The Forbidden

1873: When the ambitious Doctor Paul Clément takes a job on the island of Saint Sébastien, he has dreams of finding cures for tropical diseases. After witnessing the ritualistic murder of a young boy who was allegedly already dead, he is warned never to speak of what he has seen. Back in fin de siècle Paris, Paul’s attentions turn to studying the nervous system and resuscitation through electricity. Paul is told of patients who have apparently died, been brought back to life, and, while they lay between life and death, witnessed what they believed to be Heaven itself. Using forbidden knowledge he swore never to use, he at- tempts to experience what everyone else has seen, but something goes horribly wrong. When Paul returns to the land of the living, can it be possible that he brings something else back with him, an unspeakable evil so powerful it can never be banished?

From Booklist

We’re in Paris, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Dr. Paul Clément’s interests in the techniques of human resuscitation—interests that started growing when, working at a mission hospital in the French Antilles, he witnessed the shocking death of a young man who appeared to have been turned into a zombie—have taken over his life, leading him to take the biggest risk a man can take: to bring himself back from death so he can see what those who have been resuscitated have experienced. What he discovers, though, is a lot more terrifying than even he had expected. Written in a lightly ornamented style to match its Victorian setting, this is a full-on horror story that grabs us pretty much from the first paragraph and doesn’t let go until it’s good and ready to. For fans of gothic horror, a tasty treat. --David Pitt

About the Author

F. R. Tallis is a writer and clinical psychologist. Between 1999 and 2012, he has received or been nominated for numerous awards, including the New London Writers' Award, the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, the Elle Prix de Letrice, the Crime Writers' Association Historical Dagger Award, and two Edgar Allen Poe Awards. His critically acclaimed Liebermann series (written as Frank Tallis) has been translated into fourteen languages and optioned for TV adaptation.

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