Anyone read any books by Jack Ketchum? He wrote the novel that was basis

I'm reading the first in the series, Off Season (TV failed me this Halloween season so I downloaded a bunch of horror reading to my Kindle instead). Its decent, and almost certainly unfilmable (though the remake of The Hills Have Eyes came pretty close to accomplishing what is accomplished in the book). I'm still weighing its merit.

I watched Offspring a couple years back before I knew anything about Jack Ketchum. I didn't get it. It seemed silly, violent for the sake of being violent, that conscious attempt to shock that always fails. I fell asleep and woke up during the worst of the abuse that takes place in the cave. That also seemed kind of silly. I was still stinging from paying to rent Teenage Caveman, and the casting seemed similar.

I perked up when I later came across Stephen King's endorsement of Ketchum. Apparently he is credited with inventing the splatter genre.

The book has the set up and pacing of a slasher movie from the period when it was written, with a pretty long set-up before the carnage begins. It stands out for the anatomical, but also psychological detail and care Ketchum gives to describing the violence. If you've seen Offspring then you know what to expect (I've come across the criticism that Offspring is pretty much the same book as Off Season, so I might skip straight to reading The Woman if its available). At the same time much of the action (and much of the horror) is psychological. And also at the same time - and this is a great puzzle to me - so much is left to the imagination despite reading exactly how the cuts are being made and exactly how the actors think about what is happening. The characters are all very real, partly a consequence of the long set-up, but partly also because they are flawed. So there is much good in the book. I'm just waiting to see whether things pay off for me or not in the last pages.

Read "The Lost". End of story