Nightmare

Women at a clinic for multiple personality disorders are supposedly killing themselves one-by-one, but an investigator suspects the chief doctor's wife, whom he catches in the midst of conducting a bizarre blood ritual.

Epperson's second novel, Dumford Blood , was dubbed "Kansas Gothic"--a term that also nicely describes her newest entry in the horror genre. Dr. Bryant Raleigh comes to a clinic in Flint Hills, Kans., to study and treat women with multiple personality disorders. His brother David, a journalist with a taste for the macabre, accompanies him to write a book about the project--and perhaps to begin to surmount the effects of his wife's suicide. The clinic, run by Dr. Russell Guerin, turns out to be a strange place indeed: Guerin's mysterious wife, confined to her room for years and grown disgustingly obese, rules over it as an unseen, frightening monarch; their hemophiliac son is a morose and brooding presence. Moreover, the patients are killing themselves one by one for no discernible reason. Epperson strains credulity by providing every character (except for the blue parrot who needs a daily dose of Oprah! ) with a secret trauma in his or her past and by introducing a weird, wildly gratuitous blood ritual as a plot element. As horror novels go, however, this is an intriguing and mesmerizing addition to the genre.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The multiple-personality patients are the least dangerous inmates of Dr. Russell Guerin's ranch clinic--in this latest Kansas gothic from Epperson (Borderland, p. 6; etc.). When Dr. Guerin invites Bryan Raleigh, a psychiatrist who's developed a group-therapy program for multiples, to his isolated Flint Hills clinic to demonstrate the program, Guerin's grotesquely obese wife Augusta, the real guiding spirit at the clinic, persuades him to include Raleigh's journalist brother David in the invitation, even though the brothers have been estranged ever since the suicide of David's society wife. Also along for the ride are occupational therapist Kate Berquist; social-worker Melvina Kierkes; and David's Oprah-addicted parrot Frank. Even before their plane lands, the visitors have already discovered the first of a mounting pile of corpses--a multiple who turned out to be all-too-susceptible to posthypnotic suggestion. As predictable romances blossom amid the gathering clouds--David duels the Guerins' antique-gun-collecting son Jay for blushing Kate, and self-avowed lesbian Mel finds herself wooed by a cowhand barely out of his teens--the secret behind the bumps in the night (mysterious self-mutilations; Mel's night in a charnel cave whose human contents have disappeared the next day; the real reason Augusta Guerin wanted David invited) becomes more and more firmly rooted in Epperson's trademark obsession with monstrously evil villains obsessed in turn with blood. For most of its length, this installment keeps its hysteria under tighter control than usual; it's only in the sanguinary denouement that its pulpish energy springs to the surface. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This melodramatic thriller with an uninspired title is the fourth book by award-winning Kansas gothic writer Epperson ( Borderland , Donald I. Fine, 1992; Dumford Blood , St. Martin's, 1991; Brother Lowdown , St. Martin's, 1990). A journalist on a feature-writing assignment visits a rural treatment center for female psychiatric patients suffering from multiple personality disorder. While investigating a series of suicides at the center, he discovers a gory blood ritual carried out by family members of the chief psychiatrist. Although several female characters are strongly drawn and suspense skillfully maintained, the plot is too ludicrous to carry most intelligent readers. And the bloodletting and mutilation in this overly sensational novel brought this reviewer close to gagging. Not recommended.
- Joyce Smothers, Monmouth Cty. Lib., Manalapan, N.J.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.