The Least of My Scars

by Stephen Graham Jones

You haven't heard of William Colton Hughes. Or, if you have, then you're not telling anybody. Not telling them anything, ever. He's not the serial killer on the news, in the textbooks. He's the one out there still punching his card, and a few other people's too. He is a nightmare come to life, waiting in his apartment for you to knock on his door.

William Colton Hughes is living his fantasy: his victims are delivered to his apartment every few days. But when he's suddenly alone, no visitors, nobody to talk to but himself, he begins to lose what little of his mind he has left. Has his benefactor, his employer, been his prison warden all along? His apartment complex a hospital? Is he going to have to go back to heaving dark plastic bags into dumpsters when nobody's looking?

Or will Dashboard Mary, a mysterious woman hell-bent on revenge, get to him first?

This is William Colton Hughes. Come and knock on his door.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Thriller, Crime, Indigenous, Mystery, Novella

183 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2013

About the author

Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author thirty-five or so books. He really likes werewolves and slashers. Favorite novels change daily, but Valis and Love Medicine and Lonesome Dove and It and The Things They Carried are all usually up there somewhere. Stephen lives in Boulder, Colorado. It's a big change from the West Texas he grew up in.

Reviews

[Sadie Hartmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE LEAST OF MY SCARS by Stephen Graham Jones
Release Date: December 2013
General genre: Adult, Graphic, Horror
Subgenre: Serial Killers & Slashers
Writing Style: Humorous, Unflinching, Brutal, Graphic Detail, 1st Person POV

What you need to know: You're in the mind of a killer. As his story unfolds, the truth of his life, the situation he's in, the game he's playing. the players of the game, come to light.

My reading experience: Man, this story is FUCKED. UP. I felt dirty for enjoying it but being the seasoned horror that I am, that dirt washes off. Jones makes it even easier by making his audience too fucking comfortable, so comfortable we should not be laughing at the stuff this guy says and does, but here we are. TW: there is animal cruelty (dog stuff) you can skim over which feels shitty because you don't skim the people stuff, but whatever. We all do that.
This will forever go on every list I ever make about horror with serial killers. Very entertaining.

My final recommendation: For fans who don't mind the yuck, enjoy the squirm, and love being in that unsafe place with a favorite horror storyteller.
Comps: Joe Lansdale, Bret Easton Ellis, Cormac McCarthy, Jeremy Robert Johnson (basically any author that makes you laugh while you're scared)

[Rhiannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Whew. Glad that's over with.

This rating only reflects that I didn't like this book. That's not to say it fails on an artistic level. No, it does exactly what its author set out to do, which is to creep you out like no one else has and to make you sick with it. I strongly encourage horror fans to give this a try if they've got the stomach for a deep first person account of a psychopath and the labyrinthine sewer of his mind.

This is not sunny, congenial Dexter, and this is far beyond the placid lunacy of American Psycho. It pushes limits. Read only if you're ready to see where yours are.

I came face to face with a hard truth about my own horror fandom about a third of the way through, which suggested that I wasn't a horror fan at all - not if what I like is the safe nonsense of superstition. Demons, monsters; the dressing up of ancient loathing for teeth and the dark unknown. Things that are impossible in my materialist worldview.

So when I found here something truly horrifying - as in, it lives among us in the realm of possibility - I was repulsed. I turned away. I hate saying this, but I was actually offended.

Ugh. That's the last thing any horror fan is willing to admit. We're here because it's not easy, it's not likeable and not always fun, and it says something about you if you can endure a glance into the abyss without flinching.

But then you find this, an abyss that makes your previous victories look fake and silly. You wonder who you're trying to impress after all, liking what you do, pretending to play with psychological fire.

This shit isn't for me. It's a shame because there's something else going on that you can only glimpse through the narrator's sludgy windows, but you have to be paying close attention. I couldn't do that. Not after the scene in the storage unit. Not after angrily putting this book down and thinking the only incentive for picking it back up was to see if the narrator got his.

