Jigglyspot is half-human, half-warlock. Named after the “white spot of hair on the right side of [his] occipital lobe” and his perma-round belly, Jigglyspot donned the garb of a clown back when the Warlocks came to find him dressed in their clown disguise. The Warlocks figuring that if they revealed their true selves humanity would be terrified. The Warlocks may have gone but Jigglyspot never looked back. He stuck with the clown outfit. And he hates humans–he refers to them as “Stupid Human Scum”. Half brains. Zero intellect. Now Jigglyspot is spending his time as a pimp and procurer for demonic beings who feast on humans. With a sideline as a drug dealer and his new position as coordinator for the Summer Solstice Celebration at the infamous Cannibal Café, Jigglyspot has his hands full. Add into the mix his ever troublesome girlfriend Kera and Jigglyspot is enmeshed in a veritable carnival of chaos.
P.D. Alleva’s JIGGLYSPOT AND THE ZERO INTELLECT fits into the clown horror genre exemplified by Stephen King’s IT and Thomas Ligotti’s The Last Feast of Harlequin, with an added touch of the misanthropy of Todd Phillips’s Joker movie. Though where each of these creators honed their clown based killing sprees with scalpel sharp craft and guile, Alleva bludgeons his subject with a bloody mallet. The novel runs to more than 500 pages over which time the need to continually up the intensity of gore and outrage becomes increasingly wearisome and the overriding plot is stretched paper thin. As much as Alleva relishes the slice and dice at the Cannibal Café, the cuts the novel would most benefit from would be from a judicious edit. More is not always best and the book would be 100% improved by being slimmed down by at least 50%. There are moments when Alleva is on top of his material, there are a few surprise twists and some wicked jokes that he lands well. But much of his good work is buried by relentless repetition. There are a few good ideas but they are, quite literally, done to death. JIGGLYSPOT AND THE ZERO INTELLECT may not be heading for any writing awards, but in its best moments it reads like a XXX version of a Goosebumps novel and there will always be an audience for those kind of thrills. For the less committed, the exhaustive antics of Jigglyspot and his host of demons and cannibals may prove more grueling than gleefully gruesome.
For card carrying clown fanatics who struggle to get their fill of killer carnival action, PD Alleva’s JIGGLYSPOT AND THE ZERO INTELLECT provides enough guts and gore to sate the appetite.
~Kent Lane for IndieReader