“Grandma Meche says a horse kicked Balta in the head when he was little. That’s why he’s a moron. This story has always seemed like another of the old woman’s inventions to me because we have lived in this neighborhood of vicious and evil people all our lives, and I have never seen a horse.” Thus starts The Smell of the Dead, an insane trek down the rabbit hole, which is the world of the mentally ill and the victims of poverty, ignorance, and marginalization. Max Resto utilizes all the trappings and tropes of the detective genre, the black novel, to tell in a Rashomon-like tale the nature of these peculiar characters and the sordid societal and cultural jail that keeps them from fulfillment, self-awareness and redemption. An astute and engaging telling of an absurd story, this novel uses a cunning shifting of narrative voices and points of view to weave an intricate portrait of the futility of existence when weighed against the yearning for significance and pertinence. The modesty of aspirations versus the fatality of life, the empty nature of dreams and ambition. Aburdist, politically incorrect, and often just plain offensive, The Smell of the Dead places the reader in front of a mirror where the reflection shows a grim reality as straightforward as it is detestable.