When I learned that Hard Case Crime was publishing a new, Halloween-themed novel (one written by the co-author of The Shape of Water), I was immediately sold. I rushed to buy a copy of Daniel Kraus’s Blood Sugar and plunged into the book, which turned out to be quite an unexpected reading experience.

Blood Sugar surprises on several levels. First, it counters the immediate assumptions about the Halloween candy-tainting scheme that forms its central plot. Such mistreatment of costumed beggars is not being planned by some elderly neighborhood crank but by a young man and the group of kids who form his small circle of friends/surrogate family. Secondly, the narrative catches the reader (particularly the one anticipating typical genre fare) off-guard with its saturation by grotesque and outré detail. A perfect, squirm-inducing example: one quirky character here willingly mummifies herself with used flypaper teeming with still-wriggling insects.

Kraus’s eccentric October-set novel reads like the wild literary child of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange and Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (the anti-hero Robbie’s trashed house on Yellow Street makes Tyler Durden’s abode on Paper Street seem like the Taj Mahal). And while encountering a first-person narrator is no great shock in a Hard Case novel, the slang-heavy, streetwise-young-thug-affecting storytelling by the adolescent Jody certainly furnishes a unique take on the conventional perspective. Here’s a taste of Jody’s sic[k] verbiage:

We arent even off the stoop before Midge kneels down and investigates our jackolantern like shes from CSI Miami. Must be some beetles or worms up inside that big orange bitch. Moms bough tit from some banger with a shopping cart full a pumpkins and even though it was fungused I was psyched cuz Moms hardly ever gets out of bed and when she does its only to cross the street to reup her cigs cuz the dude that works there wont let me buy any for her. Last time moms acquired me something special like that was once upon a time and a galaxy far away.

I lugged that big orange bastard all the way down Yellow Street cuz Robbies got ten Ginsu knives hes super proud of and I knew theyd be perfect for doing pumpkins. Robbie warned me it was too early for carving and dang, yo, turns out fat boy was correct. Here its Halloween day and the jackolanterns mouth is sucked in like No Teeth Mike, this dude that shoots up from across the school. Its all withered and rotten and a gross poop color. Every time I look at it I think about Moms cuz shes the one that bough tit special for me and also cuz shes up in her room getting all withered and rotten too. Maybe moms has bugs in her head like the jackolantern does? That would explain a lot.

The many short chapters built with block paragraphs do give the book an episodic feel, and Blood Sugar lacks the hard-charging narrative drive of a typical caper novel. There’s not much suspense, either, because the intended crime is so heinous it couldn’t possibly be pulled off as planned (which isn’t to say there’s no poisonous candy dispersed during the disturbingly violent climax). Also, much ado is made throughout the book about dressing up in costume, but the overarching emphasis on grotesquerie tends to prevent the establishment of a true, autumnal-holiday atmosphere. Where Kraus’s version of a Halloween crime novel shines is in the dark brilliance of its narrative voice. This book is often laugh-out-loud funny, and beneath its vulgar exterior, surprisingly sweet. An unprecedented feat for Hard Case Crime (I doubt there will be anything like it put out by this publisher ever again), Blood Sugar proves to be a quite-satisfying seasonal treat.