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Nightjack
Pace is released from a mental institution, only to be kidnapped by three other escapees, all suffering from multiple personality disorder. What ensues is a wild, surreal adventure leading finally to a Greek island, where everyone may wind up dead unless Pace willingly releases the darkest persona of all...Nightjack.
241 pages, Paperback
First published October 18, 2010
6 people are currently reading
184 people want to read
About the author
Tom Piccirilli
185 books387 followersThomas Piccirilli (May 27, 1965 – July 11, 2015) was an American novelist and short story writer.
Piccirilli sold over 150 stories in the mystery, thriller, horror, erotica, and science fiction fields. He was a two-time winner of the International Thriller Writers Award for "Best Paperback Original" (2008, 2010). He was a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award. He was also a finalist for the 2009 Edgar Allan Poe Award given by the Mystery Writers of America, a final nominee for the Fantasy Award, and the winner of the first Bram Stoker Award given in the category of "Best Poetry Collection".
Piccirilli sold over 150 stories in the mystery, thriller, horror, erotica, and science fiction fields. He was a two-time winner of the International Thriller Writers Award for "Best Paperback Original" (2008, 2010). He was a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award. He was also a finalist for the 2009 Edgar Allan Poe Award given by the Mystery Writers of America, a final nominee for the Fantasy Award, and the winner of the first Bram Stoker Award given in the category of "Best Poetry Collection".
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
September 7, 2011
And then confusion set in…
This was fun, well-written and original, but I’m not sure how best to describe it. Was it (1) a tightly plotted, multi-layered exploration of multiple personality disorder within a violent noir setting whose brilliance was just beyond my grasp or (2) an adrenaline-based, thrill ride using the “gimmick” of a protag with MPD in a wild, unfocused tale in which the narrative got away from the author? I'm going to need another read in order to be make a final determination. For now, I’m going to King Solomon the baby and call it both.
BACKGROUND
Our main character is...well, that's a corker. He's multi-dimensional to say the least.
Our narrator is a guy named Pace who is one of about a thousand “personalities” floating around in the body of what used to be William Pacella. Pacella was a school teacher who went on a permanent “nutter” after his wife and child were burned to death in a restaurant fire started by the mob to collect insurance proceeds. William’s mind was unable to cope with the loss of his family (to which I can completely relate) and retreated behind some new “friends” better able to deal.
One of these friends was a murderous psychopath called the “Night Jack.” After the fire, Jack emerged and proceeded to slice, dice, dismember and mutilate EVERY member of the local mob responsible for his family’s death. Once the carnage was complete and the last heart had stopped ticking, Pacella/Pace checked himself into a mental hospital…
…and that brings to the beginning of the book.
PLOT SUMMARY
Years have passed and Pace is now the dominant personality and is the only one who can interact with and observe the rest of the gang living in Pacella’s psyche. Despite having a cast of thousands in his head, Pace is intelligent enough to “play the game” and appear, for the most part, functionally sane. Then, under somewhat mysterious circumstances, Pace is suddenly released from the hospital. Almost immediately, he is kidnapped by 3 of his fellow patients, all of which also suffer from MPD (holy sack loads, the cast is getting way too crowded).
It turns out that the daughter of a powerful Greek arms dealer, who was also a patient at the hospital, was raped and beaten while being treated there and Pace (or one of this “others”) is the prime suspect. The Greek, named Kaltzas, has moved some pieces around to arrange for Pace’s release so he could have him “dealt with” once he finds out what really happened from Pace’s own battered lips.
Meanwhile, Pace is just as interested as Kaltzas to find out what happened to Cassandra (the daughter) and is afraid that he may in fact me responsible for what happened. The rest of this novella/short novel is a psychological roller coaster of fast paced, surrealism as the 4 patients X 1000 personalities try to unravel what happened at the hospital while preparing for a final showdown with Kaltzas.
MY THOUGHTS
If you’re a fan of noir mysteries with healthy doses a violence and an off the beaten path setting, this is book I think you will like. I’m just not sure whether it was an amazing achievement or just a lot of fun, but it certainly has stuck with me. It’s been over 24 hours since I have finished this and I am still thinking about the story (especially the ending) and so it has clearly affected me. Hopefully another reading, or some insight from my fellow goodreaders who check this out, will shed some light.
