Mike Nelson’s Death Rat!
Mike Nelson
HarperEntertainment
368 Pages
$14.95 paperback

Michael J. Nelson is alive and well, and writing hilarious novels in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Nelson is the former host of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” (MST3k to hip fans of the show, who are called MiSTies), which was quite possibly the funniest two-hour-an-episode show about humans and robots trapped on a spaceship making fun of some of the most terrible, terrible movies ever made. Nelson apparently escaped from the Satellite of Love and has just published the drop-dead hilarious and quite exciting novel Mike Nelson’s Death Rat!

Pontius Feeb, a history professor and textbook writer, author of such classics as Old Van Steuban Had a Farm: The German-American Settlement of the Midwest and Everett M. Dirksen— The Other McKinley has just been fired by his publisher to make way for books of a more persuasive quality. The 60-year-old Feeb, determined not to fade away for the rest of his life, begins to write a novel of adventure—a novel of self-discovery and surviving the elements. He calls the novel Death Rat and the book becomes a worldwide phenomenon—in fact, the best-selling book of all time. Little does “Ponty” know, the novel’s publication will cause a chain reaction, forcing him to lie, scam, cheat death and find true love.

Along the way he meets up with a struggling actor, a best-selling author with no redeeming social qualities, an enthusiastic funk musician with an inexplicable fascination with wiener-steamers and a secret powerful underground organization composed entirely of Danish people. Oh, and a giant six-foot death rat that, although it never makes an actual appearance in the novel, becomes the key factor in the lives of Ponty and all the rest.

Not only is Mike Nelson’s Death Rat! a really, really funny book, it actually tells quite an interesting story. The unforgettable characters and the bizarre situations that they find themselves in are quite fascinating. In fact, there are times when I found myself wishing Nelson would stop being so damn funny (he seems to not take his characters seriously enough, which can be really disheartening if you find yourself liking them or, God forbid, identifying with some of them) and continue on with the story. This is a book that is very easy to get sucked into and even easier to turn away in order not to spit water all over it because you’re laughing so damn hard.

This is Nelson’s third book. His first was Movie Megacheese, which was a sort of literary version of MST3k. (Nelson makes fun of bad movies for 304 pages.) His second book was the semi-autobiographical Mind Over Matters. Death Rat! is his first novel. I really hope it’s not his last.
jordan@red-mag.com