Title: Hell’s Door
Author: Sandy DeLuca
Genre: Dark Fiction, Horror
Age Group: Adult (18+)
Rating: 4,5 stars
Purchase: Amazon
Review copy provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Detective Lacy Powers and her partner John Demmings are stalking a sadistic killer down the rainy streets and back alleys of Providence. Together they go undercover into a dark and perverse subculture, where pimps, hookers and sexual deviants gather at an underground nightclub called Hell’s Door. There they come face-to-face with their prime suspect, a charismatic and dangerous woman named Ramsay Wolfe.
But Ramsay might be working in concert with a tortured soul who calls himself Gabriel, an elusive drifter who records each detail of the killings, leaving notebook pages spattered with victims’ blood as evidence.
As the headless bodies and blood-soaked crime scenes continue to mount, Lacey and John have few leads and minimal evidence. Will they catch the real killer before it’s too late…or will they meet their demise at Hell’s Door?
Hell’s Door is my kind of book. It’s a twisted mix of Hannibal (think the TV series – I find that even more twisted than the movies) and the worst episode of Criminal Minds or Bones you can think of. That’s a good description of what Hell’s Door is all about.
Detective Lacy Powers and her partner, John Demmings, are chasing a sadistic killer who goes above and beyond anyone’s wildest imaginations. The two of them go undercover in a perverse subculture, and a nightclub called Hells Door, where they meet their prime suspect, Ramsay Wolfe. However, Ramsay may not be the only one doing the killings, and may not even be the real killer. Evidence is scarce, and Lacy and John have to go to their limits and beyond to catch this killer.
Lacy and John are typical detectives – overworked, stressed, barely any time for a life outside the force, haunted by images of the victims, suppressed by guilt for not catching the culprit sooner. John’s marriage is failing, as is typical for detectives, at least so it seems if I have to believe TV and books. Lacy is married to work, obsessed with it, even. There’s underlying sexual tension between the two of them that would be pointless to deny.
But that aside, the characters don’t really matter. At least, neither of them matters as much as the serial killer who we often see glimpses of while he/she (but for the sake of this review, I’ll call the killer a ‘he’) does his sadistic work. Some of the scenes are gruesome, others are chilling, and they’re all sadistic, disturbing, and unsettling. The killer is truly a disturbed individual, but when we see glimpses of his behavior, we slowly uncover glimpses of his psyche as well, of his past, of what made him become this sadist.
This book definitely isn’t for the faint of heart, but I loved it. It was scary, terrifying, and extremely intriguing. For anyone who loves TV series like Hannibal and Criminal Minds, and who doesn’t mind if things put another step further, this book is an absolute must.
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