The good news is that even with long gaps between reads and skimming through the really violent parts, you'll still get the twist at the end, more or less.

Is it worth it?

Probably. If you're a real horror fan.

[Kelby Losack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alone and slipping into paranoia. Obsessed with mannequin neighbors and family members, with a wet-dry vac, robot arms, and killing people delivered to his doorstep. This is William Colton Hughes, the serial killer who never leaves his apartment, and he's been waiting for you to come and knock on his door.

SGJ always grabs me, but this may be the most gripping voice he's ever tapped into. Billy is a darker, more complex, somehow strangely relatable type of serial killer than any other in literature.

And the things he does with the bodies... Conversations he has over the phone with Dashboard Mary... I won't spoil anything.

Read this in one sitting. Get lost in it. But be sure to shower afterwards, as this is grimy and gory territory, but oh, is it wonderful in the most sinister of ways.

Dark, romantic, raw, disturbing. Jones never, ever flinches or pulls punches with LEAST OF MY SCARS, which just may be his best work to date, and that is saying a lot.

[Lezlie The Nerdy Narrative · Rating 5 out of 5]

FREAKING MASTERPIECE

I share a few brief non spoiler thoughts in my Weekly Wrap Up that you can watch here if you're interested: https://youtu.be/TgPTexZKwmQ

[Angyl · Rating 5 out of 5]

hello this was so good ‼️

The Least of My Scars is told through the perspective of a serial killer in a unique situation... He works for someone with all expenses paid and victims hand-delivered to his door routinely. The only thing is, he can never leave the apartment. The story throws us right into the action when we meet our main character and immediately get to see his killing routine in action. Graphic at times, and deeply psychological, the plot slowly unfolds as more information is made available to the reader. Yet, the book does not give it all away up front. Along with an unreliable narrator who has begun to blur the lines between reality & make-believe, this book keeps you guessing until the very last page.

I wasn't sure if this would be a five-star book for me, but as we slowly crept to the devastating ending, there was a reveal that genuinely shocked me and upon finishing the book I had to sit in silence with my thoughts for a minute. This will definitely be one to reread in the future, as I'm sure you'll pick up on so much more throughout.

[Fionnuala · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was going to wait 24 hours or so to review this so I could get my thoughts in order, but I've been around the horror block enough times to know that I'm only lying to myself, so here we are. I don't often finish a book and say "what the fuck was that?" and mean it in a good way, but this right here is one of the delightful rare exceptions.

I've read a lot of horror; I've read a lot of messed up books. I think I mentioned in my review for The Only Good Indians that there's a certain quality to the writing (and this book is no exception) that reminds me of the very best of creepy online horror from Back In The Day (a high I'll forever be chasing), and I've been around that block, too. What I'm trying to say is, I know my stuff, and I'm very, very good at guessing plot twists. I think when you read around a certain style or genre enough, that's a given -- I can still enjoy books when I see things coming, but it's very rare that I don't guess what's going to happen. Can you guess who, despite this, got absolutely taken out by what was going on here? I bet you can.

This is a short book, but it packs so much into it. It's well worth taking slowly, reading into every line, and taking your best guess. You probably won't have much luck, but it's a fun journey. This really is horror in its truest form -- it's horrifying, it's gross, it's messed up, but it's not senseless. Well, OK, it is, a little, but not in the bad way. There's a quality to it where you do genuinely feel like you might be straying a little too far into waters best left unexplored, but at the same time you're having too much fun (and enjoying your horror a little too much) to back out. After all, we can say to one another oh man, that's so messed up, that's fucked, what the hell? as much as we want, but we're saying it through grins and deep down we all know that's why we rocked up to this journey in the first place. You want to be horrified? You want to be disgusted? You want to be disturbed? This is for you. It's exactly what it says on the tin, baby. No takebacks.

