Road Kill was published by Cemetery Dance Publications in 1994, a short novel (barely 150 pages) that moves with the efficiency of a well-aimed projectile. Wayne, a young man left wheelchair-bound after a hit-and-run accident, has spent years planning his revenge on the teenagers responsible. Now adults, scattered across the country, they have mostly forgotten the accident — a night of drunken driving that ended one life and shattered another. Wayne has not forgotten. He tracks each of them, studies their routines, and executes his plan with a methodical calm that is more frightening than rage.
Ketchum structures the novel as a series of set pieces — each revenge a distinct episode, escalating in ingenuity and brutality. The question the novel poses is not whether Wayne’s victims deserve punishment (they do, by any moral calculus) but whether the act of punishment transforms the punisher into something worse than the crime. Wayne’s disability gives him moral authority; his intelligence gives him capability; but the pleasure he takes in the execution of his plan suggests that revenge is not justice but addiction.
The novel is representative of the mid-period Ketchum: technically accomplished, morally ambiguous, and violently efficient.
Collecting Road Kill
First edition (Cemetery Dance Publications, 1994): Limited hardcover.
Market values:
- Limited signed edition, fine: $40–$100
- Trade edition: $15–$30