The Forbidden
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
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?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Demonic possession drives the plot of this polished supernatural thriller from Tallis (The Sleep Room). In 1872, Dr. Paul Cl ment accepts a position with a missionary hospital on the island of Saint-S bastian in the French Antilles, only to have a terrifying encounter with an apparent zombie. A medical colleague provides a rational explanation for the apparition, but Cl ment is still unsettled by the warning from the island bokor (sorcerer) not to reveal to anyone what he witnessed. On returning to Paris, Cl ment begins working with electricity to revive the dead. When he learns that some of the patients who survived the procedure report visions of the afterlife, Cl ment subjects himself to the same treatment. His experience is anything but inspirational, and on resuming consciousness, he gradually realizes that he did not return to the waking world alone. Tallis knows how to elicit fear in his readers, with first-rate prose and atmospherics.
