A novel of demonic possession is unusual in these days of contemptuous dismissal of anything pertaining to the supernatural and it is brave of Frank Tallis to attempt it. In less skilled hands it could have been a crude shocker but Tallis writes with subtlety and intelligence and uses extensive research to produce a vastly entertaining story.
In 1872 Paul Clement, a young doctor, travels to Saint Sebastien an island in the French Antilles to practice at a mission station. He is befriended by Doctor Tavernier who has worked on the island for many years and become an expert on tropical diseases. Tavernier has also immersed himself in the culture of the island and one day informs Clement that a relative of his manservant has been turned into a zombie. On Clement rejecting such a suggestion he takes him to a ceremony where the unfortunate man is killed by the local Bokor or witch doctor. Returning from this gruesome ceremony Clement is accosted by the Bokor who says that he will send his soul to Hell if he reveals what he has seen.
Clement returns to Paris where he is fortunate to be taken on as an assistant to Guillaume Duchene a leading experimental physiologist and a pioneer of using electric shocks to re-start the heart. Duchene notes that several of the patients who have been brought back from a state of clinical death report that their soul left their body and journeyed to a place of light wherein they felt a great feeling of peace.
A former pupil of Duchene, Jean-Martin Charcot, is head of the Salpetriere hospital and working on "hysteria" as mental illness was then described and is also interested in "out of body" experiences. Clement takes a post under him and one night persuades a colleague to take him to the point of death with anasthetic and then revive him using electric shocks. Whilst clinicaly dead Clements soul does leave his body but not to a place of peace and light but to the very depths of Hell. Returning to conciousness Clement reveals nothing of his experience but from then on he is haunted by what he has seen. Shortly afterwards he is introduced to, and falls in love with, Therese the wife of a senior colleague and begins a torrid affair.
This affair which began as an expression of love degenerates into violence and depravity as Clement is taken further under the influence of the demon who has followed him from Hell. Clement has introduced Therese to morphine and this added to the violence Clement inflicts on her undermines her health although her husband appears not to notice. During this time Clement has made the acquaintance of Bazille, a pious man who is bellringer at the Church of Saint Sulpice. Bazille makes it clear that he is concerned for the health, mental and physical, of Clement and eventualy persuades him to meet Father Ranier an exorcist. Clement takes part in an exorcism during which Father Ranier is killed but the demon is captured and imprisoned in a sphere of crystal whose safekeeping is to be Clement's lifelong responsibility. He decides to leave Paris and takes a position as household doctor to a wealthy familly in the south but the demon has not given up and it will take another exorcism before Clement is free.
This is a stunning novel full of pace and invention and despite it's fantastical theme this reader never felt that his leg was being pulled beyond endurance. Frank Tallis is an excellent writer as his "Vienna" novels have shown and maintains his standard in this change of genre.
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