Necrotrivia vs. Skull, the novel from which this blog takes its name, and my first of two published. My novels for 4th Estate were written under the name Jeremy Clarke.

Fourth Estate, London, 1989 (price: £4.95)
dedication: to Shell Scott - Clown Prince of the LCD Private Dicks

The blurb on the back:
It's late twentieth-century USA, and two marketing moghuls have the commercial life of the nation by the throat: Mr Rock of Necrotrivia, a psychotic blue-collar fascist, and SKULL supremo Sandy Silence, born-again Christian and Ivy League smoothie. Between them they are greedily exploiting Mr and Mrs America's insatiable appetite for junk.
Meanwhile an extra-terrestrial intelligence operative, lately a convict, has materialised in up-state New York. His knowledge of the ways of men comes entirely from a Dictionary of American Slang and TV transmissions which take ten years to reach his home planet. None of this has prepared him for the hotwire effect of nicotine, fast food and soda pop on his alien metabolism, and soon he is wanted for a series of mindless shootings, Only his ability to change his appearance at will saves him from arrest.
But he's an adaptable kind of guy, and after a couple of goggle-eyed trips to the local hypermart and a week spent holed up in the Siesta Motel watching TV game shows and gorging himself on Pop Tarts, he reckons he's got the measure of Planet Earth - hell, he's even getting to enjoy himself. He applies for a harmless copywriting job and winds up in the crazed corridors of Necrotrivia, where sedative gases seep through the air-conditioning. Soon he's Rock's pet employee, and he's handed the greatest marketing challenge of the century: SMACK, a revolutionary narcotic breakfast cereal. But SKULL is also after the SMACK account, and when Sandy Silence teams up with TV evangelist Dales Junior, it looks like the end of the line for Necrotrivia.
Written in the wise-cracking style of a pulp detective novel, Necrotrivia vs Skull is a deranged satire that gleefully derides the violence, greed and stupidity of the Western world.

Necrotrivia on Amazon.com

ONE OF THE GREAT FORGOTTEN BOOKS OF THIS CENTURY,

by A Customer of Amazon.com

This is basically a tragedy. A tragedy that this book is now out of print, a tragedy that I can't find any other books by this author ANYWHERE,a tragedy that my review is number 1 and not number 111, and a tragedy that the only reason I ever read it was by finding it for about 50p ($1) in a Bargain Book Store. It's also a tragedy that the only reason you'll probably even be reading this review is if you were looking for something else. But enough of that - I would just like to say that this book is a piece of biting satire on a par with 'Catch-22' and says more about the consumerist, mass-marketing 80's and 90's than 'American Psycho'. We see society through the eyes of a first time visitor (an alien) who's entire speech is formed from the sound-bites and advertising slogans that we are bombarded with day-in, day-out. What at first sounds like complete gibberish turns out to be incredibly apt and completely relevant in most of the bizarre situations that he finds himself,from joining the Marketing Company from hell,to promoting an addictive breakfast cereal, with a few dead bodies in between, all the time filling himself with an incredible array of junk food and e-numbers to keep his strength up. This is a hilarious (like all the best satire), thought-provoking and extremely well-written book that even has the confidence to parody itself towards the end, and the fact that it isn't currently a blockbuster film starring John Cusack, Christopher Walken, Harry Dean stanton and Steve Buscemi is, you've guessed it, a tragedy..