Let's face it, every Straub novel is a night journey. From "Ghost Story" to "The Hellfire Club"
every one of his stories is an endless nightmare, filled with anguish and despair, with a menace
just out of the corner of the characters' eyes. Even if I do not consider this book his best,
Mr. Straub knows how to write a fine novel. Complicated almost to an exasperating point, this
new puzzling story is spun around a mysterious summer in 1938 and a psychopath that
leaves a trail of wretched murders in a secluded suburb in the present. Superbly detailed,
the main character, a middle-aged woman caught in the middle of the storm, will have to resolve
the ancient mistery and, at the same time, to deal with the killer that plunges her life in a
twisted world of crime and madness...

 

 With a complex plot, "The Hellfire Club" is relentless. However, I think that "Koko" is still unsurpassable. Besides, the old puzzle reminded me some of the material shown in "Mystery". All in all, and even though he abandoned some of his delicate style since "Koko", he still is a lot more powerful than many of his fellow writers.