Wizzer Whale runs his own junk shop. He collects together broken and discarded items that people no longer value, repairs them and then sells them on again. But since his wife died he seems to have lost his direction and is descending into a miasma of trash. So when he discovers the headless naked body of a women slowly decomposing in his backyard you would think that would be the final straw. Not the case!

Wizzer decides to take the corpse into his home, attaches the head from a shop mannequin and rubs toilet cleaner into the body to cover up the smell of decay. Now he has a companion he decides to give her a necklace made from a strange scarab that a mysterious trader swapped for an old photo frame. Almost immediately the corpse re-animates and Wizzer finds himself with a living non-breathing girlfriend. However, when a notorious mob boss comes looking for his dead wife Wizzer realises that things may not be quite so simple especially when Elsa reveals one of the darker sides of her personality.

This is a bizarre little book. Essentially it is the story of a junk man who somehow manages to re-animate a corpse by using an ancient Egyptian artefact. However nothing is quite that simple as the un-dead woman shows a disturbing desire to kill anyone who threatens Wizzer.

The story is very reminiscent of the Frankenstein story with local residents gathering into a mob intent on burning the "bride" and Wizzer alive in their home. But whereas the original Mary Shelley tale was a gothic story written from a scientific point of view this story is more a disturbing horror story with odd moments of black humour and tongue-in-cheek writing.

As a novella of some 170 pages this story was perfectly paced for its format and, to be honest, I am not sure that the premise and style would have held true if used for a longer novel. I have always found that the stranger the style the shorter the book needs to be to allow the theme to be fully explored before it has the chance to become tedious.

When I first picked up this book I felt that I needed a change as I had just finished two Alias novels back-to-back. I got exactly what I wanted in spades. Truly original and a definite page-turner!

Synopsis
Delusional good ol' boy Wizzer Whale has gotten himself into a bizarre predicament—he's fallen in love with a blood-thirsty monster. Their demented romance leads the couple through a twisted world of carnival sideshows, media frenzy, and necrophilia.

The Bride of Trash is a raucously warped homage to B-monster movies and the gory, lurid horror comics of the 1950s. This ultra-campy tale of terror and bad taste will keep you gasping and guffawing long past the witching hour!