As a matter of fact, I discovered this book not through reading any of the author's previous work (it was a happy coincidence that I already had The Only Good Indians on hand), but because a friend of a friend on Goodreads reviewed it with perhaps the most intriguing one-star review I've ever read -- not a reflection of the work itself, but more because this person was so horrified that they couldn't in good conscience rate it any higher. The review highly recommended it for fans of real, true horror, and as someone who's been around the block a few times, I thought sure, why not? Well, I got everything I asked for, and some that I didn't. And I loved every moment of it.

If you're curious, give it a read. You're in for a ride either way. And hey, if it's that horrific, you can just stop, right?

Right?

[Edward Rathke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not giving this a rating yet, because, like the best of Stephen's novels, I need another read. Some very interesting things happening on the surface here, but I got lost for a while. With most writers, I hold that as a fault, but with Stephen, it's usually because I was reading wrong, or not yet reading right. The best of his novels are deceptive this way. They're not difficult to read but they're difficult to figure out, and I think there may be another novel happening underneath what I thought I was reading the right way.

So, for a first read, I'd put it at like a 3.5, or something. But I'll be reading this again, maybe in a year, once the dust from the questions settles, and likely it'll end up being one of my favorites.

There's a lot to love about this book, even in all its brutality and derangement. Definitely worth checking out, but read close, closer than I did, even when it hurts.

And it will.

[Justin Steele · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the high notes of the latter days of 2013 was that the noir genre saw the birth of Broken River Books. Author J. David Osborne's Kickstarter-funded publishing project exploded onto the scene with five simultaneous releases, all featuring gorgeous Matthew Revert covers.

One of these releases is The Least of My Scars, one of the wildest, most twisted books I've had the pleasure of reading. Author Stephen Graham Jones is no stranger to the scene, and he is currently one of the most impressive writers working across genres, remaining at ease whether he's penning horror, noir, or bizarro stories. One thing he doesn't do is hold punches, and The Least of My Scars is one hard-hitting novel, giving readers a look into an extremely warped mind that is sure to leave it's mark.

The premise is one of a kind: serial killer William Colton Hughes finds himself caught by a local crime boss, who decides to utilize his talents. Posted up in an apartment that he never leaves, Hughes murders the people that his boss has delivered to his door. The system seems like it would be perfect for a man like Hughes, a constant stream of victims, anything else he wants delivered by the bosses henchmen, and a buffer of adjacent empty apartments connected to his in order to keep his business quiet. However, the isolation seems to further warp his already sick mind, and has him questioning reality.

Hughes is also the novel's narrator, and this is what really makes the novel shine. He makes for a completely unreliable narrator, very much unable to separate reality from his fantasies. His calculating, cold and sadistic side makes him very effective at what he does, although it's counter-balanced by his paranoia and debilitating fantasies, as well as bizarre OCD-style behaviors.

This book is not for everyone, and I mean that in a good way. Despite the over the top premise, the disturbed narration is scary. It's scary because Stephen Graham Jones managed to do such a convincing job. This isn't a narrative that goes away, days later I still find it festering in the back of my head.

This book is too good to be missed. It's bloody, it's scary, and at times it's even funny, which makes it even scarier. William Colton Hughes is destined to go down in the books among the greatest literary psychopaths and villains. So what are you waiting for? Go and knock on his door.

Originally appeared on my blog, The Arkham Digest.

[Az · Rating 1 out of 5]

I consider myself lucky to be able to read, as many people are unable to and, as a result, miss out on the beauty of literature and storytelling. However, I can say with conviction that no one on this earth is missing out on anything by not reading this particular book. In fact, I found myself wanting to be illiterate at points during my reading of it.

