Séance Infernale

June 26, 2017
At the start of Skariton’s inventive, gruesome first novel set in 2002, enigmatic collector Andrew Valdano hires movie memorabilia dealer Alex Whitman to find a copy of Séance Infernale—the legendary first-ever film, created by mysterious Victorian inventor Augustin Sekuler. A scattering of clues steer Whitman from L.A. to Europe and finally to Edinburgh—the city where his beloved daughter Ellie vanished a decade earlier, a tragedy that shattered his marriage and haunts him to this day. Racing to find the lost film, the world-weary Whitman traces a 19th-century mystery’s entanglement with a present-day series of inhumane crimes committed by an extravagantly psychotic serial killer. Laced with cinematic allusions (especially fun for classic film buffs), the obstacle course of a plot barrels past spooky historical flashbacks and pages of quirky typographic design, culminating in a Da Vinci Code–esque scavenger hunt. Breathless readers will scramble to keep up. Agent: Harvey Klinger, Harvey Klinger Literary Agency.

July 1, 2017
A post-millennial gothic ripsnorter blends old-fashioned suspense and up-to-the-minute sadism in the dark streets and even darker underbelly of Edinburgh.Suppose the movies weren't the invention of Thomas Edison or the Lumiere brothers but of a long-missing-and-presumed-dead figure named Augustin Sekuler? In this intricately designed thriller, the name of Sekuler ("heavily based," according to the author, on the real-life French inventor Louis Aime Augustin Le Prince) re-emerges in the autumn of 2002 when a shady art collector named Andrew Valdano asks Alex Whitman, a mordant movie memorabilia expert, to check out the possibility that Sekuler's only feature, Seance Infernale, may exist in fragments all over Europe. The film was supposedly made before both Sekuler and his groundbreaking "moving picture machine" vanished without a trace on a Paris-bound train in 1890. For Whitman, this quest means encountering old ghosts, including that of his long-missing-and-presumed-dead daughter, Ellie, who vanished in the midst of Edinburgh's plague of viciously murdered young girls; a plague that, apparently, still goes on. When Whitman's pursuit of Sekuler's film takes him to that macabre-but-magical Scottish city, menace seems to be stalking him as well as Elena, Sekuler's dark-haired and crimson-nailed great-granddaughter, who may or may not be a trustworthy source. The search for Seance is interspersed with the investigation into the kidnap-murders by a team led by the intense DS Georgina McBride, whose own inquiry soon intersects with Whitman's. And to further complicate matters, someone else is looking for Sekuler's film and has recruited some nasty aides to help thwart both Whitman and McBride. The melodrama at times carries hoary whiffs of the old penny dreadfuls. One of the characters is actually caught saying, "He's not going to get away with this!" To which you want to respond, "Well, now that you've actually said so, of course he isn't!" Yes, it's almost like watching a movie you can't help talking back to. This debut novel resembles a series of trap doors springing open and shut and open again without a whole lot of rhythm or logic. Nevertheless, its basic premise fascinates, and its fog-shrouded intrigue keeps your head in the game.

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August 1, 2017

Alex Whitman, a Los Angeles-based private eye specializing in locating movie memorabilia and missing films, undertakes to find a lost film by one Augustin Sekuler, who, Whitman's client alleges, is the real inventor of the motion picture and who, on the way to Paris to unveil his invention, boarded a train at Dijon and promptly disappeared, along with his projector and his film, Seance Infernale. Initially, there are few clues with which to work, except for a letter of dubious origin that merely mentions the film, posted in 1889 to an address in Edinburgh. But others are also looking for the film, some of whom wish to prevent anyone else from finding it, and who begin keeping an eye on Alex. Ten years earlier, his daughter disappeared in circumstances that become important to the hunt, which skips quickly from Los Angeles to Switzerland, and finally to Scottish graveyards and the underground reaches of Edinburgh, giving the novel a dark and creepy feel. VERDICT This first novel, despite a few plot dead ends, is a fast and entertaining read for those who enjoy dark thrillers, and for movie buffs as well.--Vicki Gregory, Sch. of Information, Univ. of South Florida, Tampa

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