Off Season: The Unexpurgated Edition, 
by Jack Ketchum; 
Overlook Connection Press, 1999; 211 pgs; $45.00

It's difficult to avoid turning this review into an essay. But how else do you discuss a classic? Off Season was a classic even in its emasculated 1981 Ballantine version, and rightly so. Now Ketchum (the pseudonymous Dallas Mayr) adds an Afterword discussing the negotiations 
surrounding the clipped version. Doug Winter adds his historian's view in an introduction.

In a remote area of the Maine coast, a woman from the city awaits a group of friends which includes her current boyfriend, her old boyfriend and his current girlfriend, and her sister and her boyfriend. It sounds idyllic  three couples sharing a cabin in the woods. Romantic, or perhaps 
traumatic, due to unresolved tension.

The city folk cannot know that a pack of inbred cave-dwelling hillbilly types have made meals of hikers and tourists for years, disappearances which finally begin to click with local state cops. The police's awareness comes at about the same time as the six city people realize their own predicament. There's no such thing as a cavalry rescue, which is both cynical and realistic.

The middle portion is taken up by the cave-dwellers' siege of the cabin, which Ketchum admits was heavily influenced by George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. But there's added dimension  here the "zombies" are human enough to understand their own actions, though for them it's a routine "hunt."

Ketchum's message is that not even good guys are safe facing the unflinching randomness of the universe. During the attack and after, we witness brutality beyond human comprehension. A woman is gutted like a deer and barbecued, her organs eaten raw. Body parts are hacked off. Children are shot in the head. We have to consider: what is this mantle of civilization into which we put so much stock? How easily shed is it?

Ketchum makes us voyeurs. The fact that we're shocked, yes, but also unshockable, says a lot about us. After all, how many machete attacks and mass grave finds litter our TV news? Brutality thrives in our world, and only the randomness of the universe keeps us from its grasp. Highest possible recommendation.