Before we even begin to dissect the convoluted and awful structure of the plot, the writing style is so confusing that it makes it hard to keep track of the characters. What began as a promising book turned into a boring slog, with its only redeeming feature being the plot twist. However, even this plot twist felt cheap due to the fact that the plot had become so complicated that I had no idea who the main character was. The introduction of multiple characters and ambiguity of whether some were alive or dead added to frustrations. What could have been an excellent book turned into one of the worst-written books I've ever come across. In fact, it is quite clearly the worst book I have ever read. Perhaps the writing style was intended to reflect the crazed nature of a serial killer and their rationale, and in that aspect, I commend the author for capturing it so well. He captured it so well that I wanted a serial killer to kill me to avoid the torture of reading this book any further. I genuinely love the thriller/horror/gore genre of reading and had high expectations before reading it, however, this book has single-handedly done more damage to my joy of reading than any other book I have ever read.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meet William Colton Hughes, serial killer. Holed up in a connected set of apartments, he’s got it made. Regularly supplied with all his necessities, he doesn’t even need to set foot outside. All that’s required of him in return is to answer the door and kill whoever comes knocking.

Aside from Hughes, there’s a mysterious woman with an agenda of her own, the occasional delivery people, a collection of corpses placed around his home (which he converses with, when the mood strikes), and a few others. Hughes himself is the focal point throughout the novel, though, and nearly all of it takes place in one apartment. All things considered, Stephen Graham Jones does a masterful job of maintaining both the momentum of the plot and attention of the reader.

Just don’t go into this expecting a character with the suave charm of Dexter or the erudite, sardonic wit of Hannibal Lecter. This is not your typical safe and sanitized, cat and mouse serial killer story. No, this is a one-way ticket to the inner workings of a murderous sociopath with no redeeming qualities, viewed exclusively through his perspective. Hughes is a monster, an abomination, right to the bloody core. Through tightly woven first-person narrative, the reader is forced to live vicariously through Hughes’ terrifying idiosyncrasies, forced to peer into Hughes’ own personal abyss.

There is some small shred of levity to be found here, but even that leads back into the abyssal depths of Hughes’ inhumanity. A pitch-black humor runs through the novel’s veins, to the point where any sane and sensible reader may be drawn to question the direction of their own moral compass. An apt frame of reference is Rémy Belvaux’s controversial film Man Bites Dog, which toys with the viewer’s perception and sense of culpability in a similar, though more obvious fashion. The Least of My Scars is arguably far more disturbing. It’s the kind of book that makes you want to have a shower after reading, to scrub all the filth off.

The prose here is exceptional. It’s meandering and claustrophobic, depicting in meticulous detail Hughes’ gradual descent into a state of frenzied paranoia. Whether he’s compulsively tapping objects, casually eviscerating people, or engaging in deplorable sexual acts, there are no frilly metaphors here to create layers of distance between reader and text. With consummate skill, Jones weaves together threads of plot in perfect tandem with the threads of Hughes’ mind tearing apart. Things start out slowly and escalate to a shocking and tragic conclusion.

It’s categorized as dark crime fiction, which may technically be the case. Whatever the label, with The Least of My Scars, Stephen Graham Jones cuts through the flesh of the surface and reaches straight into the pulsing heart of horror. If you can handle it (and yes, this is an open challenge), it comes highly recommended.

originally posted at http://www.hellnotes.com

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mark of a good book is if it makes me feel mentally ill, yet I have to finish it. This book did that job, and then some. It's my first Stephen Graham Jones book. It will only be my last if his other books screw with my head as much as this one did.

[Leah Bayer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jesus Christ

[Caleb Fogler · Rating 5 out of 5]

William Colton Hughes is a serial killer. He delights in torturing and methodically destroying his victims bodies and he’s good at it. One day William is interrupted during a murder and his life changes as a mob boss offers him a job. William finds himself in a serial killer’s paradise where the mob boss delivers him victims, until one day the victims stop showing up.

The Least of my Scars is a very gory unraveling of a sadistic killer’s dive into madness. William is not likable, no character is really likable to be honest, but he is funny in a dark sort of way and is the most unreliable narrator I think I’ve ever read. Some of this story doesn’t always make sense because he’s such unreliable but nevertheless it was fast, brutal and fun. I’m still processing the ending, not entirely sure I understand what happened, but I still enjoyed it.