One thing I am not confused about is that Tom Piccirilli can write, draw characters a lay dialogue with the best of them. I scratched my head a few times and may have missed some of the depth he infused into the narrative, but I had a lot of fun rollicking in his story for a few hours.
Finally, before I wrap up, I want to give some praise to my favorite personality of our main character…Jimmy Boyd. Jimmy’s a welterweight boxer born in Dublin, 1883, who comes out whenever Pace is about to get his ass kicked and had me laughing out loud whenever he appeared. My favorite line from Jimmy: ”Next time, boyo, ye’ll be wantin’ to speak in a proper tone when ye address me. Else I’ll slap the snottiness out the other side a ye head.” I would love to have seen a lot more of Jimmy in the book.
4.0 stars (with potential of upward advancement). HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
This was fun, well-written and original, but I’m not sure how best to describe it. Was it (1) a tightly plotted, multi-layered exploration of multiple personality disorder within a violent noir setting whose brilliance was just beyond my grasp or (2) an adrenaline-based, thrill ride using the “gimmick” of a protag with MPD in a wild, unfocused tale in which the narrative got away from the author? I'm going to need another read in order to be make a final determination. For now, I’m going to King Solomon the baby and call it both.
BACKGROUND
Our main character is...well, that's a corker. He's multi-dimensional to say the least.
Our narrator is a guy named Pace who is one of about a thousand “personalities” floating around in the body of what used to be William Pacella. Pacella was a school teacher who went on a permanent “nutter” after his wife and child were burned to death in a restaurant fire started by the mob to collect insurance proceeds. William’s mind was unable to cope with the loss of his family (to which I can completely relate) and retreated behind some new “friends” better able to deal.
One of these friends was a murderous psychopath called the “Night Jack.” After the fire, Jack emerged and proceeded to slice, dice, dismember and mutilate EVERY member of the local mob responsible for his family’s death. Once the carnage was complete and the last heart had stopped ticking, Pacella/Pace checked himself into a mental hospital…
…and that brings to the beginning of the book.
PLOT SUMMARY
Years have passed and Pace is now the dominant personality and is the only one who can interact with and observe the rest of the gang living in Pacella’s psyche. Despite having a cast of thousands in his head, Pace is intelligent enough to “play the game” and appear, for the most part, functionally sane. Then, under somewhat mysterious circumstances, Pace is suddenly released from the hospital. Almost immediately, he is kidnapped by 3 of his fellow patients, all of which also suffer from MPD (holy sack loads, the cast is getting way too crowded).
It turns out that the daughter of a powerful Greek arms dealer, who was also a patient at the hospital, was raped and beaten while being treated there and Pace (or one of this “others”) is the prime suspect. The Greek, named Kaltzas, has moved some pieces around to arrange for Pace’s release so he could have him “dealt with” once he finds out what really happened from Pace’s own battered lips.
Meanwhile, Pace is just as interested as Kaltzas to find out what happened to Cassandra (the daughter) and is afraid that he may in fact me responsible for what happened. The rest of this novella/short novel is a psychological roller coaster of fast paced, surrealism as the 4 patients X 1000 personalities try to unravel what happened at the hospital while preparing for a final showdown with Kaltzas.
MY THOUGHTS
If you’re a fan of noir mysteries with healthy doses a violence and an off the beaten path setting, this is book I think you will like. I’m just not sure whether it was an amazing achievement or just a lot of fun, but it certainly has stuck with me. It’s been over 24 hours since I have finished this and I am still thinking about the story (especially the ending) and so it has clearly affected me. Hopefully another reading, or some insight from my fellow goodreaders who check this out, will shed some light.
One thing I am not confused about is that Tom Piccirilli can write, draw characters a lay dialogue with the best of them. I scratched my head a few times and may have missed some of the depth he infused into the narrative, but I had a lot of fun rollicking in his story for a few hours.
Finally, before I wrap up, I want to give some praise to my favorite personality of our main character…Jimmy Boyd. Jimmy’s a welterweight boxer born in Dublin, 1883, who comes out whenever Pace is about to get his ass kicked and had me laughing out loud whenever he appeared. My favorite line from Jimmy: ”Next time, boyo, ye’ll be wantin’ to speak in a proper tone when ye address me. Else I’ll slap the snottiness out the other side a ye head.” I would love to have seen a lot more of Jimmy in the book.
