This “Pain” Is All Gain

After last week’s announcement of the three winners in our Afraid giveaway contest, I promised you another free book for the taking, and here it is. I have one copy of California writer Jerry Stahl’s fourth and latest novel, Pain Killers, to send to some lucky Rap Sheet reader. I was a big fan of Stahl’s previous novel, I, Fatty, which I included among January Magazine’s Best of 2004 books list, so I’m looking forward myself to reading this blackly humorous new work of history, mystery, and dementia.

The book’s publisher describes its plot this way:

Down-and-out ex-cop and not-quite-reformed addict Manny Rupert accepts a job going undercover to find out if an old man locked up in a California prison is who he claims to be: the despicable--and allegedly dead--Josef Mengele, aka the Angel of Death. What if, instead of drowning thirty years ago, the sadistic legend whose Auschwitz crimes still horrify faked his own death and is now locked up in San Quentin, ranting and bitter about being denied the adulation he craves for his contribution to keeping the Master Race pure--if no longer masterful?

After accidentally reuniting with ex-wife and love of his life, Tina, at San Quentin--they first met at the crime scene where Tina murdered her first husband with Drano-laced Lucky Charms--Manny spends a bad night imbibing boxed wine and questionable World War One morphine, hunched over a trove of photos showing live genital dissections that plant him in the middle of a conspiracy involving genocide, drugs, eugenics, human experiments, and America’s secret history of collusion with German believers in Nordic superiority.

Manny’s quest sends him careening from one extreme of apocalypse-adjacent reality to the other: from SS-inked Jewish shotcallers to meth-crazed virgin hookers, from Mexican gangbangers to Big Pharma-financed prison research to an animal shelter that gasses more than stray dogs and cats ...

Pain Killers captures one man’s struggle against a perverse and demented scheme of global proportions, in a literary tour de force as outrageous, compelling, and dangerous as history itself. Not for the faint of heart, the novel hurtles readers into a disturbing, original, and alarmingly real world filled with some of the kinkiest sex, most horrific violence, and screaming wit ever found on the page--proving yet again that Stahl is, as The New Yorker described him, “a better-than-Burroughs virtuoso.”

To enter this latest book contest, just answer one simple question:

In which other of Stahl’s novels did ex-junkie turned codeine-popping detective Manny Rupert also appear?

If you need a clue, click here. Once you have the answer, send it in an e-mail note--along with your snail-mail address--to: jpwrites@wordcuts.org. And write “Pain Killers Contest” in the subject line. The deadline for entering is midnight on Sunday, April 5. One winner will be announced next Monday.

Unfortunately, only readers living in the United States are eligible to enter this contest.