Finishing touches - Hardcover

Tessier, Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0689117469 ISBN 13: 9780689117466

Publisher: Atheneum, 1986

Synopsis

Tom Sutherland, a young intern, goes to London where he becomes involved with the mysterious Dr. Nordhagen, his seductive assistant, Lina Ravachol, and their terrifying experiments

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Making good on his reputation for sensual tales of terror (Nightwalker, Phantom, Tessier's new novel is seductive and compulsively readable. The plot is an ingenious metaphor for the '80s zeitgeist, with the power and self-indulgence of business and economics translated into terms of sex and physical control over others' lives. Young American doctor Tom Sutherland is on an extended vacation in London when he meets wealthy, enigmatic plastic surgeon Roger Nordhagen and his assistant, Eurasian beauty Lina Ravachol. While Nordhagen grooms Tom as his successor, Lina shows him a world of erotic, amoral pleasure he had never imagined. Tessier is particularly good at depicting the transition from repugnance to acceptance to participation in acts of casual terror. If the novel turns diffuse and mystic at the end, it has by then drawn the reader into a remarkable complicity with its characters.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Tom Sutherland, a young doctor from the Midwest, decides to spend time in London before starting this practice. There he meets Dr. Roger Nordhagen, a cosmetic surgeon, and his assistant, Lina, who seduce Sutherland into their fantasy world of eroticism, cruelty, and power. The horror in Tessier's latest novel is not supernaturally inspired, but rather a result of the atrocities the human brain can devise. Tessier, author of The Nightwalker and other novels, maintains a fine suspense and a believable aura of spiritual apathy as he charts Sutherland's descent into and acceptance of Nordhagen's hellish world, and he provides a powerful and chilling ending to this parable for the 1980s. A decidely adult horror novel that deserves a wide audience, Finishing Touches is enthusiastically recommended for modern fiction collections. Eric W. Johnson, Univ. of Bridgeport Lib., Conn.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Atheneum
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0689117469
• ISBN 13: 9780689117466
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 243