The Fever Cabinet

The arcane and outdated medical therapy referenced in the title of this occult thriller from Joschko (Whitetooth Falls) serves as the linchpin for its wild and sinuous plot. Its protagonist, Roland Hellmich, is a German immigrant working on the docks in Queenstown, Ontario, in the 1940s when an upsetting series of infernal visions lands him in the Walpole Institution for Mental Hygiene. His trumped-up medical diagnosis leads to a treatment designed to make him sweat out his sickness, which instead awakens a power within him to view a hellish realm of souls tortured by an army of golems. Joschko effectively connects the dots between Roland’s macabre visions and the history of the institution and its sinister founder, Erasmus Walpole, who used his patients as fodder to channel a dark power from a malignant underworld. Though the ending is perhaps a little too pat, the novel succeeds in turning an unusual historical artifact into a source of supernatural terror. Fans of historical horror should check this out. Agent: Alec Shane, Writers House. (Sept.)