Take American Psycho and turn the dial to 10.

[Indigo · Rating 2 out of 5]

The twist at the end kind of redeems it, but mannnnnn that was SO BORING. I was really excited to be in the mind of a serial killer, i'm definitely a true crime kid, and find that space fascinating. Imo there's the possibility for such interesting and complicated characters. Billy is none of those. Billy is completely insane, nothing about his inner narrative or his reasons for killing makes sense. Nothing about why he kills the way he kills, or what he does after, or the rest of the time, or literally anything at all about him makes sense, and it's just mind-numbingly boring with a some pointless gore thrown in. He's gross, and he's obnoxious, and he's just not interesting or fun to read about at all.

I was really looking forward to this book, because it sounded like exactly my jam, but this is a no for me.

[Cassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm becoming a somewhat obsessive fan of the author's works. The Least of My Scars is the latest in my long list of acquisitions from his backlist and curiously enough, possibly my favorite.

Is it the world building? The character? The plot?

No.

It is the clear-minded violence of the main character. Terrible things happen here, a kind of horror that digs a hook through the navel and tugs, reminding one of one's own mortality. In any other author's hands, it'd be a splatterpunk frenzy, wanton and almost distasteful. But Jones exhibits incredible restraint, an economy of language that makes it clear as to what's going on without being exploitative. It's a delicious exhibition of craft and one of the many reasons you should be reading Jones today.

[D · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 stars. I thought I'd attempt another one of Jones' works in the hopes that I might understand it but alas. It's not that the plot is overly complicated, or there's too many characters, no, it's literally incomprehensible. It makes me question whether I can read English or not, nothing is explained and it's all a incoherent babble of nonsense. I know the protagonist is meant to be insane but this was a flaw with the other Jones book I read. There's creative gore that I must applaud but I have absolutely no clue what else happened or why I bothered to finish this book.

[Chris Rhatigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Smashes every serial killer trope with reckless abandon. This book is probably not for many readers--it has almost no plot and contains not a single likeable character. (It might only contain one character.) But it's terrifying and interesting and poetic.

[Jenni is on storygraph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh my gods.

[thebookwasbetter · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 🥲 I think this writing style and pov style just wasn’t for me. soooo disturbing and dark, which I’m almost always down for but this took it a bit too far for me 🫣

[David Keaton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeesh. Well, this is about as close to the brainworms of a serial killer as you're gonna wanna get. The story is simple enough on the surface - a madman scurrying up and down and around the walls of his apartment building slash prison, waiting for oblivious victims to knock on his door (sent there by some fuzzy organized crime types), sometimes getting bored and ordering a pizza dude for dinner, sometimes talking to his ghost collection and/or appliances - but a plot does wiggle its way out into the open in the last 20 pages or so. As far as hallucinatory Stephen Graham Jones books go, I probably enjoyed Last Final Girl a teeny bit more, mostly because of my own destructive movie addictions. But this feverish book is right up there with that one. I mean, come on, how much fun is it when a serial killer takes time before he pounces to get his victim to play a game of Trouble. The game's called "Trouble," you fool. Run! The book is skewered with humor to take some of the sting out of spending a couple days locked in with this nut, but this humor is pretty dark, too. Dark, dark, dark. If it was a night sky, we're talking about a 1 on the Bortle Scale dark. You'd lose your dogs forever in this kind of dark. But if you get a chuckle when a psycho pretends he's cracking a safe with his oven dials before he pulls a Girl Scout uniform out of it, then this is your kinda night.

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this book would never end. Just seemed parts of it were for shock value. Oh he was forced to eat an entire woman. Gross, grey brain matter bubbling out of a staw. And I realize, other than the gory parts, much of the book was psychological. I just became crazy bored with reading all the crazy shit this guy did to pass the time. Many nights I fell asleep reading it - woke up with the Kindle still on my chest. So I'm thankful this was an under $3 buy.

