Both violence and wackiness continually threaten to erupt in Marisa Wegrzyn's macabre comedy. Dowdy Wisconsin housewife Valerie may have butchered her husband in hopes of canoodling with his brother. Her lesbian pharmacist daughter, Midge, sells meth to middle schoolers with the tacit approval of Aunt Gail, the bumbling sheriff who gets high to research her antidrug lectures. And so on. It's all smarter, funnier, and truer than it sounds, thanks to Wegrzyn's extraordinary ability to imbue goofiness with menace. Justin Hayford, Chicago Reader | The Butcher of Baraboo by Marisa Wegrzyn, Paperback | Indigo Chapters