4.0 stars (with potential of upward advancement). HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
November 16, 2016
I really dig me some Piccrilli and this was one crazy flippin’ ride. I’m not exactly what the hell was going on here, but I liked it. It had tons of personality. Or personalities, rather. Multiple personalities.
"Hey, Will."
“My name isn't Will.”
“What is it then?”
“I don't know.”
This should have been a complete train wreck, but somehow Pic manages to keep this one going amongst all the different character personalities and violence and kept me completely engaged the whole way thru. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get lost here and there, but it didn’t matter. It’s that well written. It’s that good. 4+ Stars and Highly Recommended.
"Hey, Will."
“My name isn't Will.”
“What is it then?”
“I don't know.”
This should have been a complete train wreck, but somehow Pic manages to keep this one going amongst all the different character personalities and violence and kept me completely engaged the whole way thru. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get lost here and there, but it didn’t matter. It’s that well written. It’s that good. 4+ Stars and Highly Recommended.
September 12, 2011
A surrealist novel by Tom Piccirilli with an emphasis on madness over meaning. ‘Nightjack’ follows the fragmented psyche of a disturbed and schizophrenic protagonist in Will (Pace, Jack, Sam etc.) as he tries to piece together the events that lead to his institutionalisation and subsequent release. Read in a perpetual state of haziness, the lines continually blurred between fact and fantasy as Will’s (and wards) sojourn towards a semblance of reality on a quest to quash pent up anger and those responsible for his state of being. At times, ‘Nightjack’ resembled the classic noir tale of a good man wronged seeking retribution for the loss of his wife, while at other, a collage of craziness and subtle interlocking of hallucinations to form pieces of a complex puzzle which unfortunately eluded a conclusive closure. An interesting and unique look at a multifaceted story with extreme multidimensional character(s). 3.5 stars.
May 30, 2016
I could give this a five-star review for execution, as Piccirilli completely delivered a narrative from inside the multiple-personality head, and in that regard it reminded me of the fascinating book The Minds of Billy Milligan. As impressive as the writing feat is, I just didn't enjoy reading this one.
August 12, 2013
A live wire of a novel. Tom Piccirilli's tale of mental illness can get confusing at time, but it goes through great pains to expose how terrifying it can be to be lost inside your own head. Pace, our hero with dissociative identity disorder, understands himself to be part of something greater than what he can imagine and from the moment he gets kidnapped by three maniacs, two fights between. One outside of himself and one within.
NIGHTJACK should be a mandatory reading to everybody who wants to explore mental illness as a central theme of their fiction. It can get to be quite a chore at times, but Piccirilli is never confrontational and never tries to lose you on purpose. Entertaining his reader always remains the priority. If you're into Piccirilli as deep as I am, this is a no-brainer, you've GOT to read this. It's too insane to pass on. If you don't know this cult author, read it for the sheer nattative stunt that it is.
NIGHTJACK should be a mandatory reading to everybody who wants to explore mental illness as a central theme of their fiction. It can get to be quite a chore at times, but Piccirilli is never confrontational and never tries to lose you on purpose. Entertaining his reader always remains the priority. If you're into Piccirilli as deep as I am, this is a no-brainer, you've GOT to read this. It's too insane to pass on. If you don't know this cult author, read it for the sheer nattative stunt that it is.
November 30, 2017
An engaging, twisted, violent and utterly dark noir masterpiece!
May 28, 2015
Disjointed and surrealistic. There are too many little touche sand shifts that make it somewhat annoying to the reader. I wanted to put it down and almost did. Pace is a complicated man who has done some bad things for good reason and then checks himself into the loony bin. He has a myriad of disorders and they manifest themselves in some interesting ways. The story seemed showy and was not up to his normal cannon of work.
May 1, 2015
This book is unlike anything I've ever read before. Honestly, I still have no idea quite what the fvck I just read. But it was brilliant, really. Beautiful, evocative writing and a truly mesmerising premise and execution. I will think on it further to see if can decide what actually happened. But I recommend it. It will be a new experience for you, I'm fairly sure of that.
January 30, 2020
Audio-book rating.
