Fowl Play

by Jay Spencer Green

Winner of Best Indie Comedy 2018.

Ladies' man Josiah Joshua Jordan King is a rising star for the Trafford Titans in the new and wildly popular sport of Chicker. But he's also a professional hitman and union buster on behalf of the league's management. With the European Championship final against Barcelona looming, he gets wind of a filthy commie plot to scupper the whole shebang. Can he lead his team to victory while neutralizing the Reds, or will his dreams of international glory be thwarted by a faceless conspiracy that threatens civilization itself?

A mutant cross-breed of Rollerball, The Wicker Man and Chicken Run, Fowl Play is satirist Jay Spencer Green at his weirdest and most outrageous, a laugh-out-loud dark comedy in which the headless chickens are not confined to the farmyard.

Genres: Politics

242 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 10, 2018

About the author

Rabelaisian, Experimental, Inventive, and Fun, the novels of Jay Spencer Green are like Goya's Black Paintings in literary form, the kind of enjoyment you get looking into somebody else's abyss to avoid looking into your own.

Comparisons have been made with Kurt Vonnegut, J. G. Ballard, Angela Carter, and Joseph Heller, none of them favourable.

His official website is here.

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read Jay Spencer Green’s past two books....
“Breakfast at Cannibal Joe’s”, and “Ivy Feckett is Looking for Love”....I knew not to expect a lullaby.

Jay’s stories are wonderfully funny- original - subversive- with sophisticated ‘choice’ words... (some socially foul)....His work is oddball outlandish!
......yet what’s really haunting...is when you look below the queer kinky inscrutable storytelling .... there are authentic and cautionary messages.

While worries of destruction to civilization concern us --(turn on any news channel) —world leaders playing ‘their’ game — ( listen to the American President) —
“Fowl Play”......is and isn’t pulling our chicken legs.

“Fowl Play”......is a tough nut to crack in describing what you’re reading....
I have NEVER IMAGINED THIS NEW POPULAR SPORT CALLED *Chicker*......
Have you? Very creative with charming ( and not so charming) kick ass characters.

Jay Spencer Green has designed an entire world around the European Champion Final. Teammates better get it together! There was some serious fear of sabotage....lookout for a hitman and union- buster.
And after ‘already’ a death - “Raoul’s” death- it was extra important that the team stand by each other. There were specific team building exercises designed to build trust among the them.
“The Circle of Trust was one of the ‘fun’ ways we bonded. By making a game of our revelations, we learned not to take ourselves or another too seriously”. ........
At the same time...... they affirmed their responsibility to one another.

How serious could ANYONE BE - completely when playing the game *CHICKER*?

Just for fun.... I looked up the word “Chicker”..... to see what I might find. I actually found a variety of descriptions for this word....
But here’s what I loved the best —- which IS VERY FITTING TO JAY’S STORY.....

Chicker: “A variation on the name for a bloodsucking parasitic arthropod, known as a chigger. Refers to a woman who gets under your skin or into your bed and sucks you dry in any applicable way”.
“The dumb chicker, she is sucking the life out of me”.

Crazy - fun book! LOVE JAY’S use of the English language! I promise you’ll run across a few exciting words you’ve never heard of. Not to fear... iPhone dictionary was near by. NOT A BOOK FOR THE WEAK.... must be able to tolerate profanity as it’s just mother nature’s way.

Great Characters: Sally, Elspeth, Stumpy Sue, Lenny, Babs, Patel, Beastie, Geoff, etc. etc....


At the beginning when we first meet Sally, just getting my head wrapped around the joy ride read I was about to take...I jumped a few leaps - ......( we learn other sides of Sally as the story goes on).....
but here the first little taste——juicy chicken flavor taste of Sally:
“Sally was a stacker, meaning she spent two hours during every game in the freezer section. Hence her inability to wash herself afterwards — no feeling from the biceps down to the fingers, or so she claimed. She was also a self-harmer, which explained the cuts and scabs on her arms, and why she was in the Freezer section: the coach kept her far away from knives as possible”.

Funny- provocative - mind-altering “glowing hallucinogenic, offering palliative care for the terminally dull”......
..........deliciously satire entertaining!

