Angel of Darkness

This is quite possibly the creepiest book de Lint ever did. He's never been one to shy away from the darker side of human nature, but this book includes outright gore at the start. A sociopath records the screams of his victims as he tortures them in the hopes of... who really knows? When he plays the sounds he's recorded, he unleashes a fury on to an unsuspecting Ottawa.

"Chad Baker was a rock star once, a real '60s hitmaker. Now he serves as benevolent angel of the Ottawa music scene, helping new bands make demos--and sometimes, secretly, helping a young beauty into his second, hidden recording studio. This is where Baker, a serial killer, records his victims' dying screams. When he combines the agonized vocalizations, he creates a hellish new music. Music that summons a different sort of angel--an unearthly and brutally vengeful Angel of Darkness." (From Amazon.com)

The most beautiful of de Lint's Samuel M. Key novels, Angel of Darkness is a decadent horror novel. You find yourself both amazed and appauled by the twists of the plot in the aftermath of Chad Baker's creation.

3.75 stars

A man and a missing teenage girl are found murdered in a hidden room in the man's basement/recording studio. The first people on the scene, including the majority of the police officers, suddenly start hallucinating off and on, and dreaming of this place they are hallucinating about. What is going on, and what happened to the dead man and girl? They won't figure it out until more have died.

This is one of de Lint's adult/horror novels written under the pen name, Samuel M. Key. It was quite good, though gruesome in parts. It was a quick read.

A creepy novel, originally published under the penname Samuel M. Key. A serial killer's experiments with pain and sound (he likes to record his victims' screams) unleashes an avenging spirit on an unsuspecting Ottawa. Definitely different from de Lint's other works, but an effective horror story.

For the most part I do not like the books that De Lint wrote as Samuel Keys. It is not what I have come to expect from his books. These are chronologically some of his earlier books so this is understandable. What I do like is that you get to see how Newford and his other worlds developed.