The Nightly Disease

This was a great dark humor/horror book for me. I found it very interesting and couldn't wait to see where Isaac's decent would end.

Isaac is working the night shift at the Goddamn Hotel. He is equal parts bored and disgusted. Between guests that don't know how to flush toilets, to ones that demand he dispose of vomit and other equally gross items. When a new girl comes to work at the hotel and is interested in owls. That sparks his interest in them as well. Only the new girl doesn't expect what becomes of her obsession and it leads Isaac down a dark decent into hell, that makes him wish for his nice, quiet, boring night job again.

I was given an advanced eARC by the publisher through NetGalley.

It is said one should write about what they know. Max Booth definitely knows something about night auditing in a hotel. Much of what is in The Nightly Disease comes from his experiences working that very job; hopefully not the actual events but from the strange and cynical atmosphere that night duty brings. Having worked a series of night shifts in a series of strange jobs in my much younger years, I can vouch that the midnight hours brings out a different and not always complimentary side of human nature. But so far none of my nighttime jobs ever involved, at least directly, owls. Only my daytime ones.

The Nightly Disease centers around a hotel night auditor by the name of Isaac. In first person narrative, he gets right down to telling us about what a lousy job he has. His only real only friend is George the night auditor at the hotel next door. Asides from George, the only other thing he looks forward to each night is the bulimic homeless girl who comes into the hotel to purge. There is one other interesting girl he meets, a new night auditor who biggest dream is to pet an owl. So it is a bad sign when she ends up dead, killed by an owl that attacks her.

Owls figure heavily in Booth's noirish yet weird novel. What their role actually is may be argued even after you finished the last page. They give the book a fantastic feel but are more of a omen (appropriately if you know your Native American folklore) than the main event. Isaac's nightly encounters are both mundane and surreal at the same time. It is a bit like Bukowski's nihilism meets Tom Robbins' mirth. Booth could have made the questionable decision to write a wandering narrative steeped in the negativity of lost hotel characters but instead he wisely chooses to add a main event that gives the plot a focus and Isaac a challenge. Isaac doesn't see it that way but views it as an exclamation point to his drudge of a life and it's inescapable dead end. But in a typical noir move there is a girl that may be his ticket to a meaningful life. Yes, it is the bulimic one. Even hotel night auditors have dreams and sometimes you have to take them where they drop.

While Booth is usually associated with writings of the surreal and bizarre, this particular book reads fairly straight. That does not mean it isn't strange, just the type of strange that makes sense in an alienating world. In fact, of the things I've read by the author, this is probably the most mainstream . (Gasp!) It is, as expected, beautifully written with dialogue and descriptions that grabs your jugular. It is a darkly comedic story which smacks head first into existential angst and comes out the other side with a least a little hope for the human race, not to mention one hotel night auditor. Max Booth III is one of those authors to look out for and The Nightly Disease is the first substantial and thoughtful fiction of the new year.

Have you ever thought of working nights as an hotel auditor? After reading this dark but humorous novel, you may have second thoughts. I know I will not consider it as a serious second career. Issac is a night auditor. He is single, has no life outside of work except for his coworkers that work nights. At work, he runs the audit and watches Netflix. He doesn't like his job but it pays the rent. He also must respond to the guests requests regardless of what they are.

At times, I had difficulty reading this novel. I'm not exactly sure why. I think it was just a story that I found more sad than funny. It does have its funny parts.

I will keep an eye out for all future tales woven by Max Booth III.
Whoooooo? Max Booth III, ya stupid owl!

I absolutely loved this novel, is it bizarro fiction, yes! Is it entertaining, yes!
Is it original, yes?

I like owls more than ever.

My brief experience reading Max Booth III tells me that going into a Booth III read with any sort of pre-conceived notion or expectation is silly, and sets you up for a lifetime of ridicule. A Booth III read can go any number of directions at any given time, sometimes multiple directions at once. Like a menage-a-whatever, you get nothing less than half-again what you want and twice more than what you deserve, or can handle for that matter.

And what this cover tells me is that I am right in thinking that this book can, and will, go anywhere. Owls, man. Crazy.

I managed to keep up with this book in it's original from of release, that being serialized over the 31 days of October. Hitting most chapters at around midnight while at work, it seemed fitting given the subject matter, that of a less than spectacular man working the night shift. Replace a hotel environment with a big-box retail hardware store and it feels like part of my story. A lot of what Issac experiences rings true and I can relate to quite a bit of it.

