David Wong was just an ordinary man with a rather nutty friend, John. But ordinary soon goes away when John and David are exposed to a magician who calls himself Robert Marley. Robert has a drug called soy sauce due to a similarity in its appearance to actual soy sauce. It gives users, including David and John, the ability to perceive the supernatural beings intruding on our world.
Soon after this revelation, David and John have their world turned upside down. Joined by a dog, Molly, who is also on the soy sauce and Jennifer Lopez, David's high school unrequited crush (not the famous Jennifer Lopez) and later Amy Sullivan, the sister of the man who was Molly's owner, they mainly fight to stay alive while dealing with the agents of the enemy, an lunatic being from another dimension or universe with a penchant for mindless cruelty who goes by various forms of the name Korrok.
This novel is described as horror/comedy. I found it to be mainly just horror and only mildly amusing occasionally. It is very chaotic, with people being dead and alive at the same time and way too much strange and peculiar events going on all the time. I was glad when I finished it. It was just too gross and gruesome for me.
Kirkus has a review of the book.
It was made into a movie, John Dies at the End that came out in 2012 and stars Chase Williamson (who?) as David and Rob Mayes (?) as John and Paul Giamatti as a secondary character, the only actor in the movie whose name sounded familiar to me.
