| From Publishers Weekly Storms raging outdoors and in the mind of the protagonist create a maelstrom of menace in this sinuous psychological thriller by Schow (The Kill Riff; The Shaft). A whopper of a hurricane is barreling up the California coast， and renegade architect Art Latimer is planning to ride it out and test the structural integrity of his self-designed dream home. At the same time， he's struggling to batten down powerful feelings about his wife， Lorelle， whose death two years before sent him into an emotional tailspin. As the storm intensifies， a string of peculiar experiences suggest that the foundations of his reality are wobbling. He finds an old bottle washed up on the beach containing a cryptic message that speaks eerily to him. Then he's visited by a long-lost friend who mysteriously disappears without a trace from the premises. Meanwhile， a wild house party is underway down the beach and host Price， a steely manipulator who employs drugs and humiliation to control his guests， schemes to use the storm as cover for playing sinister mind games with Art. Schow works suspenseful sleight-of-hand with his story elements， skillfully underplaying the significance of clues and deftly managing character viewpoints to direct what the reader sees. His kinetic orchestration of events-action sequences， moments of moving intimacy and the richly symbolic tempest outside-and vivid hardboiled prose push the plot to a thunderclap climax that in less assured hands would seem farfetched but here is a measure of coolly calculated audacity.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information， Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Booklist Schow is a recognized name in the horror field， credited with coining the term splatterpunk and probably best known for his screenplay of the cult film The Crow . (This may be part of the reason this novel often seems more like a screen treatment than a full-bodied piece of fiction.) Evoking both John Fowles' The Magus and Ed Woods' Glen or Glenda (but leaning heavily toward campy schlock rather than higbrow lit)， Schow experiments with the concepts of sexual identity， personality disintegration， and megalomania. A recluse living near the ocean gets mixed up in a confrontation with a bunch of people from a nearby house who have been fed a cocktail of mind-altering drugs. There's also a hurricane brewing. It's all fairly predictable with the exception of a gender switch involving the main character. On the plus side， the writing is generally smooth， the dark-and-stormy-night settings are well crafted， and the characters are interesting if not always believable. Schow doesn't quite make this odd book work， but his considerable following will want to see for themselves. Elliott SwansonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. See all Editorial Reviews |
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