People Live Still in Cashtown Corners

by Tony Burgess

People Live Still in Cashtown Corners is the vivid record of the inner world of pump jockey and infamous couple killer Cliff Klyder. History is clear on what happened at that lonely intersection over the course of one particularly bitter six couples were brutally murdered and cannibalized. What history doesn't give us is what exactly was missing in Cliff Klyder that inspired him to such complicated acts of evil.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Canada, Thriller, Crime, Death

205 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2010

About the author

Tony Burgess is a Canadian novelist and screenwriter. His most notable works include the 1998 novel Pontypool Changes Everything and the screenplay for the film adaptation of that same novel, "Pontypool" (2008).

Burgess’ unique style of writing has been called literary horror fiction and described as ”blended ultra-violent horror and absurdist humour, inflicting nightmarish narratives on the quirky citizens of small-town Ontario: think H. P. Lovecraft meets Stephen Leacock.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

so, i love this book, but writing the review for it is pissing me off a little bit. as a procrastination tactic, because i really didn't feel like burrowing back into my paper just yet, i thought, "i shall write a very informed review for once; one which edifies its readers and is full of facts and figures and well-constructed sentences and no cursewords or animal pictures."

seriously, that isn't going to fucking happen.

because i may be being fooled. i don't keep up on true crime stories from canada. (except that one that happened last year where the dude decapitated that other dude on the bus—jesus) but so when this book claims it is based on a happening, i believe it. but i have never heard of it. so a-googling i go, but i find nothing. well, i am a budding librarian; i know all about other search engines, so i go there. nada.

then i look through the book and at the beginning there is a little disclaimer; "Cashtown Corners does exist; the people and events as portrayed here, however, are fictitious." okay, fine, i understand we distance ourselves from a potentially litigious situation even though we claim in the goodreads.com writeup (but nowhere in the book itself):

People Live Still in Cashtown Corners is the vivid record of the inner world of pump jockey and infamous couple killer Cliff Klyder. History is clear on what happened at that lonely intersection over the course of one particularly bitter winter: six couples were brutally murdered and cannibalized. What history doesn't give us is what exactly was missing in Cliff Klyder that inspired him to such complicated acts of evil.

now in the book, the character's name is "bob clark," i don't think there is any cannibalism, and the people killed were not "couples," but inside the book are crime scene photos, so why go to all the trouble of making it appear real if it is not?? and changing the name of the character in the "nooo, this is reeeeal" part of the writeup to make it look "ripped from the headlines?" don't fucking blair witch me on this, tony!! i thought we were pals!!

YOU ARE KILLING ME WITH YOUR CONFUSION!!

this review was meant to be a brief pre-paper writing writing exercise, just to get the juices flowing. now it involves research and self-doubt and complete time-suckage. i liked your book, tony burgess, but right now i am a little pissed at you.

i even read this book as a distraction—i plugged it in between a bunch of teen-fiction-class reads because i needed something different. and it supplied. it is totally gross and violent and wonderful. the being trapped inside a killer's head thing has been done to death, but rarely turns out as well as this. eugene marten's waste is an example of it being done right, nick cave's and the ass saw the angel is near-perfection, and even though he is not a killer, hal's character in infinite jest could absolutely have uttered lines like this book's:

I don't like faces on people in town so i scribble over them. I don't actually recall what Feck looks like in the face. just swirls and loops out of a ball point. Round and round and round. When he talks, two or three blue wires vibrate horribly. Doesn't make me want to answer.

there is also a difficulty with this character not knowing what kind of faces he is making which is again, pure hal. it is a creepy head to be in, but there are moments of very delicate prose to compensate for all the killing.

it gets muddy towards the end—and i am still pissed off about this tease and i still don't get all the 9/11 stuff... what i did understand, i really liked.

i will be in my trailer, writing a paper, awaiting a message from tony burgess explaining himself to me, please.

come to my blog!

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Well, ma'am, looks like the problem is people. They just make us nervous and then we kill them. And then we feel better until someone makes us nervous again. And well, ma'am, that's the way it lays."

It's true, Bob Clark DOES NOT have a way with people. He doesn't like talking to them and he damn sure doesn't like seeing them.

I don't like faces on people in town so I scribble over them. I don't actually recall what Feck looks like in the face. Just swirls and loops out of a ballpoint. Round and round and round. When he talks, two or three blue wires vibrate horribly. Doesn't make me want to answer.

She tries to smile at me but the tangle of blue lines that make up her head only manage to sort of point around the room in a random way.

