Blankety Blank is the story of Vulgaria - an overgrown, grandiose, mass-produced supersurburb, full of McMansions and the tiny-minded families that occupy them. Everyday people with everyday problems: a suited superhero having a crisis of confidence, a housewife who worries her skeleton might be haunted, children who torment everyone around (while collecting shrunken heads)... and a serial killer known only as Blankety Blank.

Vulgaria is a sideways squint at suburbia, full of the secret stories of dumb folk - the smartest thing around is a car. Everyone is so caught up in their own world, that the exploits of Blankety Blank almost go unnoticed, despite a rate of around a dozen killings per day.

Blankety Blank is very much ideas-based. The storyline is thin, seemingly generated only to link together the absurdities of a feverishly imaginative mind. There are educational interludes and sidesteps, describing, for instance, how werewolves originated from an extreme fear of nudity in Viking berserkers, and how to make shrunken heads. The characters are pastiches - but how could they be anything else in a book such as this? - and the arrival of Blankety Blank to the McMansions brings a welcome relief from the minutiae of suburban life.

As another in the set of absurdist books by D. Harlan Wilson, one can't expect a rational, linear story, but the constant diversions and relentless bizarrities became wearing. For me, it was a book to dip into occasionally rather than to read as such. But I should qualify this by saying that this type of fiction has never really been a favourite of mine, and I’m sure those who do appreciate the random flights of fancy of D. Harlan Wilson and the other 'irreal' authors will certainly enjoy this book.

Blankety Blank is available from Amazon.com and Raw Dog Screaming Press.