[Glenn Russell]

The stadium is packed to capacity, thousands and thousands of fans hooting and shouting in anticipation of the big match between those highly talented Danes from Copenhagen and the seasoned English champions, the Trafford Titans, who recently posted victories over Barcelona and Real Madrid.

The players are ready and there's the opening whistle. Non-stop action with blood aplenty. Just take a look at that automatic neck cutter gleaming its brutality. And catch a peak at midfielder Jo wielding his knife for the English. Score! Score! Score! The crowd goes wild. Wow! There's good reason why many avid fans are called Meatheads.

More scoring for the English and there's the final whistle. The refs tally the score of all the dead that are cleanly packed up and ready for shipment. And there you have it - the Titans post a decisive win over the Danes and they will be heading to the finals.

Hey, hold on, hold on, hold on. Neck cutters, knifes, packing up the dead. What the hell kind of sport is this?

Don't be fooled. What initially might sound like World Cup football, or what in the US is called soccer, is, in fact, Chicker, the up and coming European blood sport where two teams compete in slaughtering chickens.

Welcome to the world of Jay Spencer Green's Fowl Play. And let me tell you lasses and lads or perhaps you guessed from the above description of an international match from the pages of this raucous, most outrageous novel, we have some serious black humor going down here.

Firstly, there's the tale's narrator, Mr. Josiah Joshua Jordon King aka Jo playing a decisive role as a member of the Chicker line - the fact that it's difficult to distinguish between chicken slaughter in a poultry processing plant and chicken slaughter as a competitive game adds more than a pinch of satire.

Next up on the chopping block is Raoul who, in his indiscretion, committed suicide in the bleachers of the Trafford Titans stadium. Suicide, really? Did this knife-slashing Chicker do himself in or was he the victim of foul play? Damn, now the bloody police are questioning all the Chickers about his bloody corpse.

Thus the novel's framework. Permit me to highlight several more Fowl Play themes, topics and tropes by cutting to a brood of delectable direct quotes:

"I followed her to the desk, my head always slightly raised so that no one could see me checking out her arse. The wobble of her walk lent a slight undulation to each cheek as the relevant leg advanced, emphasizing what I like to call the "grabbage," the necessary couple of extra pounds on a woman's arse that you need in order to sink your fingers in and pull her onto you."

This woman is none other than D. I. Clarke, D. I. as in Detective Inspector. The ongoing cat-and-mouse game between Jo and D. I. Clarke is one of the more intriguing bits of the story. And, of course, never once does Jo miss a chance to catch a glimpse of the the detective's luscious grabbage.

"Stumpy Sue. The team mascot. You must have seen her. Short girl, no legs."

So Jo tells D. I. Clarke about the teenage orphan each team member will take turns caring for. Nowadays it's Jo's turn. As Jo points out later on: "Sue prefers to play Internet games or else do homework research. For all her cussing and indignation, she's secretly a responsible child." With Stumpy Sue we are treated to an added shot of both humor and pathos.

"So when wankers like Raoul tried to disrupt the smooth flow and functioning of the sport with their talk of unionization, of a global proletariat, of neoliberalism, and all that arse, they were effectively attacking European civilization itself."

Well, well, well. The plot thickens. As an anti-union informant and occasional hitman, Jo isn't about to let some dark-skinned Commie foreigner bring down the glorious game of Chicker - the epicenter of a shared worldview throughout all of Europe.

"It's only a shame that instead of getting Jack Nicklaus to redesign the course, they mistakenly asked Jack Nicholson."

Jay Spencer Green you sly dog, sprinkling in such gems. One can only imagine that golf course in Northwest England - surely an unexpected treat when a golfer lands in a "sand trap."

"We undressed one another slowly, teasingly, on the understanding that we would shower before any copulation."

Our main man shares a string of his souped up sexual encounters where he brings a chicken slicer's sensibility to the tender dimensions of intimacy with the fair sex; in other words, life reduced to little more than a slash-happy Chicker on the poultry production line.

Let's cut away yet again, this time to some overarching philosophical observations:

In many ways, mass production is one of the ugliest aspects of modern society, especially when it comes to things like poultry or beef processing plants. Most people would rather look the other way. If you don't believe me, go to YouTube and take a gander at a video or two on chicken slaughter. The one I viewed had the chickens hanging upside down to have their heads cut off by mechanical blades before being scalded in boiling water. Those less fortunate chickens that missed the blade drowned while being boiled alive.

