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Chaingang #3
Chaingang
Weighing five hundred pounds and possessing a genius-level intellect, Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski is a dangerous serial killer who has just been released from prison
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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174 people want to read
About the author
Rex Miller
123 books46 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Rex Miller Spangberg was a DJ and horror novelist, best known for his "Detective Jack Eichord" books.
Rex Miller Spangberg was a DJ and horror novelist, best known for his "Detective Jack Eichord" books.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 4, 2022
Well, I can see why Miller made such a splash in the late 80s with Slob and the sequels/spinoffs. My edition of Chaingang has glowing blurbs by King, Joe Lansdale, Masterton, Ellison among many others, including even Piers Anthony. Nonetheless, this is not an easy book to read given Miller's almost experimental prose style, shifting from first to third person from paragraph to paragraph at times, incomplete sentences, rotating POVs, and a heavy use of slang. I enjoyed the almost eclectic prose, however-- something very different. And the story is something very different as well.
Miller does not hold the reader's hand here whatsoever and it takes a bit to figure out the bones of the story. This is the third installment of the Chaingang series, but I read it as a standalone without issues, though I am very curious about the prequels now. Chaingang is the nickname for the most notorious serial killer in the world. Weighing in at almost 500 pounds and standing 6 foot 7 or so, he is a massive man. We learn a little backstory as the novel progresses-- tormented childhood to say the least, stints in prison and so forth. It seems the US government was putting together a gang of killers to help in the Vietnam war and they needed people who were disposable/deniable and willing to assassinate people or other nasty jobs. They thought they could control Chaingang, but he survived the fragging attempt on his life and came back to the states to murder hundreds of people before he was eventually caught.
The book starts off with Chaingang in prison, but it seems the US government, or at least some shady branch thereof, wants to set him loose again to study just what makes him such an effective killer. They stick a tracking device in his head and bugs all over his stuff, let him loose in a 25 mile circle with hundreds of people monitoring/filming/documenting his every move. Unfortunately, the place they released him is a small town in Missouri on the Tennessee border. Of course, the locals have no idea what is going on. So, on the one hand, we have Chaingain doing his thing (along with a list of people/targets he is supposed to take out) and the townies trying to figure out what the hell is going on as people start disappearing and dying and the cops/feds just turn a blind eye.
Chaingang as a character is over the top for sure, but Miller does a good job showing us what is going on in his head. He sees people as basically monkeys and is truly outside of any social norms/conventions. Yet, he has his moments of feelings. He, for example, breaks into a house and discovers all kinds of canned goods in the pantry and eats like fiend. Yet, he cleans the jars and house before he leaves, though he is a bit conflicted as he would like to come back to kill the old lady someday. Chaingang kills people all kinds of ways, usually eating their heart, but somehow manages to keep a low profile-- pretty hard if you are as big as he is.
So, if you can manage the experimental prose style, there is a great story of government corruption, a serial killer on the rampage, and a small town caught in crossfire. Good stuff! 4 slobby stars.
Miller does not hold the reader's hand here whatsoever and it takes a bit to figure out the bones of the story. This is the third installment of the Chaingang series, but I read it as a standalone without issues, though I am very curious about the prequels now. Chaingang is the nickname for the most notorious serial killer in the world. Weighing in at almost 500 pounds and standing 6 foot 7 or so, he is a massive man. We learn a little backstory as the novel progresses-- tormented childhood to say the least, stints in prison and so forth. It seems the US government was putting together a gang of killers to help in the Vietnam war and they needed people who were disposable/deniable and willing to assassinate people or other nasty jobs. They thought they could control Chaingang, but he survived the fragging attempt on his life and came back to the states to murder hundreds of people before he was eventually caught.
The book starts off with Chaingang in prison, but it seems the US government, or at least some shady branch thereof, wants to set him loose again to study just what makes him such an effective killer. They stick a tracking device in his head and bugs all over his stuff, let him loose in a 25 mile circle with hundreds of people monitoring/filming/documenting his every move. Unfortunately, the place they released him is a small town in Missouri on the Tennessee border. Of course, the locals have no idea what is going on. So, on the one hand, we have Chaingain doing his thing (along with a list of people/targets he is supposed to take out) and the townies trying to figure out what the hell is going on as people start disappearing and dying and the cops/feds just turn a blind eye.
Chaingang as a character is over the top for sure, but Miller does a good job showing us what is going on in his head. He sees people as basically monkeys and is truly outside of any social norms/conventions. Yet, he has his moments of feelings. He, for example, breaks into a house and discovers all kinds of canned goods in the pantry and eats like fiend. Yet, he cleans the jars and house before he leaves, though he is a bit conflicted as he would like to come back to kill the old lady someday. Chaingang kills people all kinds of ways, usually eating their heart, but somehow manages to keep a low profile-- pretty hard if you are as big as he is.
So, if you can manage the experimental prose style, there is a great story of government corruption, a serial killer on the rampage, and a small town caught in crossfire. Good stuff! 4 slobby stars.
