Murder For Revenge

Peter Straub

The suave trickster instincts of Peter Straub have never before been displayed quite as they are found here. From the quaintly comic yet undeniably sinister entrance of the titular pair to the scenes of extreme unpleasantness that follow, the author (renowned for such extravaganzas of the macabre as ‘Ghost Story’ and ‘Floating Dragon’,) takes his elegant time scaring us out of our wits.

The good news is that restraint does figure as a definite factor in the ghastly delicacy of Mr. Straub’s overall effect; the bad news, as I perhaps don’t need to tell you, is that restraint is a word with more than one meaning.

Still, it is clear that a great deal of fun went into the composition of ‘Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff.’ And that’s news as good as it gets. Whether he’s delving into the past in novels such as ‘Koko’, ‘Mystery’, or, most recently. ‘The Hellfire Club’, or scraping the edge of our psyches in the present, Peter Straub is a writer we love to see enjoy himself. Even-and especially-at the expense of our own peace of mind.