There are novels dealing head-on with this repugnant subject (Upton Sinclair's 1904 novel The Jungle comes immediately to mind) but not many. In this way, Fowl Play adds a jolt of modern sensibility to the literature. True, generous helpings of satire and the blackest of humors are added to the mix but, hey, these elements are foundational to our brave new 21st century world.

Jay Spencer Green's father left school at age fourteen and worked his entire life in die-casting factories. And after university, Jay joined his dad at the factory. But five years was enough whereupon Jay left the factory never to return and used his savings to become a full-time writer. This to say, Jay had his own first-hand experience of the brutality and dehumanization of modern factory work. Fowl Play captures a measure of what it means to be subjected to such coarse debasement - a book that is occasionally tough going but a book well worth the read.


Jay Spencer Green - Here's looking at you!

[Rebecca Gransden · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one has a lot of cheek. To fiddle with genre this ostentatiously could be downright obnoxious but here Jay Spencer Green undercuts the more conspicuous risks of this approach by being so damn acutely no-nonsense. A truly bizarre concoction of murder mystery, shady thriller and gripping sports melodrama, Fowl Play introduces us to a world where absurdist spectacle makes as much sense as anything else, a convergence of barmy conceits neutered under the force of characters drawn so expertly they appear mundane even in their oddness. Everything hinges on how our main players intertwine, and being rich, and distinct, and hence memorable, they drive the more playful elements of the narrative with a grounded propulsion.

What is this world we find? Team sports have taken an interesting swerve, with the intricacies of competitive poultry bothering becoming a warped display. Soon we learn of another layer to the strangeness and the ruthless aspects of the game manifest away from the arena, a behind-the-scenes plot worthy of the fiendish skullduggery of the greatest thriller fiction, all set with a tongue so firmly placed in the aforementioned cheek, that if the wind changes direction, your face will stay like that.

Our main guy is a puzzling chap, fond of documenting his liaisons in scrutinisingly forensic detail, his chosen conquests catalogued and assessed into his appreciations. His work/life balance could do with some attention. It is to Jay Spencer Green’s credit that he never comes off the rails, not in the narrative sense, because the inherent daftness serves to embolden the existential comedy. Though I didn’t laugh too much, I understood the cut. This is experiential knowing hand cranked through a cerebral meat grinder. Chicken meat.

I am fond of books where I don’t quite know what I’m reading as I’m reading them. I still don’t think I know what this book is. For all its outlandish propositions and mischievous wilful oddity, it reads straight, with characters that absorb and a skilfully woven plot, scaffolding the more fanciful elements securely. I like Jay’s writing style very much and am always intrigued to see what he comes up with.

[Rupert Dreyfus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took loads of notes wile reading this as I spent four years living in Manchester and so some of the locations and dialect were very familiar--Deansgate, Salford, Wilmslow. The humour was top notch as per ("Nearly two million autistic children are born every year in China alone. We’d be crazy not to tap into that”) and the premise genius. The narrator is my worst nightmare but I loved him to bits. Green must've had loads of fun with this character as I know he's aligned with my own worldview.

I'll write a proper deserving review in due course as I'm a bit under the weather at the moment. Meanwhile this book deserves way, way more readers.

One more Green novel to go and by that point I hope he's written tons more.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jay Spencer Green's third novel is one impressive story, part sports novel....part dystopian....part sex diary....part thriller. Jay's biggest strength in his writing is his characters, they are always well developed and easy to love, the two stand-out characters here at Jo and the mighty mighty "Stumpy Sue". Jo is our narrator, MVP of the game "Chicker", assassin and connoisseur of women...and their knickers. Stumpy Sue was bloody brilliant, 11 year old girl with one hell of an attitude, I am certain she will one day grow up to have a dragon tattoo.

I'm not gonna say too much about the plot as it will give too much away, you'll have to read the blurb to find out more. Jay's humour is there throughout the whole book and also included are glimpses of his paranoia.

One thing I think is missing from the book is the rules of the game Chicker...How am I going to start my chicker training without knowing the rules?

All in all another brilliant read.

Blog review is here> https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2018...

