The late Rex Miller was certainly not everyone's cup of tea. Although he was associated with the splatterpunk genre, that description was too limiting. His writing as he freely admitted, came from some painful places, some of which he didn't care to describe in depth. As he wrote in a Dark Muse piece, "..evil exists. [It] needs to be cut out of the herd and incarcerated."

Frenzy is a short novel that is a battle of wits between two Midwestern men, Jack Eichord, a detective who specializes in taking down serial killers and Frank Spain, a mild mannered St. Louis based man who also happens to be the country's best hit man. Spain is primarily associated with the Midwest Organized Crime Families (St. Louis, Kansas City, and ultimately Chicago). Spain takes no pleasure in his job. It is just something that he does. Spain does not let his wife know of his business which unfortunately turns out to be a mistake and later a tragedy for Spain.


His wife Pat, is tired of Frank's constant absences and infrequent amorous attention. She comes to believe he's a wimp so she cheats on him with their insurance salesman. He catches her but does not kill her as he still loves her and Frank only kills on business. Pat leaves and takes their teen daughter Tiffany with her. Under her mother's less than attentive care, Tiffany falls in with a fast crowd. On a visit from Tiffany , Frank tries to correct this but overreacts. Tiffany runs away with her no-good boyfriend who turns her out into prostitution and later much worse activities. Ultimately she's murdered. Frank is devastated.

However Frank is beyond enraged when he discovers that the people who murdered his daughter ultimately worked for the same Mafia group HE did. As far as Frank is concerned they're ALL responsible and they're ALL going to pay. The Mafia's number one murder machine goes off the reservation, leaves sanity behind and comes to the attention of Eichord, who doesn't understand at first that this is an intensely personal killing spree that he's trying to stop. This book was short (300 pages) and to the point.