Amazon Category:  Humor ISBN-10:  0741442612 Type: Fiction Copyright: October 2007 ISBN-13: 9780741442611 Sexual addiction. Too much alcohol. Revenge. Witnessing someone having a nervous breakdown can be great fun. "A highly addictive book. Gripping, powerful, laugh-out-loud funny, painfully sad. Archer is a writer with a big future." (James Frey - A Million Little Pieces, My Friend leonard) "A Dark, twisted, bitingly funny novel. Everyone should read it." (Jonathan Maberry - Patient Zero, Ghost Road Blues) Sandwiched between obnoxious coworkers who reek of burnt popcorn and cheap perfume, Michael O’Donnell is a short step away from a total meltdown. Recently promoted in a career that is destroying him, Michael escapes the stress of his nightmarish world by embarking on a self-destructive journey through Philadelphia’s sexual underground. As his dangerous behavior takes him through Philadelphia strip clubs and massage parlors, all the way to swingers resorts and nude beaches, Michael is forced to confront a darkness he has harbored for years, one that will release a hatred and a quest for vengeance. It is this realization that can either save him from future misery or swallow him whole. Darkly comic, extremely raw, and unexpectedly poignant, Burnt Popcorn And Cheap Perfume chronicles one man’s quest to escape not only a career that is driving him insane but also his growing addiction and his thirst for vengeance against the father who brutally betrayed him. This is a novel for anyone who has ever felt trapped in a job and a life they could not escape.

A take-no-prisoners tale of a man in crisis
Sometimes you want a smoky, flavorful glass of fine Cabernet, and sometimes you want a bracing shot of 80-proof liquid fire that burns its way into your gut and slaps you awake from your day-to-day routine. "Burnt Popcorn and Cheap Perfume" is the literary equivalent of the latter. Laced with profanity, out-of-control sex, visceral unhappiness, and cutting hostility, you should definitely look elsewhere if you simply must have that fine Cabernet.

But if this memorable novel is the kind of burning liquor consumed via quickly-downed shots when you're out with your buddies, it nevertheless comes from a bottle stored on the upper shelf. Yeah, it burns, but it's a fine burn, a good burn. Protagonist Michael O'Donnell's profanity-laced anger and hostility at the world around him is part of a larger, richer characterization and history that, as the story progresses, elegantly reveal why Michael acts the way he does, and why he has some very specific demons following on his heels.

Like the best books and movies, "Burnt Popcorn and Cheap Perfume" is both believable and crazy-out-there surprising. It's the former because Mr. Archer's Michael O'Donnell character is in many ways a normal young man who explores all the things normal young men want to explore, or at least show interest about. It's the latter because Michael takes those explorations to the stratosphere and beyond, as greater and greater distraction is needed from the pain in his life. I'll say this, you won't soon forget Michael's escalation of experience, as he moves from mostly-harmless hedonism to out-of-control near madness.

And what's an edgy novel without some controversy? Without revealing too much, let me just say that you'll get that controversy in the closing chapters, when Michael finally exorcises his demons and makes his first steps toward peace not via civilized therapeutic sessions but through a beachfront confrontation right out of a Martin Scorcese movie. Sting once said in one of his songs, "Nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could." Mr. Archer's novel begs to differ.

This is the kind of book that often generates comments like "not for every taste" or "if you can get past the cursing and the violence, it's really worth reading". I'll add my own comment to the hypothetical squeamish reader we're worrying about here: Grow up-- it's a hard, rough world out there, and it won't kill you to occasionally read a tough story that capably communicates that world and the troubles of the lonely, haunted people in it.

Myself, I was better for it.