[Esther Rabbit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jay Spencer Green’s take on humor had me hooked from the start. While I don’t like giving spoilers away in my reviews, be prepared for a genre blend that works. All while slaughtering chicken! The ongoing plot twists and turbulent characters make this an unexpected yet tremendously satisfying read.

[Colette Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another filthy, funny, and farcical work from the author of Breakfast at Cannibal Joe's and Ivy Feckett Is Looking for Love. Set in a near-future where tens of thousands of fans flock (!) to stadia to watch their favourite teams slaughter chickens, this book is utterly unlike anything else you will read. It manages to cover topics from unionization to antiglobalization to the nature of modern celebrity, while keeping you engrossed in the antics of characters such as Jo King and Stumpy Sue. Dark, acerbic, and surreal - in a good way.

[Michael Trounce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Featuring an undercover hitman who kills chickens for a living and also treats his sexual conquests as pieces of meat, Jay Spencer Green's Fowl Play is much subtler than it looks - all blood, guts, vulgarity, and violence - comprising a social satire on the machismo and misogyny of sports culture and what goes wrong when everything and everyone becomes an object for man's (yes, man's) self-fulfillment and satisfaction. Cleverly drawn characters tend to conceal a complex plot (the way a surfeit of jokes did in Breakfast at Cannibal Joe's), but the layering means you can get your kicks from this book by taking it at face value or by appreciating its perceptiveness and relevance (perhaps both) - just don't congratulate yourself too much on "getting" it, when what you're getting should be common sense.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well played, Jay, well played .... Whilst I was busy trying to get my head round the chicken kill/pluck/gut process being a competitive sport called Chicker and trying to keep up with the hedonistic central character, I missed the subtle signs that led to the major twist at the end. Some crazy characters that we can all relate to in real life, maybe with the exception of Stumpy Sue (or maybe I've just lived a sheltered life), and the complex relationships between them as they try to work together as a team.

Jay's dark and morbid style of writing appeals to my sick sense of humour and, like many, won't admit to laughing out loud at some unfortunate events in the book.

This has definitely gone straight into my books to be re-read pile because, despite knowing the ending, I need to decipher all the ingenuities that Mr Spencer so cleverly devises in his art of writing.

[OSKR · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this but I found it hard to engage with. The story is set in a bizarre future where factory workers compete in a stadium sport called "Chicker". Initially I presumed that Chicker was some kind of ball sport, and it was anticlimactic to discover that essentially it wasn't much different from an open-air abbattoir. I struggled to believe that watching teams kill chickens in a factory line would be entertaining to a mass audience, and it seemed more likely to be disturbing (or just plain boring).

However the real problem I had with this novel, is that the protagonist was too smugly comfortable with the bizarre world in which he lived. For example it doesn't seem to bother him that Spain has begun euthanizing autistic children in their abbottoirs. Essentially the protagonist is the bad guy, and I guess we aren't supposed to like him, but none-the-less I found it hard-going getting the story from his perspective.

[Harry Whitewolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why did the chicken cross the road? To avoid being slaughtered in the new big-business premiership sport of Chicker of course.

Jay Spencer Green’s latest book combines thriller, satire and laugh-out-loud humour with an intelligent and excellently-written plot that will keep you enthralled and entertained. Top-notch stuff from one of my favourite modern writers.

It gets brownie points for mentioning Madness and Bad Manners too. Chick up fatty.

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

As sharp and deadly as any of the machinery used in the new sport of chicker, Fowl Play is an original and dark comedy about murder, union busting, and professional sport. Boasting the kind of unpleasant but intriguing characters John Kennedy Toole would have been proud of, the story covers a lot of ground you don't usually see covered, well, anywhere else, really. In this world, chicken slaughtering is a competitive sport, sexual encounters are forensically dissected, and children grow up fast and manky.
It's truly end-to-end stuff.

[M.T. Bass · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know you're reading "on the edge" when poultry meat processing has become a team sport rivaling the NFL and FIFA. But, personally, that's what I like about self proclaimed ne're-do-well Jay Spencer Green's forays where no satirist has gone before. His plunderous bounty of crazy characters, turbulent plot twists and scalpel sharp barbs is a just reward.

As always, make sure your seat belt is snuggly fastened and your seat backs and tray tables are in their full, upright and locked position. In the event of rapid decompression, place your oxygen mask on first--but, then again, there really shouldn't be any children along on this ride.