One day he discovers it's almost easier to just kill them.

And so he does.

Bob commits a whole mess o' homicides.

My mind isn't snapped or anything. I'm not particularly afraid of what I've done even though I do know that now, whatever happens, at some point down the road I'm going to have to listen to someone tell me what I've done. That isn't a very nice thought; however it isn't what's happening now. I am sitting on her soft body and I stay like this for quite a while.

This is a very strange read. There's no character development, it's horrific without being a horror novel, it's a puzzle and an enigma, and just plain weird. Make that WEIRD. There are no explanations for Bob's sudden killing spree. He seems as baffled as his victims in a sort of dammit-now-I'll-have-to-kill-her way.

It DOES make for one disturbingly compelling ride. You can't stop, you can't look away. You have to know what's going to happen next.

Not recommended for most readers. There are extremely graphic and occasionally stomach-churning descriptions of corpses. And as you may have surmised, bad things happen to undeserving people. Brain bleach and a follow-up read of something wholesome and cheery are required.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the things I like to while I sit in my booth is pretend it's September 11. How awesome is that? Anyone can do it and it's like you have the greatest time for free. Your imagination can do whatever it wants to, of course, that's how we get things like sex with alligators and people who make baby bridges across rivers of lava. But every once in a while the imagination gets to step over its borders and be something. That happened on September 11.


Karen wrote a good review for this book and it can be read here. I just did a google search hoping to find out the truthfulness of the book and instead the first hit was the webpage for this book, the second was Karen's review and the rest were other listings for the book, including a stellar one star rating from Barnes and Noble, I checked to see who or why the book was rated one star but there were no reviews, no ratings, nothing. Just that one star out of five on the google results page. I will file this away in my brain as more circumstantial evidence that as a company B&N wishes to shit on and destroy anything that is any good and leave, well their feces, knick-knacks and some shitty books written by safe hacks, in it's place. Or this could just be some little glitch.

I read this book because one of the characters in Idaho Winter was from Cashtown Corners, and I like it when my books by an author have little intersecting moments. I liked Idaho Winter, and thought, maybe there is something in this other book that will illuminate something about the girl leader who was supposed to be on a school trip of some kind from Cashtown Corners when she wound up in Idaho's twisted reality.

(Oh, why am I so stupid, why did I already return the books to Karen? Why did I not check to see if the girl was the same one in this book towards the end that was in the other one? I guess I'll have to wait till I get to work and see, and then I could erase this aside and give the answer, or I could leave it and never say if I was right or wrong, and you probably have no idea what I'm even talking about because I'm not being clear at all).

Karen mentioned in her review that she didn't understand the 9/11 stuff. I don't either but I thought the passage that starts off the few pages about 9/11 fantasizing were sort of great, even if I wasn't exactly positive about what I should think. I shared that passage above. But maybe what he's getting at, and what this book sort of could be thought of as are misanthropic and gruesome fantasies / thoughts come to life. ---great idea genius, books about a mass murderer (is that right? there isn't the stamina here for serial killer, but I don't want to get called out by some know-it-all jerk who will get all haughty over the distinction and then bring his equally annoying friend to ramble on also about the distinction as if for the sake of most conversations it really matters, just like the sociopath / psychopath distinction matters, but it's not really an argument stopper to prove you are right (oh don't you love when I pull really passive-aggressive shit like this in my reviews?)) usually have some sort of misanthropy involved in them (note to self or a competent writer, write a serial killer / mass murderer character who loves all of humanity but still kills people in gruesome ways because, well I'm not sure why).

Still with me?

Good. This is me reading a sentence or two from the book while on a ferris wheel.

[image error]

Maybe one day I'll tell the tale of reading this book on the Nook, and the annoyances (I mean quirks) involved. This wasn't the first book I've read on a device 9that review will come shortly, I promise), but this is the first book that to finish I had to read digitally and in that 'boring old way' of ink on paper.

But what about the book? Well here's the actual review:

A good fun novel told from the first person perspective of a killer. It's not nearly as gruesome or icky feeling as something like American Psycho but it's also not as alliteratively chummy and friendly as the Dexter books (or Dexter book that I read, maybe the earlier ones were more alliteratively appealingly awesome than the one I read). So that's my review, a good fun first person novel about a mass murderer. You should have just clicked on the link to Karen's review and forgotten to come back here.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes this Tony Burgess guy takes flight and swoops exulting into a fiery firmament of linguistic legerdemain, really lovely brilliant stuff, I love it – he did it in Ravenna Gets and he does it here – example –

A torn cloud grows sideways along the moon’s eye. A fine oil is scattered out from the white crawlspace of a half galaxy. The oil is orange and green and gold that sprays behind the moon and emerges towards the unseen sun as a brief map. Black scratched lines that hold for a second then scatter as a million tiny viruses vibrating on the scalp of a whale.

