This Thing Of Darkness: A Novel

Hollywood, 1956. Journalist Evangeline Kilhooley is assigned to write a “star profile” of fading horror movie actor, Bela Lugosi. During a seemingly mundane series of interviews, Lugosi draws Evi into the curious world of his European childhood, lived in the shadow of Transylvania. As he does so, Evi discovers the link between Old World shadows and the twilight realm of Hollywood’s dark underbelly. In so doing, she chances upon a secret: one that will shatter her already fragile grip on reality by revealing something darker still in the Californian sunshine…

Along the way, Evi meets an equally mysterious English expatriate, Hugo Radelle, who claims to want to help her with her research. But as their relationship deepens, the recently-widowed Evi begins to suspect that he knows more about her than he is letting on. Is Hugo all that he seems and what is his real connection to the unfolding mystery swirling around Evi? 

As Evi delves into the legends surrounding the actor, she makes a discovery that causes her to doubt her own sanity. Was this the real truth of the actor known as Bela Lugosi? Has she been the victim of an elaborate hoax? Has her troubled past come back to torment her? Is she losing her mind? Or – more frightening still – has she really stumbled into a nightmare from which she will have to risk everything to escape?

This story take readers to 1950s Hollywood, but it is not the city of bright lights, rather one where there is a Thing of Darkness at the city’s core – a brooding presence that guides and manipulates cinema’s sinister hold upon audiences across the globe.

Paperback. 260 pages.