April 7, 2020
Starts off with a bang, then fizzles. If John Kenny Toole had written horror fiction, this is what would have resulted...
February 23, 2021
Read in 1993. A horror story that is at once macabre, inhuman and implausible.
February 23, 2021
This book gives me the same sort of thrill as a hard-R action movie.
It's dumb, it's over the top, implausible, but a lot of fun and written in a very dense style that I really enjoy.
It's dumb, it's over the top, implausible, but a lot of fun and written in a very dense style that I really enjoy.
February 26, 2023
Daniel Bunkowski a 6'8" 400lb malevolent . Rex Miller takes the reader into the human heart of darkness. Chilling, ugly and effective.
May 21, 2023
Good read.
July 2, 2024
It's all crazy as hell.
January 1, 2017
Oh my GOD this book was a fucking turd. I had been wanting to read a book from this series since I was a kid and saw the first paperback edition of Slob in Walmart. Stupid mistake.
Ok, the main reason you'd get this book is to read about the gigantic, fat, evil, genius serial killer Daniel. I thought it was going to be super gruesome and violent and badass, but it was just, holy crap, like really really bad. Daniel's there, and he kills lots of people, but it's done kind of like I just said, "Daniel hit him in the face with his chain, killing him." "Bop. Bop. Just like that, both dead." Oh so bad. The plot? He's in prison, and the government wants to make an assassin school so they let him go wild in a little town and watch him the whole time to take notes on how to kill people.
?!?!?!
Also for some reason there is a giant, giant slab of concrete laid by the government that needed the land of 12 farmers to make. Why? And they were making drugs there. Why? We never find out, but about half the book is dedicated to two stupid fucking idiots trying to learn all they can about it, and it's completely useless to the plot.
The writing, like, there are some parts where the author just wants to use a lot of synonyms right in a row, and holy shit you can tell he was just coping words out of a thesaurus: here are 4 words that start with "f," followed by a few words that start with "t," etc. And sometimes he'll go off on these "poetic" tangents, where the killer Daniel is, I don't know, just waxing lyrical, and he'll have like half a page of incomplete sentences using words that no one would know, like oddball archaic words for "glittering," etc., that my Kindle dictionary had to teach me.
The book just suddenly ends. Oh, Daniel got away, and then there is a list of the remaining characters and what happened to them, like at the end of some movies: so-and-so went on to become a millionaire and buy a ranch in Montana, this dude disappeared, that dude died in an accident in the mountains, etc etc.
One of the worst books I've read in a long time, such a huge, huge disappointment.
Ok, the main reason you'd get this book is to read about the gigantic, fat, evil, genius serial killer Daniel. I thought it was going to be super gruesome and violent and badass, but it was just, holy crap, like really really bad. Daniel's there, and he kills lots of people, but it's done kind of like I just said, "Daniel hit him in the face with his chain, killing him." "Bop. Bop. Just like that, both dead." Oh so bad. The plot? He's in prison, and the government wants to make an assassin school so they let him go wild in a little town and watch him the whole time to take notes on how to kill people.
?!?!?!
Also for some reason there is a giant, giant slab of concrete laid by the government that needed the land of 12 farmers to make. Why? And they were making drugs there. Why? We never find out, but about half the book is dedicated to two stupid fucking idiots trying to learn all they can about it, and it's completely useless to the plot.
The writing, like, there are some parts where the author just wants to use a lot of synonyms right in a row, and holy shit you can tell he was just coping words out of a thesaurus: here are 4 words that start with "f," followed by a few words that start with "t," etc. And sometimes he'll go off on these "poetic" tangents, where the killer Daniel is, I don't know, just waxing lyrical, and he'll have like half a page of incomplete sentences using words that no one would know, like oddball archaic words for "glittering," etc., that my Kindle dictionary had to teach me.
The book just suddenly ends. Oh, Daniel got away, and then there is a list of the remaining characters and what happened to them, like at the end of some movies: so-and-so went on to become a millionaire and buy a ranch in Montana, this dude disappeared, that dude died in an accident in the mountains, etc etc.
One of the worst books I've read in a long time, such a huge, huge disappointment.
August 21, 2021
500 pound Bunkowski who has killed a person for every pound he weighs is back after being allowed out of maximum security prison so a clandestine government agency can watch him kill in the wild and study his every move, his kills, torture, everything he does so this information can be compiled and used to train a new breed of would be assasins. Oh and over 200 personnel will follow, watch so he only stays in a 25 mile radius. Bunkowski hates more than anything people who abuse animals and these people will get extra care. He will swing his chain destroying jaws, faces and the lucky ones will die before they hit the ground. The other unfortunates will have their hearts ripped out and he will devour/enjoy the delicacies. And he might even escape this crazy study and be truly free again. The best in the chaingang series.
November 16, 2009
A raging, over-the-top beast driven by complex subtext.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews