ROAD TO STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES’ OFF THE RESERVATION: An Obsessive’s Fiction Review Column
Stephen Graham Jones is largely known as a horror writer—the horror writer, one could argue—but one of the greatest pleasures upon reading through his immense backlist is discovering just how widely he’s drawn from other genres. There is always that vein of horror running through his work, but today we will discuss books that could also be categorized as crime, thriller, noir, and the like. All can and often do share a relation to horror, but to just call these books “horror” would be reductive. I’ll speak more on SGJ’s specific style in the final column of this series, but for the purposes of today’s column, the common denominator is one in which he excels quite deviously: the mind of a serial killer.
The Serial Killers of Stephen Graham Jones
ALL THE BEAUTIFUL SINNERS
Originally published 2003 by Rugged Land
Revised ebook edition published 2010 by Dzanc Books
Re-issued and restored to original text 2025 by Open Road Media
Here is the oldest book in this series. Maybe the longest, too. And definitely the most underrated. It’s a novel of echoes; of names; of puzzles within puzzles. Stephen King might call it a book of twinners. It’s a novel, much like most of Jones’ work, of Americana.
The what: All the Beautiful Sinners tells of Deputy Sheriff Jim Doe, chasing after the killer of his sheriff and father figure. But the eerie similarities between hunter and hunted put Doe on the run too, as three FBI profilers take up the chase. What’s unearthed, stripped bare as if by a blood-filled hurricane, is a decades-long trail of abducted orphans, and very little is as it seems.
The why: Of all of SGJ’s work, Beautiful Sinners demands absolute focus with every sentence. One of my favorite aspects of Jones’ writing is the way he pulls the reader close—in the age of TikTok, it feels refreshingly antithetical to so much of today’s popular fiction. I found that to never be more true than while reading this novel. Every sentence, every line of dialogue, seems to hide multiple layers of meaning, and the reader is rewarded tenfold if you can only slice through the literary fascia. The character work and myth building, toward the very beginning of his career, is truly something special.
Why so underrated, then? Besides the decades between its initial publication and re-issue, it also seems to have been the victim of critical misunderstanding. Literary critics, for whatever reason, paired it with the likes of Thomas Pynchon, rather than Fight Club or Se7en. In this reader’s opinion, All the Beautiful Sinners is long overdue a second chance. Go read it, and try not to blink.
IT CAME FROM DEL RIO: A BUNNYHEAD CHRONICLE
Originally published 2010 by Trapdoor Books
Re-issued 2024 by Open Road Media 
And here we have what was, besides maybe States of Grace, the most difficult SGJ book to get one’s hands on before the re-issues. (Thank you again, Open Road!) It may have taken 14 years, but believe me when I say that it was well worth the wait.
It Came from Del Rio (that title being an homage to the Bradbury-inspired 1953 film It Came from Outer Space) is a goddamn delight, not least of which is its noir style of narration. Border smuggler Dodd Raines narrates his big-break-gone-horribly-wrong transporting mysterious, radioactive moon rocks across the border into the U.S. At its heart, this is a tragic story of father and daughter, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was a damn good time—especially once the chupacabras start showing up.
In the end, It Came from Del Rio is yet another perfect blend of so much of what we love about SGJ. The heart, the humor, the style, the “What the f*ck?” All the ingredients of a home run while still being wholly unique.
THREE MILES PAST: STORIES
Originally published 2013 by Nightscape Press
Re-issued 2024 by Open Road Media
Three Miles Past is, of all the books in this column series, perhaps my top pick for Halloween reading. Three spooky and/or f*cked-up tales, around fifty pages each; I won’t give many details of the actual plots here, as they’re so short and a delight to discover for yourself. Suffice to say, this book finds itself in today’s column because two of its three collected novellas star a serial killer.
“Interstate Love Affair” could be said to pair well with one of the earlier books in this series, Killer on the Road, because of their shared settings of the U.S. interstate and the serial killers that stalk said road, but I would actually pair this first Three Miles Past story closer with the last book on today’s list, The Least of My Scars. It’s with these serial killer tales that SGJ crosses over into the darker terrain of transgressive fiction. These are the splatterpunk of his oeuvre. “Interstate Love Affair” has the added displeasure of taking us through a gauntlet of excruciatingly detailed, roadkill-oriented serial killer modus operandi. Animal lovers: if you haven’t learned this about SGJ books yet… you’ve been warned.