March 28, 2020
The first Piccirilli novel I didn't like. To paraphrase one meta-paragraph near the end, the story is jumpy, extremely convoluted, and the characters not particularly compelling. In particular, the way the female characters are written is, to put it bluntly, offensive. For no particular reason, they are all desperately in love with the main character, and that is their only real trait. That's putting it mildly.
Anyway, the story is a mess, but Piccirilli is a master of prose, which is the only reason I finished it.
Anyway, the story is a mess, but Piccirilli is a master of prose, which is the only reason I finished it.
June 18, 2018
This book... This book was very difficult for me to read. I read this book via audible and it was between a 5 to 6 hour read it took me a number of days to get though. It was not that I wasn’t interested it was very much in my head, almost as if my identities were arguing.
November 22, 2014
I... I-I don't even really know what I just read. Pace is a person suffering from MPD (multiple personality disorder, Schizophrenia, crazy to the core). He is released from the mental institution where he resided as self admitted patient, only to be promptly sorta kidnapped by a bunch of other people suffering from MPD. So while Pace seems to be traveling with just 4 other people, in reality there are thousands of personalities swimming about in each of them.
It left me jarred at best, feeling severely disjointed and unreal (much like the characters themselves) at the worst moments. The whole squadron of maniacs is on their way to an island where a rich man lives, who they think is out to kill them for some wrong done to a fellow patient done in the same mad house where they had been. As maybe half of them have death wishes anyways, it really leads to a confusing tumble of personalities and stories throughout.
And then the main character can often perceive the split personalities of his compatriots as being real, leaving me even more disjointed. What is real? What isn't?
A intriguing noir mystery, but going every which way with the characters left me confused at times, and disappointed at others.
It left me jarred at best, feeling severely disjointed and unreal (much like the characters themselves) at the worst moments. The whole squadron of maniacs is on their way to an island where a rich man lives, who they think is out to kill them for some wrong done to a fellow patient done in the same mad house where they had been. As maybe half of them have death wishes anyways, it really leads to a confusing tumble of personalities and stories throughout.
And then the main character can often perceive the split personalities of his compatriots as being real, leaving me even more disjointed. What is real? What isn't?
A intriguing noir mystery, but going every which way with the characters left me confused at times, and disappointed at others.
April 22, 2012
Quick paced but strange to begin with this book does surprise nicely as its planned out to climax to a strange conclusion. Well worth the read but hard to imagine why reading Nightjack was at all important. With all the excitement that goes around mostly surrounds Jack a modern day return of Jack the Ripper from the past a kind of reincarnation, it was hard to follow all the strangeness this invokes throughout the whole story and the other main characters that it was just hard to read like much of a Piccirilli book. His creations touch bizarre but are nice enough that Piccirilli succeeds in dishing mysterious hard fact thrillers with horror to surprise readers wanting more from the story edged with fun enthusiasms.
June 8, 2012
I think I found out about this via a Neil Gaiman "tweet." I took my time with this one (it was my lunch time reading on my iphone via Kindle) not because I didn't enjoy it. So glad I discovered this book and author. Something about the story really got to me, just liked the way it was written along with the characters. I do I think want to revisit the story especially the discussion of the Greek myths, etc. Some great lines in this book too. It'd be cool to explore these characters again (especially Jack/Pacella/Pace/Sam) but I think the book brings closure to the story. Oh and for this: "You went mad with the wonder of Why."
May 11, 2012
Great, mind-bending read. Would love to see this turned into a film...it'd be difficult but, if done right, would be phenomenal. I'm thinking Christian Bale for Pace...maybe Brad Anderson or Christopher Nolan to direct.
December 29, 2013
Multiple personalities tell this feverish story of murder, revenge and still more revenge. It might be easy to think your getting confused but you're just fooling yourself. It's easy enough to keep up with which is my complaint - it should have gone further, gotten wilder.
March 28, 2017
Highly bizarre and disorienting. Picorilli has a habit of creating these u usual situations and just throwing the reader into them unprepared.
It takes a little bit to get into the swing of things, but the challenges keep you on your toes.
It takes a little bit to get into the swing of things, but the challenges keep you on your toes.
January 18, 2013
See my full review on The Bag and The Crow: http://blog.thebagandthecrow.com/2013...
February 18, 2011
Dark and with good characters. Not for my mother to read, but certainly my brother.
October 11, 2011
Tom Piccirilli is the most underrated author around.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews