The Hellfire Club (Mass Market Paperback)

There's so much to savour. I have so many favourite parts - the history behind "Night Journey" (which is obviously reminiscent of "The Lord of the Rings") like Paddi Mann and The Hellfire Club of the title, Dick Dart's wonderfully twisted campness, Daisy freaking out at Nora's opinions of her sprawling novel (the Poison family are very funny!), the brief but intense flashbacks to Nora's Vietnam experiences, the story of Katherine Mannheim, Davey being reduced to a child by his father, the excellent finale in Shorelands, and ... oh, so much more!

One of my friends thought Dick Dart was too unbelievable to be scary, but I disagree. His over-the-topness certainly makes him scarier and a change from the usual brooding, boring sociopaths in most other novels of the same themes.

I highly recommend this excellent novel. If you've read Straub before, you'll love it. If you've never read him before, it makes the perfect introduction to his world.

Very disappointing after reading great books like Ghost Story, The Throat, and Koko by the same author.

Even avid Straub fans will be not want to waste their time reading this one.

I found this book a tough read, with a confusing opening and cartoonish characters. It only becomes interesting with the introduction of Dick Dart who energizes things around page 160. But this leads to one of the fundamental flaws of this book.

As described in other reviews, the main character, Nora, is raped by Dart in a vividly written scene. Yet even though Nora starts the book still unable to cope with her being raped during military duty decades earlier, she doesn't even spend ONE PAGE dealing with this new assault.

It is with the characters that Straub lets us down here. Why Nora cares about anything but killing Dart is a mystery. And Straub doesn't seem to really know what to do with Dart himself, smart and one step ahead of everyone for most of the book. He provides two small glimpses at an Achille's heel, but doesn't really follow up on it. Nora's husband is possibly the character who gets the worst treatment. The reader never really gets a grip on who this person is.

The story itself concerns the origins of a beloved fantasy trilogy. Think Lord of the Rings. And yet, as seen through the eyes of Nora, Straub doesn't encourage us to have the same good feelings toward this book that many characters have. The followers of the books are given full geek/nerd treatment for the most part, which undermines the reader caring about who ultimately wrote these classics.