To someone who finished reading the book: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE explain the ending to me!! I thought the scar on his hand was from a dog bite or something? I read this book over the course of 2 weeks or more (I've been busy and very tired) so i'm not sure if I'm forgetting something. But why did "Dashboard Mary" have his photo. Help!

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far it's my favorite book Stephen Graham Jones has written. I'm entranced. I only put it down because I know I have to sleep.


Now that I'm freshly finished reading. Wow. Stephen always leaves you wondering, but I feel confident that I figured this one out. My only question is how?

[Zachary Ashford · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent book. Interesting premise, great sneering voice that reminded me of Palahniuk at times, but the prose was a bit too 'stream-of-consciousness' for me to really get into. Having said that, my read was quite broken up during a busy couple of weeks and I kept finding time to read it.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most disturbing book I have read this year (ever?) and I can only recommend it to people with strong stomachs and a taste for the terrible

[Casey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Respectfully, what the fuck.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had this book sitting unread on my kindle for the longest time and just happened to think about it last night. So I pulled it up this morning and didn't put it down again until I finished it.

In The Least of My Scars, we meet William Colton Hughes, a serial killer who is placed on the strangest kind of house arrest, one where his victims are delivered directly to his front door.

For the last three years, he's lived in a series of interconnected apartments which he has rigged to meet his many needs and he wants for nothing. Until now. William starts getting antsy when the knocks on his door appear to come to a halt. He tries to kill the time by talking to the leftovers of his latest victim Kid Hoodie, dressing up in parts from his wet-dry vac, soaking in the sun from his apartment window, and meandering down memory lane until he figures out how to crack the code on ole Kid Hoodie's cell phone and discovers a woman who seems to have him all figured out.

Taking place almost entirely in his apartment, we are trapped inside the killer's head, which is a claustrophobic and immensely fucked up place to be. It's part crime fiction, part horror, and part bizarro, while also being entirely its own thing. It's also quite graphic so be sure to have a vomit bag handy if you're weak stomached. And hang on to your couch cushions because those final 20 some odd pages will give you whiplash!

I mean, is there anything SGJ can't write?!

[Bryan Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not for the faint of heart for sure as a one star review for this book made me feel the need to read it. I've admired Jones for a while now and to be honest helped bring me out of my writing slump recently and while The Least of My Scars is not my favorite, I believe that its a work that will come around again for people to discover. Its worth discussing at the very least.

Its a page turner that yanks you around like an unmaintained amusement park ride. To be honest, I had to go back a couple of times to make sure I understood what was happening which some may feel is a fault...I didn't. This is one of the most violent books I've read but the scenery in the apartment, which most of the book takes place, reminded me of a early, gritty David Fincher film, like Se7en or The Game.

Id be lying if I said I've read something like it before, but if you've recently read any of his work, The Only Good Indians or My Heart is a Chainsaw, this might throw you for a loop and I mean that in the best (and maybe the worst way possible).

[Melissa Leitner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Usually, when I finish a book, I know pretty immediately what I want to rate it. I had no idea what to rate this when I finished it. On the one hand, I hate that I read it at all. But on the other hand, it was written very well. So I guess four stars??? I think I get the point of this novella, but at the same time, I really don't. To say it was disturbing is the understatement of the century. I'm not really sure I recommend other people read this. I know this review is helpful to absolutely zero people. I am just really not sure how to put into any sort of words what I just read. So yeah, maybe look up trigger warnings and then still maybe don't read this??? Or maybe do? Yeah...

[sidnie paige · Rating 2 out of 5]

this rating is based entirely on my own personal enjoyment and understanding of this book. It was gruesome and intense and extreme. I just couldn’t stick with the first person narrative of a psychopath without desperately wanting a cut and dry explanation of what the actual f*ck was going on. *laughs hesitantly*

[Aeryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disturbing psychotic slide down and I loved it!