Scumbag Rehab - Corey Croft

A graphic, bizarro adventure that fuses the cinematic storytelling of Scorsese and Tarantino to create a gritty, visceral spectacle that lunges from the page and reads like an erotic thriller movie. The cocktail of sex, murder and revenge in this hard-hitting, hard-boiled splatterfest is not for the weak of heart or the easily offended.

You hear all kinds of stories in a bar. Booze... it brings out the best in some, and the worst in everyone else. If you sit there long enough, you might hear someone's entire life story, whether you asked for it or not.

As an ex-cop, ex-convict, ex-drug dealer, ex-drug addict, ex-soldier, recent derelict, and a once loving father and husband, Feb has a lot of stories. He's currently a scumbag. He has been his whole life. It's the only constant.

But, he wants to be better. He wants to do good. Or, at least, be less of a scumbag. If only he could figure out how...

At the Knowlton Tavern, Feb recalls his earliest memories being the latchkey kid of a prostitute mother in a destitute, gang controlled neighbourhood. Becoming an errand boy for the Mafia was his first mistake. The second was surviving his punishment. Though barely, and far from unscathed.

Since then, he has been consumed and motivated by revenge. Though death and tragedy would come to define his existence, it's like they say: You always remember your first. In Feb's case, it was the first domino which put him on a brutal and unavoidable path.

When his chance arrives, this career criminal with a broken moral compass finds himself at a crossroads. The first real test in his road to recovery. Do good or do bad. Prove that he's genuinely committed to changing for the better, or give in to his habit of violence and mayhem and do what he does best.

Or, try his hand and both.

To be a scumbag or not to be...

SCUMBAG REHAB is the first chapter in the February Sessions series. The novel provides a stylized and absorbing experience which combines the gratuitousness of grindhouse-era film with the mood and tone of pulp and noir fiction. The use of foul language, vulgarity and sex is abundant. Visual and daunting, this gut-punch symphony will appeal to fans of Frank Miller, Bukowski, Palahniuk and other darkly humoured, subversive works of art.

If that barstool happens to be plugged into the wood at the Knowlton Tavern, then the story you would be hearing might belong to James 'Feb' February. Only at a dive bar full of the most desperate, strange societal castaways could an individual such as him share a story like his.