Bad Dreams

When Anne Nielson, an American journalist, travels to London to investigate the death of her sister Judi, she finds herself sucked into her nightmarish world of corruption and perversion, populated by dealers, pimps, sadomasochists and a vampire race that feasts on their victims' dreams. At the centre of this sickly web lurks the Games Master. Something more and something less than a man, the closer Anne draws to his domain the more she endangers herself and everyone she knows, and soon she will learn that the Games Master is not just a name, and when he plays, he plays for keeps. An updated edition of the critically acclaimed novel, featuring the short story 'Orgy of the Blood Parasites' and a brand-new afterword by Kim Newman.

Amazon.com Review

"A vindaloo of a gross-out ... Dream piles on dream, in an acid-house freak show ... a wicked romp through the decadent pop culture and sleazy habits of '80s London" -- so raved the British reviewers about this antic novel from award-winning Kim Newman. A tale of a fascinating family, with one of the most successfully surreal (you don't get confused or lose interest) climaxes I have encountered. This one is rich with dry humor, hooky like a pop song and yet horrific as well.

From Publishers Weekly

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. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

When her sister is found dead in London's Soho district, journalist Anne Nielson begins a private investigation that leads her to a sordid underworld of prostitution, drugs, and kinky sex before plunging her into a terrifying nightmare world inhabited by an immortal killer who feeds off the lives and dreams of his victims. Graphic descriptions of sex and violence place this novel by the author of The Night Mayor (Carroll & Graf Pubs., 1990) firmly inside the boundaries of splatter fiction. Newman's heady surrealism and knife-edge prose, however, give the story a sophistication that is unusual to the genre. Recommended, with qualifications, for libraries with strong horror collections.Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Riotously inventive horror fantasy, the second novel by the author of the wildly original The Night Mayor (1990). Newman trumps up some superbly clever devices here, and at last creates a heroine we can care about, or almost care about, before she fades into the Dreamscape. The American sisters Anne and Judi Neilson and their half-brother Cameron Neilson III (a famous minimalist composer), children of Nobel Prize playwright Cameron Neilson, live in London, where Anne writes and Judi, a junkie S&M prostitute, hires herself out to be beaten. In the first chapter, Judi is eaten alive while turning a trick, or has the blood and most of her flesh sucked out of her, as well as her mind and memory, by Mr. Skinner, a vampire known as the King of the Cats, or leader of the Kind, who was once a master of the now-vanished Immortal Empire. Very few vampires still walk about, and Mr. Skinner himself has only one rival, Ariadne, a sexy vamp much older, smarter, and more powerful than he. Anne tries to trace Judi's path through the whoreworld to find out just how her sister's corpse had aged into a very old woman's. Judi's prostitute friend Nina leads Anne to the mansion of Amelia Dorf (``It was the kind of quietly well-off residential street where mass murderers live...''--a kind of Karloffian understatement) where an S&M party is in full swing, ruled by the Game Master, Mr. Skinner. We'll say no more, only that Mr. Skinner's vampirism is a boldly invented passionate state that can barely be contained by human form; that the Old Dark House becomes a dream house in which rooms lead into mindrooms into dreamrooms; that at one point Mr. Skinner falls into a feeding frenzy and eats up the whole party, then licks his lizard-long tongue at Anne and begins chasing her through the walls.... When you meet Mr. Skinner, remember that he bears the memories of all his victims, and that when you join him you join all of them as well. Comforting. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Kim Newman has written numerous acclaimed and successful novels and short stories. He writes slightly more disreputable work as Jack Yeovil, has written for a wide variety of magazines and journals, is a contributing editor for both SIGHT AND SOUND and EMPIRE, and has appeared on (and scripted) a great many radio and television programs, ranging from high-end arts reviews to tacky quiz shows and horror host DR TERROR.

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