LORI

by Robert Bloch ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 13, 1989

The man who wrote--and has never equalled--Psycho now writes a horror novel without a single scare, a confused and misshapen tale of possession from the past and murder in the present. Sweet Lori Holmes' parents die in a weird house fire just as Lori drives home to meet them upon graduating from college. Lori's odd homecoming is made odder still when she's contacted by Nadia Hope, a psychic who insists that Lori search the burned-down house--and who's so in tune that when Lori thinks to herself, ""I don't even know what we're looking for,"" Nadia says, ""Neither do I."" But they find it anyway, a box (""Death. The box holds death,"" thinks Nadia) that gets so cold that it turns Nadia's car into a frigidaire and then so hot that Nadia drops it in pain and runs off--to drown. In addition to death, the box holds a 1968 college yearbook with a picture of a woman, Priscilla Fairmount, who could be Nadia's twin. As nightmares--of an animated corpse, of being watched over by a Dr. Chase--begin to plague her, Lori, with her fianc‚'s help, searches for Priscilla. She also begins to consult seductive shrink Anthony Leverett, and--after her folks' lawyer, whom we (but not she) have just learned embezzled from and killed her parents, is found hanged--to be consulted by overweight homicide dick Orion Metz. So who killed the lawyer? Wouldn't you know, it was the Dr. Chase of Lori's dreams, now presently disguised as !!--and still the same cad that he was in 1968 when he supervised Lori's fetal growth within the comatose body of Priscilla Fairmount, who's now applying for immigration from the Other Side. The final chapter, an eight-page-long plot explanation, will help depressurize any reader who, gasping for meaning, makes it that far. Others will wonder to where Bloch's undeniably modest but generally reliable talents (Midnight Pleasures, 1987; The Night of the Ripper, 1984, etc.) have fled.

Pub Date: Aug. 13, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Tor--dist. by St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1989

Categories: FICTION