I started reading Peter Straub a long time ago, and then forgot about him. Then I remembered Ghost Story, and picked up The Talisman. I was hooked by his very detailed and realistic take on horror. One of the last runs to Half Price Books I picked up The Hellfire Club. Wow.
The Hellfire Club is about Nora Chancel, wife of Davey, son of the head of a big publishing company. Women in her Connecticut suburb are dying violently, and Nora can’t shake the feeling she is next. After being accused of kidnapping a supposed victim, Nora is kidnapped herself by the madman murderer, and she travels with him into her deepest fears. Chancel House has a book called Night Journey, a book that has an illicit past. It’s a book that seems to capture the minds of those who read it, and causes an obsession in its fans that borders on psychotic. Davey is under its spell, and Nora is now in the arms of a man who is determined to protect the history of the book at all costs. She has to find strength deep within herself to survive, and to search out the truth behind Night Journey and the family she married in to.
The Hellfire Club is less a horror story and more a mystery-thriller. Peter Straub builds a pretty tight plot that moves along rather quickly once you get introduced to all of the characters and Nora ends up tethered to the crazy killer. I figured out the secret behind Night Journey and some of the other elements pretty quickly but it didn’t lessen my enjoyment of the story. The only things I really didn’t like were Davey and some of the torture of Nora. Davey was an annoying, whiny, faithless baby and I could never figure out exactly why Nora married him in the first place. I also hate rape scenes, and I could have done without reading Nora getting abused that way. Those scenes were horrific and made my stomach churn. But, to be honest, both of those elements didn’t make me put the book down. It was too good of a story and a mystery to quit before I finished it.
I liked The Hellfire Club and I like Peter Straub. I’m not sure I’d put The Hellfire Club at the top of my list of his books, but if you like a good mystery-thriller, touched with fantasy like elements and Vietnam memories, you’d like Peter Straub’s books and definitely like The Hellfire Club.
Rating: 3 ½ Purrs for a tightly-woven plot and an excellent and tense last few chapters
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