Soho Black

Matchless detectives Bryant and May return from Christopher Fowler's Darkest Day, tracking bizarre acts of violence through Soho at the height of a heatwave. Meanwhile two hired killers, one black, one white, swap smart post-Pulp Fiction dialogue and film executive Richard Tyler's life turns into a nightmare after a very strange visit to the washroom. Midas has the touch, Glory brings glamour and death in her wake and Judy is enchanted. Barbara simply wants to save Richard who is determined to make a success of his life even if he has died trying. Discovering how these characters tie together is just one of the pleasures of a book that, from the cover inward, is strikingly offbeat.

So what is Soho Black? An ingenious post-modern horror novel? A satirical black comedy for the media age? Or the book of the imaginary film of the same title? The answer is all three, wrapped in an ultra-hip plot, as mind-bending as Christopher Priest's The Affirmation or Christopher Evans' In Limbo. Yet, lent particular credibility by the fact that Christopher Fowler is a director of a real film promotion company in Soho, the surreal story is told with a sharply authentic eye for character and location. With more movie references than an issue of Variety, and as much graphic and disturbing imagery as Clive Barker's The Damnation Game, this nightmarish inside view of the UK film industry's movers and shakers is quite simply begging to be made into a cult classic movie. --Gary S. Dalkin


Genre: Horror