A riveting new thriller from the award-winning author of Ghost Story. Nora, a bored housewife, married to a weakling of a husband, is kidnapped at gunpoint by Dick Dart, a man who is suspected of committing four recent murders. Now Nora can stay alive only by feeding Dart's ego and outwitting him without seeming to do so. Straub's recent series of books, while excellent, have been dense and rather cerebral as horror books go. This one, while employing many of the same devices about family secrets and mysteries half-buried in the past, has an action storyline with a viscerally satisfying villain and a strong female protagonist. The premise is that the history of a famous fantasy novel not only concerns some eccentric authors, but collides with a wily killer on a rampage. The settings--in seedy motel rooms, New England houses, a bizarre private club and an over-the-hill literary retreat--are especially fun. Straub (The Throat, Dutton, 1994) delivers a complicated two-fold thriller. A former nurse in Vietnam, Nora Chancel lives in Westerholm, Connecticut, with her ineffectual husband, Davey. While visiting the local police station to identify the most recent victim of a serial killer, Nora is kidnapped by the accused killer, the satirical villain Dick Dart. Intertwined with the kidnapping plot is an account of the terrifying events that followed the writing of a horror story at the Shorelands writers' colony in 1938. Fighting her own demons from Vietnam, Nora becomes stronger and braver as the story progresses. The climax brings the two stories together, as Dart and Nora visit Shorelands. Horror meets horror in this bizarre, enigmatic tale, which reveals itself in onion-like layers. The Hellfire Club will be popular with Straub's fans as well as readers of horror. --Stacie Browne Chandler, Newbury Coll. Lib., Brookline, Mass. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. Nora Chancel has begun to lose all sense of herself. Wracked by nightmares from her stint as a combat nurse in Vietnam and unhappily married to the weak-willed scion of a famous publishing company, she is also rattled by the fact that four women from her hometown have recently been murdered. Called down to the police station to help with the investigation into the disappearance of a friend, she is kidnapped at gunpoint by suspected murderer Dick Dart. Over the course of the next 10 days, Nora courageously faces down her brutal, talkative kidnapper, emerging with a newfound appreciation for her own abilities. This is one odd page-turner of a book. All of Straub's characters are deeply neurotic, and his scenes veer erratically from the brutality of rape and murder to witty repartee that could come straight out of the Thin Man movies (although the fact that this banter is being tossed back and forth between a vicious serial killer and his intended victim adds a whole other level of weirdness to the proceedings). But Straub, whose background as a horror novelist is readily apparent, can write circles around most of the authors topping best-seller lists these days. Although his worldview is pretty strange, he also makes it pretty interesting. Joanne Wilkinson “ The Hellfire Club moves like an express train.” —STEPHEN KING “SURPRISING TWISTS [AND A] WILDLY INVENTIVE PLOT.” — The New York Times “COMBINES THE INTELLECTUAL-PUZZLE MYSTERY WITH A POWERFUL VEIN OF PSYCHO-THRILLER SYSPENSE.” — The Washington Post “ONE OF THE MOST CHILLING VILLAINS TO COME ALONG SINCE HANNIBAL LECTER.” — San Francisco Chronicle From the Paperback edition. ew thriller from the award-winning author of Ghost Story. Nora, a bored housewife, married to a weakling of a husband, is kidnapped at gunpoint by Dick Dart, a man who is suspected of committing four recent murders. Now Nora can stay alive only by feeding Dart's ego and outwitting him without seeming to do so. Peter Straub is the author of seventeen novels, which have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in New York City with his wife, Susan, director of the Read to Me program. From the Paperback edition.