[.ca] The Hellfire Club (ISBN 0345478789)

From Amazon.com:
Straub's recent series of books, while excellent, have been dense and rather cerebral as horror books go. This one, while employing many of the same devices about family secrets and mysteries half-buried in the past, has an action storyline with a viscerally satisfying villain and a strong female protagonist. The premise is that the history of a famous fantasy novel not only concerns some eccentric authors, but collides with a wily killer on a rampage. The settings--in seedy motel rooms, New England houses, a bizarre private club and an over-the-hill literary retreat--are especially fun.

Zero Stars:
This is truely one of the worst books I've read. It's very slow, banal, and has no point. Very disappointing after reading great books like Ghost Story, The Throat, and Koko by the same author. Even avid Straub fans will be not want to waste their time reading this one.

Once Upon a Time, There Was a Story With All the Answers...:
...and someone was willing to kill, to keep them unknown. When women start dropping dead in Nora Chancel's wealthy neighborhood, she eventually is suspected of having something to do with it. She's barely under arrest, however, when someone with a worse rap-sheet than she could ever hope to achieve (even if she was guilty, which she isn't) abducts her at gunpoint to make his own escape from the police station. Her abductor, a charming, handsome cad named Dick Dart, is a truly despicable fellow for whom no depravity is too low, and Nora has a nasty time ahead of her... This is probably Straub's most unpleasant book, though it is quite good. As usual, it wears out its welcome by going on far too long, and it suffers slightly from dramatic contrivance which weakens its more than usually shaky credibility. The worst thing about it is the skin-crawlingly voyeuristic time Nora is forced to spend with Dart - put simply, Straub writes a very realistic rape scene. The action is steady and interesting, and the plot is the least convoluted Straub has written. The whole thing is pretty straightforward. A typically strong, satisfying Straub read, but be forewarned that it is gruesomely descriptive.

I Love Nora:
Peter Straub, like Stephen King, to my mind, is at his best when he is not doing straight horror. Case in point: "The Hellfire Club", which has at its center, one Nora Chancel. I love Nora because she is a survivor, a pure heroine. In a story of good and evil, she is kidnapped, abused, sexually tormented, and yet, strangely coddled, in a perverse sort of way, by one of the darkest sick-os ever to drop out of Straub's pen. This is the story of a story ("Night Journey") - who wrote it, who didn't, who stole it, who killed for it. Tie in one Dick Dart, a serial killer who was born in the darkest recesses of Straub's imagination and we are, as Bette Davis would say, "in for a bumpy ride". For Straub has created a villan who is the most sadistic, vile, malevolent creature this side of Hannibal Lector. Every time he said "Nora-pie", chills ran up my spine and I heard, in my mind, "Hello Clarice". Don't get me wrong, this is a horror story, but it is about the horror within our own souls. It's a page-turner and you have to love Nora. I did. To paraphrase a song done by the late Artie Shaw, I had it bad and that ain't good. But "The Hellfire Club", that's good. Plenty good indeed.

Hellacious Mess:
First off, I should say that "Shadowlands" and "Ghost Story" were two of my first forays into horror and that Peter Straub has always been near the top of my list of favorite horror writers. But... I found this book a tough read, with a confusing opening and cartoonish characters. It only becomes interesting with the introduction of Dick Dart who energizes things around page 160. But this leads to one of the fundamental flaws of this book. As described in other reviews, the main character, Nora, is raped by Dart in a vividly written scene. Yet even though Nora starts the book still unable to cope with her being raped during military duty decades earlier, she doesn't even spend ONE PAGE dealing with this new assault. It is with the characters that Straub lets us down here. Why Nora cares about anything but killing Dart is a mystery. And Straub doesn't seem to really know what to do with Dart himself, smart and one step ahead of everyone for most of the book. He provides two small glimpses at an Achille's heel, but doesn't really follow up on it. Nora's husband is possibly the character who gets the worst treatment. The reader never really gets a grip on who this person is. The story itself concerns the origins of a beloved fantasy trilogy. Think Lord of the Rings. And yet, as seen through the eyes of Nora, Straub doesn't encourage us to have the same good feelings toward this book that many characters have. The followers of the books are given full geek/nerd treatment for the most part, which undermines the reader caring about who ultimately wrote these classics.

Excellent. Not Straub's best novel, but my favourite.:
Peter Straub is far and away my favourite author, and this - while not his best novel - is my favourite one. I've just recently finished reading it for a third time, and I absolutely adore it. There's so much to savour. I have so many favourite parts - the history behind "Night Journey" (which is obviously reminiscent of "The Lord of the Rings") like Paddi Mann and The Hellfire Club of the title, Dick Dart's wonderfully twisted campness, Daisy freaking out at Nora's opinions of her sprawling novel (the Poison family are very funny!), the brief but intense flashbacks to Nora's Vietnam experiences, the story of Katherine Mannheim, Davey being reduced to a child by his father, the excellent finale in Shorelands, and ... oh, so much more! One of my friends thought Dick Dart was too unbelievable to be scary, but I disagree. His over-the-topness certainly makes him scarier and a change from the usual brooding, boring sociopaths in most other novels of the same themes. I highly recommend this excellent novel. If you've read Straub before, you'll love it. If you've never read him before, it makes the perfect introduction to his world.