cover image THE RESURRECTION CLUB

THE RESURRECTION CLUB

Christopher Wallace, . . Flamingo, $12 (231pp) ISBN 978-0-00-655219-2

Fusing historical legend, mad scientists and shocking performance art, Scottish writer Wallace (The Pied Piper's Poison) has crafted an unsettling tale of menace set during Edinburgh's Fringe Festival. In the early 1800s, expositional scientist Dr. Alexander Brodie is busy developing a heinous device that extracts and preserves the souls of unsuspecting victims (many dug up from graves) for future use in experiments on other patients. Fast-forward to 1999, where this same device turns up being tested in public at showman Peter Dexter's "Resurrectionist Expression" performance, much to the horror of young Charles Kidd, Dexter's public relations guru. Dexter's shadowy display of "studied theatrics" quickly backfires when the crowd angrily overtakes the stage after several audience members lose consciousness and vanish. Running parallel is an eerie, captivating transcribed interview with Daniel Lowes, who attends Dexter's resurrectionist festival performance. He describes dizzying, nightlong heavy drug use, sex, mystery and graveyard antics, which, joined with the other dangling plot pieces, concludes with a surprisingly cohesive explosion. Not all of the narrative sparkles. Wallace scatters dull legal briefs , which contribute little more than a different font style. He has a vivid imagination, and his story intermingles the curious history of Edinburgh's underbelly of grave robbers and medical mischief with some present-day grotesqueries, but the many scattered subplots limit the potential for a truly chilling experience. (Feb.)