The Chosen [Leather Bound]

Vera Abbot has a great life. She manages a wildly successful restaurant called "The Emerald Room," a success for which she is largely responsible. She works with a stellar crew that includes Donna, a former alcoholic who successfully reformed herself and now manages the waitressing and bar duties; Dan B., a chef capable of whipping up the most scrumptious dishes in town; and Lee, a gruff, obese dishwasher whose loyalty to Vera knows no bounds. On top of a great job she loves with a passion, Vera has the ideal fiancé in Paul, a freelance journalist widely respected by the local newspapers and magazines. With a stable life like this, Vera doesn't expect things to get much better when Mr. Feldspar walks into her life. Feldspar is looking for a new manager to run the restaurant at a posh resort called Wroxton Hall some miles north of where Vera lives. This very wealthy guy offers Vera a hundred grand to take the job, and even lets her take the staff from the Emerald Room. Vera cannot believe her good fortune, but decides not to accept the job because it might affect Paul's career. Well, an extremely seedy incident concerning Paul results in Vera's sudden acceptance of the job offer, and she is off to bigger and better things.

Within a matter of days, things start to sour at Wroxton Hall. Vera discovers she plays second fiddle to Paul, the manager of the room service kitchen at the resort. She also finds out that Paul is a royal jerk who likes to brag about what a big shot he is at the hotel. Then Vera starts to suffer from highly erotic dreams, dreams that take a toll on her as the days turn into weeks. Eventually, the rest of her co-workers experience their own personal traumas at the new resort. When some of Vera's guests complain about strange noises at night, she begins to ask serious questions about her new situation. It definitely does not help matters when Vera discovers that Wroxton Hall was once the site of a mental institution where inhuman crimes of sickening depravity took place. As Vera puts the various pieces of the puzzle together, she discovers that Wroxton hides a new horror beyond the comprehension of mere mortals.

While I like "The Chosen," I did have several problems with the story. Why everyone referred to the chef as "Dan B." drove me to fits of distraction. Does a Dan A. or a Dan C. lurk somewhere near the deep fat fryers? Why not just call him "Dan" and be done with it? And why is it of such paramount importance to take a dishwasher to a resort? I can understand taking a chef along for the ride, but some guy who cleans dishes? C'mon, that is totally unbelievable. Moreover, Dan B. and Lee are uninteresting and uninspired characters who converse in pedestrian insults of the type commonly found on a grade school playground. While it is not difficult to imagine a couple of guys trading verbal jabs about the reputation of one's female family members, this is all these two men do and it grates quickly. "The Chosen" also contains a host of continuity errors too numerous to mention. It is sufficient to say that this is not one of Ed Lee's best books, but it is not entirely hopeless, either.

The best thing going for "The Chosen" is how Lee keeps the reader in the dark about what is really going on at the rebuilt Wroxton Hall. One thing is for certain: you will never guess how this book concludes until you get there. That you must wade through endless descriptions of sexually charged scenes in the process is a bit of a bummer, but I thought the payoff made up for some of the redundancy of the previous sections of the book. "The Chosen" contains many truly sickening scenes, which is exactly what I expect from an Ed Lee novel. I was often struck by the similarities between this book and his latest novel "Monstrosity," with the insecure lead character and the sleazy eroticism. I liked "Monstrosity," and I generally liked this book as well. For a great Ed Lee experience, I recommend "The Ushers," but "The Chosen" should eventually follow at some point.

Within Edward Lee's books, there seems to be an underlying current telling one to always look a gift horse in the mouth - especially when dealing with jobs that seem too good to be true. This is because there's always a catch, always some sharpened instrument waiting in the dark to sing a lullaby to an unsuspecting audience, and it always seems to be fashioned from the same threads. There, the unfortunate woes of the rurally-challenged reigns supreme, always greeting the unfortunate in some sexually explicit way they never seem to want, and there are always lurid dreams and doom lurking in the shadows. Many times, this is a good combination, too, and it makes something that is well worth checking into. Unfortunately in the instance we call The Chosen, all this book has to offer on an otherwise interesting theme that this author has been developing is a seed, a little seed, and the cohesion of the book's multiple themes, well, they never pan out. Sure, there are violence tones, many of them, with people and blades greeting one another and the people oftentimes regretting it (the blades, well, they never seem to offer their opinions), but the way this is presented is mostly useless. The blood spilled seems to be nothing more than filler, plodding the story along on a course that, to me, ends in the dullest of manners. Sure, there are shadows and things going bump in them, but the explanation comes late in the book and the reasoning, it is a lifeless thing that only evokes more blood and the death of other people. And the build, based on dreams of hands that grope and do some rather livid things, really begins to wear on the patience after a time.

Basically, this book is nothing more than an erotic dream manifesting itself in a creepy place full of events that, for some odd reason, seem to be a fright train destined for a little town we call Disappointment. As an Edward Lee reader, it basically made me have to take a break from his works, almost keeping me away from some of his newer ideas on what a monster should be. Within all of my objections, the word "demonic pimp" can be attached, showing the questioner why they might want to rethink looking into the idea. . Yes, with phrases like this, the mood built in the beginning is defeated soundly.