I've never caught a customer making shoes in my store, but I have seen an unsavory person chewing their lips open mid conversation. Overdoses in the bathroom, check. Fights, ditto. Used adult diapers stashed behind product, human & animal feces smeared on the bathroom walls, flashing genitalia, death threats, chemical spills, tampons & condoms on the floor, intercourse. Yep, yep, yep, yep and yep. I'd say working the night or overnight shift is a whole new world but I really think that our world is a whole new world. We are devolving into a permanent late-shift mentality. Savage and beastly. The night shift experience is the new black and the new black fucking sucks.

The serial nature of The Nightly Disease's release made the read super easy to connect with. The characters are immensely entertaining and the situations are outrageous. Issac's descent into lucid madness is an experience to behold. The social commentary on human interaction is sharp enough to split hairs and pretty spot-on accurate. Sixty percent of the time people are shitty to each other all the time, especially when they have you in a position of having to serve they. People will try to strangle you with the slight bit of power they think they have over you. Every time.

The Nightly Disease is like a bible, maybe more accurately a field guide on the dangers of customer service. There aren't any surprise twists but unforeseen turns are everywhere bringing a potent energy to the book. It made me feel very unbalanced which made for a very fun reading experience.

Read The Nightly Disease, and anything else you can from Max Booth III. They are reads unlike any other.

The Nightly Disease by Max Booth III is promoted as comedy/horror. Those anticipating a bloody dance with the usual denizens of typical dimensions of horror may be disappointed with the lack of zombies, vampires, or even a lone ghost. But how about a rabid, face-eating owl instead?

The novel might more accurately be defined as twisted, Texas-geek-style magical realism. In all honesty, the novel defies categorization, which is, thankfully, no longer a bad thing in this postmodern age where the liminal regions that once strangled genre potentials maintain much less traction than in the past.

The story marinates, or festers, in the Goddamn hotel, which is a wavering spectral image of all the interchangeable Goddamn hotels in the world. Readers who travel regularly will surely recognize the setting. They will also recognize the nameless faceless thankless, underpaid night clerk who hunkers behind the reservation desk. Every Goddamn hotel has one. In this case, Isaac is the overweight, undereducated, lonely looser night clerk who reins as the hapless protagonist. Although he is limited and immature, Isaac, who quotes Dante, is strangely literate and instinctively understands certain elements of metaphysics such as the ascendancy of the number “three.” He wants what most everyone wants, money, friends, and most of all, love in the form of a girl who only comes to the Goddamn Hotel to binge and purge. Unfortunately, in the Goddamn hotel, which surely is damned by God, it is unlikely that Isaac will reach any of his goals, without divine intervention, that is.

Readers experience the plot via Isaac’s first person loosely present tense, rambling stream of consciousness dominated by profanity and sexually charged language. In between truncated attempted to read Animal Money, Isaac stumbles through life, the innocent victim of characters who take advantage of his innocence. The author skillfully filters in back-story without nauseating info dumps. The plot line moves in a clean, linear fashion and speeds up along with the increasing appearance of killer owls and bloody corpses.

The novel is a quick, comedic experience that offers a deceptively simple surface read. However, more experienced readers will sense something more going on at a sub-textual level. Perhaps they will see something of themselves in Isaac’s hapless quest for something more.

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This book was hilarious, gruesome, and weird as hell. Read my review (linked below) for more--I loved it!

THE NIGHTLY DISEASE is another slice of Max Booth III's unique mind. I've read two of his previous works (Toxicity and Black), both equally fucked up and interesting. I must admit, THE NIGHTLY DISEASE, hits far closer to home. Being a hotel auditor, I recognize a billion hideous acts and people within these pages.

We follow night auditor, Issac, as he talks us through his depressing and miserable existence. The narrative, while dark, sad, and all too true for many, is spiced up by Booth's talent and the raw but entertaining thoughts and observations of the protagonist.

Issac's crazy few weeks include tales of thieves, thugs, owls, drinking with George from the Other Goddamn Hotel, falling in love with a bulimic girl with terrible breath, robbery, owls, murder, and owls...hoot, hoot!

I've mentioned in a past review of the author's work that his love for work of Quentin Tarantino (one I share) oozes like pus from the blisters on the thumbs holding his pen. There's even references to KILL BILL and PULP FICTION. One scene, Issac wished he could call "Mr. Wolf" when he finds himself in a situation similar to that of poor Marvin.

The story, much like movies like the above mention QT films, and movies like FARGO and THE BIG LEBOWSKI, is fun, crazy, but always entertaining. There is a bit of heart in here, but its so messed up, it just gets mixed up and lost with all the other madness surrounding our unfortunate, poor choice-making night auditor.

All in all, fun, crazy, entertaining with boatloads of dark humor.

I give THE NIGHTLY DISEASE 4 stars!