The whole thing teetering on the edge of a derisory snort that will never snort forth from the reader’s orifice because another bullet has just entered the back of the next victim’s skull. So yes, rather disappointingly, this short sick novel is yet another dose of all American ultra violence, like we needed it, and once again we are stuck in the mind of the psycho killer qu'est-ce que c'est from start to finish.

I think Mr Burgess could write us one of the great modern American novels if only he could be unhooked from his chosen horror genre dripfeed and given an actual plot to work on.

[Toby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bloody weird first person narrative of a mentally broken spree killer that doesn't try to explain, excuse or justify itself in any way.

"Well, ma'am, looks like the problem is people. They just make us nervous and then we kill them. And then we feel better until someone makes us nervous again. And well, ma'am, that's the way it lays."

It's disturbing and far more interesting than similar more popular titles such as the one by Bret Easton Ellis that Australian bookshops are still required to sell sealed in cellophane.

"I don't like faces on people in town so I scribble over them. I don't actually recall what Feck looks like in the face. Just swirls and loops out of a ball point. Round and round and round. When he talks, two or three blue wires vibrate horribly. Doesn't make me want to answer"

[His Ghoul Friday (Julia) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a bit like if American Psycho was a gas jockey in rural Ontario.

It's written in a  first-person POV from Bob Clark (whose real name is Cliff Klyder), a gas jockey who goes on an unaliving spree. It also has a true crime vibe to it. There were crime scene photos and some headlines which made the plot immersive, but I didn't like the fact they were randomly placed in the middle of the book since it made the flow seem a little disjointed. 

I don't really know how to describe the book other than the fact that it was weird, silly, incredibly gory, and insanely hard to put down. I had a lot of fun reading this short book, and I recommend checking this out if you're in the mood for a slasher for spooky season🎃

[William Freedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hadn't been aware of Tony Burgess until about three months ago. I was flipping through channels and found -- on IFC I think, but maybe it was FearNet -- a zombie movie I'd never seen or heard of before, and it was only 10 minutes in. It had the unlikely title, "Pontypool," which suggested correctly that it was a low-budget indy -- one set, enough awkwardly paced dialogue to suggest that second takes were a rare luxury -- but didn't imply anything to do with zombies. A zombie movie without the word "Dead" in the title, or any reference to a time span ("Night," "28 Weeks").

But the characters were well drawn and fresh (except for the obligatory expository character who just had to be a scientist with a middle-European accent, the kind of guy Rocky Horror made fun of almost 40 years ago), and the acting was good. I was hooked at the first massed attack, off-camera of course.

The ending credits noted that the movie was based on the novel "Pontypool Changes Everything" by Tony Burgess.

So when ChiZine sent me a stack of books and among the titles was Burgess's new work, "People Live Still in Cashtown Corners," I felt like I won the lottery. (I'd actually won 11 ChiZine publications in a raffle, but it just keeps getting better.)

I used to be a slush reader for an on-line SF/F 'zine and, after a couple paragraphs of first-person, present-tense narration, I usually started writing the rejection letter. It's a tiresome contrivance in most writers' hands. But Burgess makes it work here. The narrator is a fascinating character, but not a terribly complicated one. I could buy that he lived in an eternal present tense. His story offers insight into how we decouple who we are from the things we do, and the random elements that populate both spheres in those Venn diagrams that define each of us.

This is a horror novel, heavy on the splatter, but there's a lot more going on. I don't know if this is what Burgess intended, but here's what I took away from it: What if Meursault from Albert Camus's "The Stranger" flees the scene of the Arab he kills at the end of Part One and goes on a rampage with guns, knives and axes?

This is blood and gore for the overly ironic, chain-smoking, absinthe-drinking set. More!

[Joshua James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holy hell. I haven't read a book that made me this uncomfortable since American Psycho. Short, sweet, and bloody disturbing. Hats off, Mr Burgess. Hats off.

