cover image Bad Dreams

Bad Dreams

Kim Newman. Carroll & Graf Publishers, $18.95 (280pp) ISBN 978-0-88184-781-9

This sporadically gruesome and nearly always frightening horror tale is not for the squeamish or faint of heart, but readers enthralled by things that go bump in the night are in for a treat. When journalist Anne Nielson goes to London to investigate the death of her sister Judi, a drug-addicted prostitute, she finds herself enmeshed with the denizens of Judi's nightmarish world: dealers, pimps, sadomasochists and, most horribly, the Monster, a member of the Kind--a ghoulish race kept eternally alive by eating humans and ingesting their dreams. Newman ( The Night Mayor ) pits his spirited heroine against this fiend in several brutal, shocking and tense encounters. One might expect that the immortal Monster would have the upper hand, but Anne, certain that he killed her sister, proves a formidable foe. Will her dreams be won by the Kind? Fans of the genre should enjoy finding out. (Nov.)