3 stars

Kyle Marffin

Gothique

Design Image Group

2000

ISBN 1-891946-06-4

The music, the poetry, the films, and the novels, haunted by pale, scarlet-mouthed, black-caped, nightstalker demon lovers -- if only it could all be real. For the Goth community of Chicago, this dream comes true with the opening of Gothique, a new club in a renovated classic movie theater. A vampire coven establishes the club as a trap for willing victims, who quickly find their fantasies transformed to nightmares. A magazine editor searching for his kidnapped daughter, a priest, a World War II veteran with his faithful dog, and a pair of unwillingly turned vampires determined to hang onto their humanity fight to save their city from the undead predators. Graphic violence abounds, but never without a legitimate narrative purpose.

Marffin combines stylish writing (though marred by a few recurring usage errors, such as inappropriate apostrophes with plurals) with satire and suspense. His obvious familiarity with Chicago heightens the vividness and credibility of the action. Amid biting wit aimed at the wannabe vampire subculture, genuinely sympathetic characters face terror and loss. Death claims some, while those who survive gain hard-won self-knowledge. The author has a talent for getting inside the minds and emotions of both twenty-somethings and members of older generations. Though at times I was put off by the other less sympathetic characters -- among the human, not vampire, cast -- who infest the story, in general it held my attention to the end. For me, the climax was flawed by an unforeshadowed betrayal that impressed me as a gratuitous, unbelievable gimmick rather than a valid character development. Otherwise, I found the denouement satisfying.

Margaret L. Carter