Raw Pain Max by Dean Andersson

Raw Pain Max
by Dean Andersson
1988 Popular Library

No, not that.  Pure coincidence, I'm sure.

If you read the acknowledgments (Dallas Fantasy Fair, Z Rock, the one book about Bathory that Dean read for research), you can probably piece together the book for yourself.  Picture if Richard Kern listened to LA Guns in Dallas instead of Foetus in New York, and you kind of get the idea.

Phil and Trudy are a kinda couple who are into mild BDSM and do a live sex show in Dallas.  After a violently accurate description of Dallas traffic, Phil picks up a cousin and her friend Liz.

Liz ends up being the sarcastic reincarnation of Elizabeth Bathory, except later she ends up being the reincarnation of the witchy friend of Bathory, or something.  Then Trudy ends up being the reincarnation of Bathory.  Anyway, there's a torture scene with more snark than pain, and Trudy lops Liz's head off.

To sort things out, Phil and Trudy drive around Dallas and Fort Worth visiting comic shops, which I'm sure isn't some self-indulgent shout out nonsense.  They then drive through Oklahoma to Lindsborg, Kansas.  For absolutely no reason that I can tell.  Seriously, the structure of this book is a road trip from Dallas to Lindsborg, with three torture sessions sandwiched in.  And Z Rock, lots of Z Rock.  Z Rock playlists, Z Rock t-shirts, discussions of the range of their transmissions,

The torture scenes are meh, with dialogue like:

"We'll whip you some more, especially your breasts and vagina, then introduce you to some megapain.  Raw pain, to the max"

Sade meets Poochie.

While in Kansas, Liz comes back to life and tortures some random victims in a barn in Denton.  This book has a weird mixture of both under and over-explaining its premise.  There is a demon that lives off of pain, and another demon or something that doesn't like the first demon, and they use people as pawns and live off the pain they cause.  To be fair, it might have been coherent and I just didn't care enough to pay attention.

After going to Kansas for no good reason, Liz hypnotizes Phil to drive back to Denton.  Trudy astrally travels back in time to witness Bathory torturing a servant girl, and this somehow was all part of some demon's plan, and the end, except for more explanations that don't make sense and more damn Z Rock.