Sadie the Sadist: X-tremely Black Humor/Horror Kindle Edition

4 1/2 Stars - Sadie despises her job. And you can’t really blame her. Her Assistant Manager is a Type A personality (the A in the case stands for ass) who forces her to shuck corn until her hands are numb in a cold, dreary basement that resides in the bowels of a supermarket. Sadie has just about reached her breaking point when this evil little tale begins and what follows might shock and offend you if you go in all innocent and unawares. Though if you’re picking up a title called “Sadie the Sadist” thinking you’re in for a sweet treat, well then I guess there’s no helping you.

Sadie starts out relatable and relatively sane. I get her. She’s snarky and she has some very dark thoughts. But don’t we all? No? Just me, then? So, very early on Sadie gives us a gentle teaser of things to come when she thinks this about a jerky customer:

"The man barks, "Your job is to serve me."

Broiled on a bed of lettuce?"

Can you see where this might be leading? Things get graphic but there’s always an undercurrent of the blackest humor your soul can imagine. I found it as amusing as I did revolting. As the book moves along, Sadie swiftly begins to unravel. Here’s a little teaser if you’re still wondering what's in store for you if pick this up.

"Barefoot, I pad to the kitchen, stand in front of the refrigerator examining the contents. Half a container of expired almond milk, a shriveled peach, a plastic container that used to hold Chia seeds and now holds what appears to be a penis. Nothing I feel like eating."

Is it real? Is it a case of too many prescription drugs? Who am I to say? I only know that I couldn’t put this book down once I started it and enjoyed all of the often over the top extreme fun and highly recommend it if you have a taste for this sort of humor. What I don’t recommend is trying out any of Sadie’s included recipes (as delish as they may sound) because they might land you in the slammer if you attempt to source the secret ingredients. Don't skip over them though because they contain a wealth of knowledge and sure are entertaining to read.

“Mushrooms add earthy flavor and depth to a dish, and if you administer the right ones to aggravating people, mushrooms can rid your life of problems."

It is interesting how the authors of horror novels can often get away with significantly more than filmmakers of the same genre. Fiction has the ability to think up some of the most sadistic and brutal acts in the history of writing and then realize that horror on the page. Often times this type of horror is called Splatter-Punk. It is just another way to say exploitation fiction—and is often comparable to movies such as Saw, Hostile, The Hills Have Eyes, and Last House on the Left. It is the most violent and sexual horror fiction available. It never pulls any punches. Often times I find myself reading and loving this genre of fiction—and may be considered a bit of a Splatter-Punk writer myself—but other times I find myself disgusted for reading it.

Sadie the Sadist by Zane Sachs is the exploitation lover’s dream. It has all the gore, sex, and violence you would expect from an exploitation novel. It is honestly one of the sickest novels I have ever read. And yet it is one strange beast of a book. It is definitely something different than I have ever seen on the market.

I as a writer often read many different types of novels and genres. To only read one type of book would be to do the world of writing a disservice. One genre that I particularly enjoy is the cozy mystery. It could be considered to be the opposite end of the spectrum from Splatter-Punk. It is a story told from the perspective of an amateur female sleuth. As she deals with life’s little issues—romance, work, family—she is also solving murder cases on the side. The setting is usually a cozy New England style town. Well, about a year ago I tried to write a short story—aptly named “Cozy”—that combined horror and the cozy mystery.

Then, once I began reading Sadie the Sadist, I realized that Sachs has done just this in her little novel. She combines the elements of a cozy female character and turned it on its head with strong elements of Splatter-Punk. The result is a disturbing mess of a book.

Sadie is a woman with issues. She works a dead end job at the local grocery store. She is alone and divorced and has serious anger issues. Her managers at her job exploit her and constantly put her down. It seems that retail work has become our generation’s version of the factory job. Having worked many years in retail myself I relate to and understand much of Sadie’s anger and complaints about her job. (Although I would never resort to the actions that Sadie does.) Little do her managers know they are messing with a sick and demented woman.

Sadie has spent too much time alone, too much time thinking, too much time fantasizing about acts of sadism. We all have had times where we were so angry that we wished we could hurt someone. But Sadie—unlike most of the normal population—acts on these thoughts and desires. She works in the back room of the grocery store chopping and shucking corn, alone for hours with her thoughts. It isn’t until one of her manager’s seemingly disappears that she begins to wonder if she herself did him in. Did she black out and do it? Did her thoughts begin to take over? Sadie begins to consider her thoughts—her sadistic side—as another personality all in itself. Similar to a Jekyll and Hyde complex she worries about the sadist completely taking over.

Once Sadie decides that she must have killed him she begins the spiral into complete and disturbed sadism. Sadie begins her escapades by horribly raping another co-worker. From there she begins to take out her vengeful anger on anyone who seems to cross her. Her acts of violence grow in grotesque nature with each new vile appointment.

The story seems as simple as that. It is one woman’s descent into the depths of violent debauchery. It isn’t a deep story and it doesn’t have any form of high moral. We just watch a normally stressed woman easily find her way down the path of a serial killer.

The book still manages to keep its cozy feeling by having strange recipes at the end of every chapter. Cozy mysteries of late are known for having recipes that apply to the main female demographic who read that type of literature. I’m not sure how they fit in with the Splatter-Punk audience but it is a humorous touch to the story.

The book itself is exceptionally well written, specifically the prose and internal character thought, for the caliber of this type of novel. Usually novels in the Splatter-Punk genre—specifically ones written by lesser known authors such as Sachs—are poorly written. So I was impressed by the style and polish of this work. However, I have a hard time recommending this novel because of its extreme exploitative content. It manages to be more disturbing than some of the works of Edward Lee I’ve read, and that isn’t a necessarily a compliment.

Also, the story arc ends up feeling a little flat. I was really interested in the novel at the beginning. Sadie was an engaging and relatable narrator in many ways. This made the concept of her slowly becoming a murderer more frightening. But I feel like she gets into the act of killing too quickly. It seems almost as if the author wanted to include more scenes of violence so it was just easier to have Sadie lose it early on. But the build-up that was present was well composed and interesting. I was just hoping for more of that human inner conflict that makes horror novels so interesting. We still get some of this after the killings begin but it isn’t as strong as in the early novel. Most of the other characters seem uninteresting and I couldn’t really care when they died.

Overall it was hard to swallow this novel. It was so disturbing and violent—and often without cause or development for the plot—that it was hard to get through. Even as a lover of horror I have a violence threshold, and I feel like I met that many times in this story. I once had a creative writing teacher who said, “violence has to be earned.” Well, I didn’t feel like it was earned very well in this novel. However, Sadie’s character was fairly well written and interesting. She is the glue that holds the novel together. The prose was also generally very polished and entertaining to read. For someone who loves scenes of extreme violence and sex this would be an ideal novel. But for me—even as a huge horror fan (and some of my favorite movies are Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the new Evil Dead)—it just wasn’t that great. But I am giving this novel a 4 out of 5 because if I was into exploitation this would be a great work.

(Originally posted on www.asliceofhorror.com)

I loved this book. It does have some very sick moments in it, be warned, but it's well worth the read.

The whole story was told in first person by Sadie. I read carefully, waiting to see it break character, but to my surprise and delight, it didn't. The flow continued throughout, following her as she struggled with her very mundane, repetitious-to-a-fault job, falling deeper and deeper into the hole of possible insanity.

There was only one spot where I spotted an obvious incongruity, but looking back on it, I believe it might have been intentional by the author. And I loved how she could see the bizarre behavior in her father but not in herself.

Overall, I think this was one of the best books I've read in a while, and I would certainly recommend it.