Lorelei

Lorelei, a dangerously seductive woman whose appearance and demeanor change to fit each man's desire, is the ultimate woman for her victims, until a Washington socialite and private eye start to follow her bizarrely twisting trail.

The premise of Clements's engrossing third horror novel (after Children of the End) is that, over the centuries, "the elemental power women all share" has flowed through particular "receptacles," from the Teutonic siren Lorelei ("Lurer to the Rocks") through Cleopatra and others, including Eva Peron. The final resting place of this female power is a modern-day Lorelei, who intends to seduce a world full of enraptured men to commit an ultimate sacrifice. When a high-powered Washington, D.C., attorney disappears, his wife, Stacy Westerman, hires PI Clyde McGammon, a former FBI agent, to find him. Reluctantly accepting the case, McGammon, who has a nearly psychic ability to search out objects and people, tracks the country for the mysterious "Madame X," who has been seen with people-perhaps including the missing attorney-who later were murdered and mutilated. Complicating matters is FBI chief Jack Augustine, McGammon's former supervisor, who is surreptitiously trying to ward off Westerman's search for her husband while drilling her about McGammon's progress, and who has a secret agenda of his own regarding "Lorelei." Rapid pacing and well-realized characters mark this particularly chilling, if far-fetched and arguably misogynist, vision of the apocalypse.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

One probably can't expect horror novels to be politically correct, appealing as they do to primal fears and atavistic impulses, and this one certainly isn't. Clements--whose Children of the End relied on readers' fears of biotechnology run amuck--builds his latest thriller around a classic male fantasy-as-nightmare of seduction and sexual obsession. When respected Washington attorney Don Westerman disappears, his wife, Stacy, hires scruffy, alcoholic ex-FBI man Clyde McGammon to find him. Don's mutilated body turns up at the New Orleans morgue, and Stacy convinces the detective to take her along in pursuing the woman who lured Don Westerman from a D.C. card shop to his death. That woman--Lorelei, aka Charlene Tipton--crisscrosses the country, matching the fantasies of every man she encounters and leaving a trail of dead bodies in her wake. Does the real horror in Clements' fast-paced narrative and powerful finale reside in damaged and damaging Lorelei herself--or in the men who are her all-too-willing lovers and victims? Readers will have to judge that one for themselves. Mary Carroll