’ll never look at pigs or giant rats the same way again.
But what really sticks out about this story is its potential for multi-media adaptation. That it would make an interesting live-action movie is obvious, but an anime-style picture might be even better. Certainly a graphic novel version would be a winner. It could also be made into a kick-ass video game. And how about a DISTANCE TRAVELLED theme park ride, where visitors are taken on a tour through Hell in an El Camino? The possibilities are endless. 
The Interpretation of Murder
Review by James Argendeli
With self-help daytime television shows breeding like unwanted insects, 21st century mass-market entertainment inhalers may find it difficult to believe that once upon a time psychology was a new science in the treatment of mental illness. Now the names of Dr. Sigmund Freud and, to a lesser extent, Dr. Carl Jung are widely known, but early in the 20th century a large majority of the populace was not so accepting of sofa science. It is this background of history that is the setting of the new book THE INTERPRETATION OF MURDER by first-time novelist Jed Rubenfeld.
The reader is engulfed into the world of New York City circa 1909 where Dr. Sigmund Freud and his small entourage have arrived for a series of lectures as well as accepting an honorary degree from Clark University. This is Freud’s first visit to these shores, and the good doctor is thrust into the hustle and bustle of the young Big Apple. Freud and company are shown around Gotham by the “only American psychoanalyst” Dr. Stratham Younger. The sites of New York are taken in including the skyscrapers, Coney Island, Grand Central Station and attempted murder.
Seventeen-year-old socialite Nora Acton has barely escaped from an attempted assault that left her with a loss of speech and memory. Enter Dr. Younger who, with Freud’s blessing, becomes her analyst to solve the mystery. Meanwhile another young girl, Elizabeth Riverford, was not as lucky. Her killing involved elements of a sick mind at work.
The elements of murder and psychology present the reader with what sounds like a heavy literal thriller. And while this is a serious thriller, there is a large comic relationship between police investigator Jimmy Littlemore and New York City coroner Charles Hugel. Think of them as the Laurel and Hardy comic relief tag team when things get depressingly dark.
Professor of Law at Yale University Rubenfeld has written a compelling mystery/thriller that keeps the reader trying to unlock the puzzle box at the heart of the novel. Obviously any novel featuring Freud in a major supporting role has digressions of psychology as well as an explanation of Shakespeare’s “To Be or Not to Be” dilemma. Rubenfeld’s history and descriptions of New York also serve to bring the story to life or, in this case, death.
The resolution of “who done it” also works brilliantly.
THE INTERPRETATION OF MURDER is not a quick read in this era of cookie-cutter mysteries. And while using Freud may seem at first like a gimmick, Rubenfeld has put New York on the psychoanalyst couch and the prescription is not Prozac, it’s murder. Murder notwithstanding, there are other reasons Freud referred to Americans as savages.
