By CHRISTOPHER FOWLER (ROC; 1992/93)
This is not my favorite novel by the late Christopher Fowler (1953-2023). RED BRIDE was one of Fowler’s early efforts, hailing from a time when he specialized in scary stuff (in his later years he branched off into whodunits and kiddie fantasy), and his dedication to the genre, at least, is evident.
It’s set in the world of movie publicity, a profession in which Fowler labored during the 1970s and 80s (it was he who coined ALIEN’s iconic tagline “In space, no one can hear you scream”). He was also a frustrated screenwriter, which may explain why this novel is so relentlessly movie-centric—think FATAL ATTRACTION meets JAGGED EDGE meets ANGEL HEART, three influences Fowler never quite merges into a satisfying whole.
John Chapel is a seemingly contented family man working as a publicist on a low budget thriller called PLAYING WITH FIRE. The details of John’s profession are, as expected, quite convincing, as in an observation about John having “racked his brains on the initial press releases for PLAYING WITH FIRE, trying to imagine what would persuade a disparate group of magazine columnists to run articles on the film, when the only unique thing about the production so far was its uneventfulness.”
PLAYING WITH FIRE is quite an appropriate title, it turns out, as that’s precisely what John does when he becomes besotted with the sultry ex-model Ixora, one of the film’s cast members. Further foreshadowing is provided by a TV program John’s wife Helen watches the night her hubby meets Ixora: a documentary on black widows. In short order John initiates an affair with Ixora, driven by an obsessive passion that overrides his common sense; it’s not like there aren’t plenty of red flags, such as an aggressive ex-boyfriend who warns him away from Ixora and his own misgivings (“the passion he had felt for Ixora that night had been swamped by a far more overwhelming feeling of fear”).
Enter Mike Sullivan, a detective investigating a series of murders in the area. His investigation leads him to the set of PLAYING WITH FIRE, and, inevitably, to John and Ixora. John can’t bring himself to believe that his new flame is in any way involved in the killings, but she is the most likely suspect, to Sullivan and the reader.
The explanation for the killings is far more complex than what we’re initially led to believe. Involved is at least one other guilty party, a red herring and a satanic pact, giving this seemingly straightforward account a supernatural twist.
That twist, I’m afraid, does nothing to raise the book’s interest level. It’s smoothly written (aside from a few clumsy lines like “She slapped at him”…?), but fails to satisfy as a gore fest or an erotic thriller, and is furthermore vastly overlong (341 bloated pages!). Christopher Fowler was and remains a writer worth reading, but RED BRIDE probably isn’t the best place to start.