RAPTURE by Thomas Tessier
Leisure is also reissuing this mesmerizing 1987 horror novel by one of my very favorite authors, the brilliant Thomas Tessier. This winner of the International Horror Guild Award is one of the few writers whose books will actually send me screaming out into the world and through the doors of a bookstore with cash in my crusty fist. Mr. Tessier's languidly sensual and erotic tales of terror gently entwine themselves around the reader's imagination, drawing us ever deeper into the inescapable horrors that confront us, page by page. I can recall each of his novels as if I'd read them just last week even though decades may have passed, and how many books can you say that about? If you are a Tessier fan, I know you'll want to read RAPTURE again and, if you are new to Mr. Tessier's work, this is a great place to become a fan. RAPTURE is one of his non-supernatural novels, but it's every bit as scary as, say, his stunning werewolf novel, NIGHTWALKER (be sure to get that one, too--it's great!). In RAPTURE, a young and very successful software developer named Jeff seems, on the surface, in total control of himself and his world. But there's something missing in Jeff, a bleak and yawning inner void. That void becomes filled when he fixates upon an old high school friend, Georgianne. She's happily married with a teenaged daughter, a full life and absolutely no interest in Jeff past a casual, old-high-school-chum friendship, but that doesn't matter to Jeff. He wants her. He needs her. And he aims to have her. Even if that means he has to kill everyone else in Georgianne's life until there's no one left for her...but him. This is an excruciatingly suspenseful novel that only Thomas Tessier could have written. It is a bleak, believable and masterful tale of psychosexual obsession that pulls the wire of suspense so tight that you can almost hear it shriek (but that'll be you).
