Depending on your sense of humor, the Easter season may be the perfect time to read Robert Rankin's The hollow chocolate bunnies of the apocalypse. As a child whose seasonal allergies plunged him into a flu-like spasm nearly every Easter week for the better part of my youth, I consequently possess a strong negative association towards all things Easter, including peeps, fake grass, colored eggs, and, of course, hollow chocolate bunnies. Rankin's perverse, gratuitous humor is the perfect outlet for those of us who seek alternative Easter fodder. If, unlike myself, you do not possess a chocolate bunny phobia before reading this book, you may well after.

The hero of the story is Jack, a simple boy leading a simple life, working in a small town clockworks factory, with dreams of something more. One day Jack seizes those dreams and sets out to make his fortune, his destination: Toy City. He arrives wide-eyed and eager, but it turns out that things are not well in Toy City. A serial killer is assassinating the town elite, those individuals who rose to fame and fortune by starring in fairy tales. Humpty Dumpty was the first to go, boiled alive in his seedy penthouse swimming pool. The killer, it seems, is leaving a particular calling card, in the form of a solitary chocolate bunny at the scene of each grisly slaughter. Needless to say the city is on edge, and Jack soon finds himself partnered with an alcoholic detective teddy bear who is determined to track down the culprit.