While the middle novella, “No Takebacks,” is certainly spooky, it pairs better with The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti (which we’ll dive into next time!); it does, however, act as a welcome breather before our next delving into the sick mind of a serial killer, in “The Coming of Night.” This one is written in 2nd person, to put us directly into the POV of this particular killer. This is one of the strangest stories I’ve ever read. You never quite know what is real and what is in this killer’s head.
THE LEAST OF MY SCARS
Originally published 2013 by Broken River Books
Re-issued 2025 by Open Road Media
At this point, it would be safe to say that serial killers are somewhat of a specialty of SGJ (complimentary). He has a talent for locating the loose thread in that sick mind, tugging it loose, and showing us how it all unravels. That is especially apparent in The Least of My Scars, which seems to hold the dubious honor of (apologies in advance for the pun) scarring the most readers. What, that Jack Ketchum quote on the cover wasn’t enough of a warning?
The Least of My Scars tells of the serial killer nobody’s heard of and lived: William Colton Hughes. A fact he’s quite proud of. He takes great pride in his work, which fills his routine. Every few days, the local crime outfit delivers someone to his front door, and he gets to work doing what he does best—after some fun torture, that is. It’s a great setup for him. Air-tight. But then the deliveries stop. His routine stumbles and falls… and that is when SGJ starts unspooling the loose thread of William’s mind.
When I first became a fan of SGJ and discovered that he had such a fathomless backlist, The Least of My Scars was one of the first I read. I still remember the shock I felt wading through these pages. This was the same guy who wrote The Only Good Indians? The guy who wrote Zombie Bake-Off? (More on both of those in later columns.) It was The Least of My Scars that convinced me to start collecting everything I could find. There must have been books in his backlist that went in all sorts of surprising directions, I figured. And boy, did they.
Haven’t I proved that to you yet, dear reader? With all the pulpy, horrific fun in the SGJ Starter Pack, or his trilogy masterpiece in Slasher 101 with Professor Jones, or the sheer ocean to be found in the Short Fiction of SGJ. Add to that today’s foray into SGJ’s Serial Killers.
Thank you for coming this far with me. We have just two more columns before we reach his newest release from Saga Press, Off the Reservation, out October 13. Before we reveal the heavy hitters that will conclude this column series, next time around we’ll be talking about something I’m personally very excited about. Something that hits at the heart of why I asked Cemetery Dance if I could do this in the first place: next up, we take a look at what I consider to be the “Hidden Gems” of the work of Stephen Graham Jones.
See ya then.
Spencer Hamilton
OUR ROAD MAP
All the Beautiful Sinners †
The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti
It Came from Del Rio †
The Ones Who Got Away ***
Zombie Bake-Off
Three Miles Past: Stories †
Zombie Sharks with Metal Teeth ***
The Least of My Scars †
Sterling City
The Gospel of Z
States of Grace ***
After the People Lights Have Gone Off ***
Mongrels
Mapping the Interior
Night of the Mannequins *
The Only Good Indians
My Heart Is a Chainsaw **
Don’t Fear the Reaper **
The Angel of Indian Lake **
I Was a Teenage Slasher *
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
Killer on the Road/The Babysitter Lives *
Off the Reservation, out October 13, 2026
OUR ROAD MAP KEY
* SGJ Starter Pack
** Slasher 101 with Professor Jones
*** Short Fiction of SGJ
† Serial Killers of SGJ
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SPENCER HAMILTON is a queer horror author living in Pennsylvania. His fiction includes the novel The Fear and novellas Welcome to Smileyland and Sister Funtime. His short fiction has been collected in Kitchen Sink and I Will Devour You and Other Promises, and has appeared in several anthologies, most recently Punk Goes Horror II from Truborn Press. He is the editor of the queer horror anthology There’s More of Us Than You Know. You can find him on Instagram as @spencer.hamilton.books.
