The Poison Artist
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Orion Publishing Co
Published:10th Mar '16
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Imagine an updated Vertigo: darker, more scary but just as hypnotically seductive. Selected for BBC Radio 2 Book Club with Simon Mayo.
Dr Caleb Maddox is an expert on pain. A leading San Francisco toxicologist, he is mapping the chemical traces that show how much agony a human body can endure. But now a different kind of pain is distracting him from his life's work - the violent break-up of his relationship with his artist girlfriend, Bridget.
Seeking solace in a secluded bar, he meets a beautiful woman who shares an absinthe with him, then disappears into the night. Instantly obsessed, he starts trawling the hidden byways of the city to try and find her. And when he does, she insists on a bizarre set of rules before he can meet her alone.
But even as he tries to lose himself in Emmeline's darkly erotic world, Caleb finds himself inexorably drawn back to the study of pain and death. For weeks the police have been fishing corpses out of the bay, with no clue as to how they died, and Caleb's old friend, medical examiner Henry Newcomb, asks him to decipher the chemical puzzles left in the bloated remains. Soon Caleb discovers evidence of an unspeakable horror connecting all the victims, suggesting that the city is prey to a deranged killer.
And then he discovers that one of the dead men was last seen at the same bar the night he met Emmeline. Suddenly Caleb is plunged into a nightmare where love, madness and murder are clasped in a lethal embrace - and untangling the truth could be the last thing he wants to do.
An electrifying read... I haven't read anything so terrifying since Red Dragon. * STEPHEN KING *
Patient, stylish and incredibly suspenseful. * LEE CHILD *
A magnificent, thoroughly unnerving psychological thriller written in a lush, intoxicating style. I dare you to look away. * JUSTIN CRONIN *
THE POISON ARTIST is an elegant, gripping, hair-raising gothic chiller, a wicked mix of Poe, The Silence of the Lambs, and Vertigo. Settle in for a long night of reading-once this one grabs you, it doesn't let go. * WILLIAM LANDAY, New York Times best-selling author of DEFENDING JACOB *
this is a cinematic and phantasmagoric treat... Obsession and violent death collide in an elegantly written thriller. * THE INDEPENDENT *
THE POISON ARTIST takes an old film noir set-up - man meets femme fatale and starts to fear that she might be even more dangerous than she looks - and brings it into the modern world...a superior cat and mouse story, with an effective twist in the tail. * MAIL ON SUNDAY *
Moore has a great gift for the macabre and the creepy. * THE TIMES *
... recalling not only Poe and West Coast noir, but also literary tales of heroes besotted with belle dames sans merci. * SUNDAY TIMES *
With its crisp, vivid writing - not a word is wasted - and multi-layered plotting, The Poison Artist is as satisfying as it is deeply unsettling. Moore has conjured a disjointed but gorgeous absinthe dream that enfolds the reader like a deadly fog. Highly recommended. * GUARDIAN *
Spiralling down from dream into nightmare, The Poison Artist is thoroughly unnerving and classily executed. * THE OBSERVER *
...this thriller's twists become as dark and intoxicating as the bars where the mystery begins. * SUNDAY MIRROR *
ISBN: 9781409159735
Dimensions: 133mm x 200mm x 24mm
Weight: 254g
288 pages