[Karl]

This is number 3 of 42 signed numbered copies.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tony Burgess is an author I feel I should like, but can’t really get into. Having read ‘Pontypool Changes Everything’ some years back, which I found to be a wildly antagonistic experience, I can at least say that I enjoyed this a bit more. There was enough going for me to stay til the end and try to piece it together, but Burgess’s prose and hallucinatory storytelling keeps this from being a full-on recommendation. It just feels like too much going on with too little a reason. Definitely a cool take on the psychotic killer trope, I’ll admit.

[David Keaton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, that was nuts! Told from a first-person perspective, a gas-pump attendant tries his hand at murder and home invasion over an unhinged but contemplative couple of days. The third act in particular is great, where an unreliable narrator infects some townspeople with that very same affliction and things take a weirdly sympathetic turn. A fascinating sometimes frustrating book that's deep in this dude's brain, riddled with curious 9/11 obsessions, and (bonus!) featuring a very clever extra addition smack-dab in the middle - in some ways, my favorite part of the book, too - a dozen pages of photos, designed to emulate what you'd find in a typical true-crime paperback. The effect of these photos is very interesting, and I'm going to have to assume that the author and/or publisher realized that browsing those pictures when you come across them halfway through (or earlier if you're standing in a bookstore), certainly before you've finished the text, would have to spoil things a bit. But in the exact same way knowing about a real crime in the newspapers would also spoil the ending of the book based on those events. Aware of this, the author uses the captions of those photos to raise other questions, drop some riddles, and, in one case, swap names. But was this intentional? The fractured thoughts of the killer creeping ever so slightly into the true-crime photo spread? Why not. A short book that you can read in an hour or so, and "soon to be a major motion picture!" (from the same filmmakers behind Burgess' acclaimed previous film adaptation, Pontypool, no less). That's an announcement you'd also normally find stamped on the cover of a true-crime paperback, too, but lacking on this edition, for now. So I helped 'em out.

[Ruby Tombstone Lives! · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love that Burgess can show you the inside of a broken brain in a believable, instinctively understandable way. Of course this meant I spent half the book wondering if the act of understanding the book equated with being a sociopath myself. So that was.... creepy.

But while Cashtown has the intelligence of Pontypool and Idaho Winter, for me it just doesn't have the beauty or the heart. I raced through this book in a day without highlighting anything, re-reading anything or gasping out loud. Maybe I'm expecting too much, and Pontypool has ruined me for other books. Yes, that's probably it.

One issue I had with the book was the faux crime scene photographs in the centre of the book. Their placement in the middle of the story interrupted a key scene and created spoilers. Also, one of the photos referred to one character by another character's name, which added an extra element of confusion.

There is a nice plot twist towards the end which keeps you thinking, and which adds an extra dollop of creepiness. To be fair, Cashtown is a good, creepy little book..... it's just not Pontypool.

FYI - The text floating around which implies that Cashtown is based on the true story of "infamous couple killer Cliff Klyder" is a red herring. There doesn't appear to be any such serial killer. This claim also doesn't appear on the book itself, but only in synopses which seem to have been mirrored on the GoodReads entry.

[Michael Poeltl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Told in a chilling first person POV, this book grabs you right away and puts you in the head of a man whose mind has snapped.

His actions thereafter left an indelible mark on my mind. The random cruelty and unconscionable acts so easily performed on citizens of his small town, people he knew and those just passing through gives us pause to understand why this is happening.

Told in graphic detail from one evil act to another, our POV character questions his own actions even while carrying out each deviant deed in a clear plea to understanding exactly what brought him to this breaking point.

In a bizarre twist our marauding madman finds himself role-playing with the young daughter of a family he had just butchered. The induction of this character offers the readers an opportunity to experience our psychopath on another dimension, one where he engages in dialogue with someone other than himself.

The dark, descriptive imagery so expertly described in People live still in Cashtown Corners will stay with me a long time.

[Geoff Gander · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in a single day - which is quite rare for me.

Burgess take the reader squarely into the head of the psychotic protagonist, and the novel itself reads almost like a stream-of-consciousness rant. The perspective shifts with the character's mental state - at times almost incoherent, and other times deceptively rational and aware that he
*should* feel certain emotions (even when he is killing people), but does not.

This novel has far less gore than similar works I have read - something I do not mind at all; although there are a few "vivid" scenes towards the end. In the end, this book feels less like a conventional story than a quick, disturbing, joy ride in someone else's brain. It is an experience.

[Robert Boyczuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disturbing, but in the right kind of ways. Wonderful, evocative language that is inventive (without drawing too much attention to itself) while effortlessly carrying forward the narrative. Made me believe I was in the mind of a mass murderer.

