Review: Atmospheric and utterly chilling!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 6, 2013
Forget everything you think you know about Paris.  Today, it may be a city of romance, beauty and art, but here it is portrayed as the darkest of dark places.  Even the decadence and wild spirit of early 1900s Paris is laced with gloom and seediness.  This is a place where entertainment comes in the form of dead bodies displayed in windows and the theatrical hot ticket is a bloodfest, where patrons are likely to vomit in their seats before applauding and cheering.  I read this book over several sessions, and after each session, I came away feeling grubby and contaminated.  But this is no bad thing.  It merely highlights the effectiveness of author David Haynes' atmospheric writing.I have encountered this author's horror before in his Victorian short story horrors, but this book is a whole new beast.  Still present is the highly authentic writing, dripping with blood and menace, but now it is fleshed out to a full-blown mystery.  Bishop is a writer escaping the confines of London and, in Paris, under the guidance of his friend Blair, he finds a new job writing horrific and bloody stage shows at a theatre, where he meets several interesting characters.Not everyone is as they seem and the reader is never sure whom to trust.  Even the main character, Bishop, whom I often sympathised with, has a dark streak and unhealthy obsession with violence.  Over the course of the book, the links among the characters unravel and the story starts to hurtle towards its stunning conclusion.  Be warned, there are some wince-inducing passages, but it never feels gratuitous.  It is appropriate for the period described.Throughout the book, recurring themes and repeated images stick in the mind and the closing pages leave the reader with a disturbing unease and a sense of everything coming full circle.  These characters are not ones you would wish to meet in real life.  They are just too disturbing in Haynes' delightfully vivid descriptions.  After the story is over, it is the author's writing itself which lingers in the memory.  It groans under the weight of dread and bloody horror, and at times it is so strong, it is as if the reader is experiencing some terrifying hallucination.If you can stomach a bit of blood and guts, you'll love this book.  It's brutal, gripping, horrifying and so grubbily unsettling, you'll want to take a shower straight after finishing to cleanse yourself!