Deep under the influence of peyote in a strange town, three Irishmen struggle to make sense of what's happening. One has it all figured out: They're in Mexico, and the man they just killed was a corrupt generalissimo who had it coming a long time ago. His companion has other ideas. "This isn't Mexico!," he says. "This is a filthy mad world of crazy men and she-devils!" Together, they attempt to negotiate the boundaries of their shared hallucination. Readers of Butcher Boy author Patrick McCabe's latest will likely know the feeling. A collection of closely related stories organized around a single character and a variety of songs, Germs relates the bloody exploits of McCabe's near-namesake Pat McNab, a middle-aged small-town resident who has seen his dreams of pop stardom interrupted by several decades of maternal intervention. Set over the course of McNab's "postmatricide" year, Germs—almost every chapter of which features a homicide—reveals that McNab's true talent may be for murder. Or is it? Even when McNab is free from the influence of hallucinogens, his ability to separate reality from fantasy seems seriously impaired, and McCabe's flair for black comedy prompts him to follow his protagonist into an internal maelstrom. Creepily amusing at first, Germs grows repetitive in a hurry. With McNab, McCabe has created a Jim Thompson-like protagonist whose delusional thinking and decided lack of aversion to bloodletting tend to wreak havoc on everyone who crosses his path. He's a memorable creation, but he grows less interesting over the course of one pattern-following chapter after another. At times, McCabe's mean, dry prose carries the book: In a flashback, a '60s hipster falls victim to a maraca bludgeoning "in what might be described as an orgy of bloody, frenzied, alternative 'bebop' improvisation." Such moments only count for so much, however. Taken as a whole, Germs has all the impact of a questionable joke stretched well past its punchline.