[Brice · Rating 3 out of 5]

A creepy Canadian tale. Burgess' description of the clean-up after a particularly nasty murder is disgusting and, yet, humourous. A short, easy read and a good introduction to Burgess' style of writing.

[M. Chandler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably a closer look into the mind of madness than I ever actually wanted to have.

WARNING: Do not read while eating.

[Craig Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a big horror fan, but this one was superbly written. Couldn't put it down. Or sleep. Now I get the willies every time I pass through Cashtown Corners.

[Jessie (Zombie_likes_cake) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay. What? But it was good.
Even though I often despise stream-of-consciousness but it somehow works here. It does. You might not always be certain as to what's really going on but Burgess makes it work.

This is probably the closest thing to a cover buy for me, besides getting most of my book from the library, when I do buy books I don't fall for pretty covers. I might get interested and look at the synopsis but I choose them for the content. This one though is very vague on its description: there is a serial killer and it does this non-fiction fiction thing meaning the book is fiction but pretends to be non-fiction, does it make sense? Not really, I know. But what a wonderful cover and serial killers at least fall into my areas of interests but I had no real clue as to what this book would be doing.

And let me tell you, it's a wild, weird and gross ride. As a reader we are in the mind of the killer which is likely different from what you'd expect it to be, at least it was for me. But good in a demented way. It is a short book and could be even more intense if read in one sitting I assume (which I didn't do). Yeah, it has a strange, fuzzy intensity to it. Sometimes confusing, sometimes shocking and always out there in the realm of demented things. What's not to like?

[J.R. McLemore · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this book a while back and had forgotten what the premise was. So, when I finally got around to reading it, I plucked it off the shelf thinking it was southern fiction. Maybe with kids or rural folks. A character study. I read the synopsis on the back and realized it wasn't what I'd thought. It's by the same author who wrote the novel the movie Pontypool is based on. I'd seen the movie and thought it was pretty good. Okay well, let's go. The writing wasn't what I'd expected either. There were some pages scattered throughout where we're in the head of a madman. I later learned that this story, about a killer in Canada, was based on real events and that Tony Burgess was taking us through those events from the killer's perspective. Once I got my bearings, it was an interesting, yet quick read. Seriously, you can read several chapters really quickly. It's a short book; nonetheless it's an interesting read. Not sure the ending quite does it for me though. I would've liked him to tie it up neater than he did.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brief, gruesome and savage. I don't know what I expected but this was not it.

This book is wild. First-person narration of a sudden and shocking killing spree and the aftermath. To say more would be to spoil it.

Cashtown Corners is a real place matches the description in the book (but the gas station has been rebuilt and there is a Pizza Pizza in it now). One of those places where you wonder why it has a name at all.

I actually found myself holding my breath a couple times while reading this because the descriptions of nasty things were so vivid it was physically repulsive.

If literary horror is your thing, this will probably scratch your itch. Not for the faint of heart

[KarleeXx0 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such an eerie read.. mostly because it felt so real. Truly seemed as though it could be the real ramblings of a killer. The photos in the book only worked to make it even more "true-crime" esque. Also - some of the descriptors and lines really stick with you, particularly for me when Bob is describing the smell of death.

[Sal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grisly and mercifully-short book about the owner of a gas station near Creemore, ON who spontaneously begins a multiple murder spree one day, and then spends a few more days having even more increasingly disturbing breaks with reality. I did not enjoy this book, but it is effectively told and presented.

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, the intense madness! This is one gruesome book. A disturbing tale told in first person of a gas station attendant who goes on a killing spree. The writing was superb! I could not put this book down. Highly recommend checking this one out. Warning - graphic and disturbing!

4.5 Stars

[Troy Disabato · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wild ride! Every time I look at the cover or think of Cashtown Corners, I think of this chilling book!

Tony Burgess is an amazing author of the horror genre! Well done, my friend . You know how to scare the shit out of people!

[Keli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well had a bit of a twist at the end. Thought it would end differently than it did.

[Jill Hamilton-Krawczyk · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 stars.

[Jans Holstrom · Rating 5 out of 5]

What did I just read?

Seriously though what did I just read? Give the author an award and then send him to a psych ward. Amazing book. Must read.

[Staci · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't decide if I hate this, love it, am weirded out by it, or just plain disturbed by it?? Maybe a little bit of all of them.

[ana · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5