Coldheart Canyon

Inhoud

After a run of failed movies, superstar Todd Pickett elects to have extensive surgery in a desperate bid to regain his lost beauty. The procedure goes horribly, grotesquely wrong. Hiding from his fans, and from the press he knows will tear his reputation apart if they find out about his operation, Todd takes refuge in a place that no map of Hollywood has ever described: COLDHEART CANYON.
Here, nursing his wounds and his desperation, he discovers what the history of the Dream Factory has long concealed: a world somewhere between life and death, reality and illusion, where the great legends of a forgotten Hollywood are waiting to educate him in the bitter business of life after fame.

Bespreking

Certainly not Clive's best, but it could have been much worse

Todd Pickett, one of the hottest movie stars of the last decade, faces the downfall of his career when extensive plastic surgery goes terribly wrong. On the run from his fans and the ever bloodthirsty press he hides in the deep woods of Hollywood. The luxurious mansion of the long deceased silent movie actress Katya Lupi seems at first the ideal hiding place. But when he discovers that the house is still inhabited by the ghost of Katya Lupi the place changes into a death trap. The house itself turns out to be a place of evil, where Lilith, the wife of the Devil, is still out for revenge on the murderers of her son. Todd's biggest fan, Tammy Lauper, worried by the sudden disappearance of her idol starts a search for Todd and she creates, without knowing it, what is likely to be the only chance for redemption Todd has left.

Let's start with the weakest point of Coldheart Canyon: the plot. Not that it is really bad, but it just does not honour the previous works of Clive. The building-up of the storyline is comparable to what Dean Koontz does in almost all his novels: a normal situation turns bad, then even a bit worse and in the end everything is back to normal after some apocalyptical struggle. Clive Barker can do a lot better. Look at Imajica, to name just one example of a story with a much more original plot.

But luckily the king of 'strange' horror can turn a plot that is not that strong into something that is far beyond average, just by applying his personal style. That is exactly what happened with Coldheart Canyon. The complete atmosphere of the book breathes the competence of an extremely talented writer: even the most violent scenes or those weird erotic extravaganzas have something poetic about them. When skin is slowly pealed off the skull of a presumably living person, Clive makes it sound like a sensual act of love.

I am really glad that Clive still dares to write some controversially gruesome stuff. For me The Books of Blood still are his best works, because it is clear that while writing those Clive did not suffer from any limitations at all. His later works are a lot cleaner and tend to miss the real spirit of the earlier works. Nevertheless, Coldheart shows that he still masters the 'craft'.