SOURCE: Silverblatt, Michael. “Tales from the Crypt.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (30 June 1991): 2, 11.

In the following review, Silverblatt offers a positive assessment of Frisk.

To frisk is to “search a person for something concealed, especially a weapon,” Frisk is about a man who wants to kill someone and find what the body conceals. Spiritually, the thing that remains of the body after death is the soul. Physically, the thing that remains is only splatter.

The narrator of Dennis Cooper's novel Frisk also is named Dennis; whether he represents the author remains a question. The narrator seems to be interested in carnage; Dennis Cooper himself seems engaged in a search for the soul.

The narrator is fascinated with sex and death. As a child, he has seen some pornographic photographs of a murdered boy. The photographs turn out to be elaborately faked, but Dennis, hooked, becomes fascinated by the...