Isaac is a night auditor for the Goddamn Hotel, who, when not reading, watching porn or Netflix, or masturbating off the roof and onto the cars parked in the lot below, is dealing with surly, ignorant guests, deadbeat travelers, grifters, and the occasional corpse. After stealing a guest's lost wallet, and shocked by the disturbing owl-related attack of a co-worker, Isaac is caught up in some dark situations well and truly over his head. He also has a crush on a homeless bulimic girl.

By turns funny and macabre, dark and sentimental, The Nightly Disease is a crime story with shades of horror, wrapped in the sensibility of retail hell. Originally published by DarkFuse Magazine as an online serial, the story has now been collected in a limited edition hardcover with a forthcoming ebook due out in 2017.

As somebody who spent too many years working in retail, and even longer working with the public (with no end in sight...), Isaac is a guy I could relate to a little too well. He gets inundated with idiotic requests, selfish demands, and entitled assholes who think the concept of the customer is always right actually means something. I definitely got where Isaac was coming from, even as he goes off the deep end, and Max Booth III's writing is clearly drawn from a deep pool of real-life experiences. Booth, himself a hotel night auditor, no doubt has many more such stories saved for other books. Isaac's relationships with Kia, the bulimic homeless girl, hits a particularly strong chord and their relationship is explored rather tenderly. This unlikely romance is a terrific mirror for Isaac as he weighs who he is versus who he wants to be.

The Night Disease is a successful fusion of multiple genres told right from the ground-level of the eternal war between the public and the workers that serve them while struggling to maintain not only their integrity and individual identity, but their sanity, as well. Note that this last item is especially important and a more difficult struggle than most civilians realize. Booth captures that particular essence here especially well.

There's also a good deal of owls, which is clearly always a bonus. If Booth intended to drive his readers into seeing owls everywhere, it worked. This book got a little too into my head, but that's OK because at least now Owlbert and Chowls can keep me company.

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title via NetGalley as part of the DarkFuse Readers Group.]

The Nightly Disease by Max Booth III, was read on the Darkfuse Magazine web site (www.darkfusemagazine.com), a wonderful place to go for horror tales. The Nightly Disease is a disease most of us has experienced, that being customer service of some sort. Is there any particular reason some people think they need to treat those trying to make a living, so badly? Who started this, the customer is always right fallacy anyway? Anyway, take a story that involves a face eating owl, a wallet containing less than 5000.00 US Dollars, a chronic masturbator and a shoe gangster who passed home economics and you get this tale that never bogs down and keeps you always wondering what zaniness may come next. And then the owl returns in force.

4 stars

The Nightly Disease by Max Booth III
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As if Isaac's soul-crushing gig as night auditor at The God Damn Hotel wasn't bad enough, now he has to contend with two methed up shoe manufacturers, a bulimic girl, and numerous corpses.

I got this from DarkFuse via Netgalley.

Ever wonder what crazy shit goes on at a hotel during the night shift? Wonder no longer!

The Nightly Disease is the tale of Isaac, the night auditor of a hotel, and how his life spiraled out of control after one ill advised decision. It's hilarious and suspenseful and very hard to put down. MBIII has a great ear for dialogue. Isaac's friendship with George was masterfully done.

While some of the scenarios were unlikely, they were all plausible and Max wove them into a tapestry of awesomeness. Max went from the frying pan to the fire, which was actually burning in another frying pan above another fire and so on and so forth.

The feeling of desperation grew throughout the book, as did my sympathy for Isaac. By the end, I was just hoping he'd live though it.

This is a little different than the books I normally get from DarkFuse, more noir than horror, but it was a damn fine read. Max Booth III drew on his own hotel experiences and delivered one hell of a tale. Four out of five stars.

Isaac works the graveyard shift at a hotel. As anyone who has ever worked a customer service job can tell you, it will drive you insane. Poor Isaac is no exception. Broke, sleep deprived and hating the guests who come to the hotel Isaac finds himself in one bad situation after another.

Having worked the graveyard yard for a mother effing airline myself, I can only wonder how Max Booth III managed to get his hands on my journal. Every rant he rants is true. And it's true for everyone who must talk to the public, be it at a restaurant, hotel or airline. It's sad, funny, and true.

It's highly recommended.

Isaac may be the worst hotel night auditor ever. In between his sleep depraved hallucinations, owl obsessions and late night rooftop jerking, he is rude to his customers, in love with a mysterious homeless girl and is totally crappy at disposing of bodies. He makes pretty good pancakes though, so there’s that. Too bad they don’t seem to last very long in the stomach.

A surreal and humorous trip into the world of the seedy hotel night auditor. A winner from Max Booth III. If the rest of his stuff is as good as this one, then I need to get to more of his work with a quickness. A solid 4+ trippy owl stars.