Book Review: "Syndrome E" By Franck Thilliez

There's a lot I can say about Franck Thilliez's epically twisted thriller Syndrome E. Was it one of the best contemporary suspense novels I've read in the past five years? Oh yes! Was it wickedly original, the plot masterfully crafted down to the last stunning little detail? You bet. But there's one very important thing I can and must say about this novel. It is not an easy read. It plumbs the depths of humankind's cruelty to one another, and baby, them depths are pitch black.

This is what unfolds in Syndrome E. It's a mind-bending tale of brainwashing, mutilation, globe-trotting insanity, all linking back to a frightening little film from the 1950's showing odd and nauseating symbolism. It's a novel first and foremost about the power authority figures have over the most vulnerable members of society...and with that, come heinous abuses of that power, the wreckage of human minds and maybe even spirits. 

It starts with a middle-aged Belgian film buff called Ludovic Senechal who, after the purchase of a mysterious old film reel from the son of a deceased collector, unexpectedly goes blind only moments after watching part of the footage.

At first, this is something that may seem to the reader a tragedy extending from the most surreal corner of the supernatural realm, but hold on! Everything in this book is rooted in the most cold-hearted and devious of human actions. 


The film is basically handed from one person to another and the main people surrounding this piece of footage, like poor Ludovic's ex-girlfriend, Lucie, a police detective, and Inspector Franck Sharko, who's got one hell of a mental battle he's facing already, run head-first into this hidden monster of a crime within the movie. The film plays around these bizarre layers of imagery, the surface being a woman who gets her eye slashed open and a little girl acting like she's in a drug-induced haze, squaring off against a bull who stops in mid-attack. This is all, like I mentioned, on this surface layer of film that the director carefully constructed to hide a much deeper and freaking terrifying meaning. What can be even scarier than what I just mentioned? Yeah...you'll find out soon enough. And the backdrop to this fifty+ year conspiracy is in the current day, being violently protected by barbaric murderers who at some point, literally rip the guts out of a person close to discovery of their sickening secrets.

There's a parallel investigation going on with the enigmatic character of Inspector Franck Sharko, a diagnosed schizophrenic grieving intensely over the death of his wife and daughter. He is enmired in a hellish world of unearthed corpses, their skulls sawed off, the mutilated state of their bodies surely pointing to the calculating methods of a serial killer. How this links up to the case Detective Lucie Henebelle is involved in is ingenious, as moment by moment, the clues connecting two seemingly incongruous situations loop together in a series of events that point to a mind-blowing (literally!) scientific explanation.

The killer/s are and have been engineering BOTH sets of crimes, all to cover up a massive atrocity which took place with orphans in the 1950's, which goes back to the dazed and glassy eyed little girl and the bull in the creepy footage, causing the poor Belgian's blindness. And the thing about the blindness is that...strangely enough, you think it's going to be the prominent storyline, the big mystery that is the focal point of the entire plot, but what it amounts to is a clever entry into a wider, darker, and infinitely frightening universe where one horror leads to a bigger horror, culminating in the ultimate horror.

What I liked about this thriller is the supreme attention to detail. This is one of the best reads in the genre that never doubts the readers' intelligence, but also doesn't sink into overly-plotted, convoluted writing.

You keep hurtling down the tracks at a near-frenetic pace but it never becomes overwhelming. Whether Sharko is fighting off a paid agent in the Egyptian desert who has dragged him there to torture information out of him or whether Lucie is ducking an orchestrated attempted murder of herself and an informant in hiding in the Canadian woods--every moment of action feels real, totally authentic. The relationship between the characters of Lucie and Sharko is also beautifully written. I really liked how there was a gradual build-up to this burgeoning romance between them, but one that didn't feel like it was awkwardly, randomly inserted. We see these two working together as friends and allies on this bewildering and disgusting case, both put in horrible danger and both dealing with emotional baggage, one much greater than the other, but both trying their hardest to move forward into a somewhat uncertain future.

Lucie is a vibrantly written female character. Props to Franck Thilliez for writing a woman who is third-dimensional and confident in her abilities! She is a mother who can go from tenderly caring for her sick child to shooting her way out of a burning house (a GREAT scene). She's extremely perceptive and dedicated to her work, seeking love, but not making it the center of her existence. She leapt off the page, I could pretty much see the film rolling in my head as I read her dialogue and actions. The same with Sharko who is such a miserably haunted man, in contrast to Lucie's relative normalcy. He battles with visions of a little girl called Eugenie, who is a mental amalgamation of his worst shame and regret. Eugenie pops up during his most stressed-out moments and is actually a crucial little character in the book, often playing out as a voice of warning. It was fascinating! Never dipped into the ridiculous or satire, which could've been the case in the hands of lesser authors. Both Lucie and Sharko are fully-realized characters who are struggling to understand a widespread, organized criminal act that cannot be quickly resolved. The layers to this are peeled away, one by one, to reveal an infected center.

During their investigation, and the murders which occur--one man is disemboweled, another man and his girlfriend are stabbed by what looks like a maniacal butcher--the film footage from the 1950's links up to a mysterious hospital in Canada and an old yet official plan to render the existences of orphaned children as nothing more than slaves and captives. How this intersects with the blank-eyed child star of the old footage, whose name is later uncovered to be Alice Tonquin, is the key that unlocks everything.

And Christ, does it. The levels that human beings will sink over money and control never ceases to amaze me. The book takes it to the heights and in the process, very few people were able to walk away from what happened in 1950's Montreal, with their hearts, minds and souls clean. In fact, certain individuals would go on to further filthy themselves by perpetrating generational monstrosities.

This book was an excellent example of top-level thriller/suspense writing. I am dying to read the sequel, Bred To Kill, and continue following the kick-ass crime solving skills of Lucie Henebelle and Franck Sharko. 

A big thumbs up to Thilliez for creating a work of crime fiction that was never boring, not even for a minute, and never cliche. A strong 5 stars.

You can also read this review and connect with me over at Goodreads!

What I'm Reading Now: "Syndrome E" By Franck Thilliez

It starts with an eye...then quickly degenerates into a violent, frightening series of images that have the capability of unlocking hidden memories, causing blindness, permanently haunting you with its celluloid evil, and even the power to bring bloody death to your doorstep. This is the story I'm currently journeying through in French author Franck Thilliez's chilling thriller, Syndrome E.

Hidden images and the intense subconscious affect it can have on the human psyche is the focal point of this visceral, disturbing story. The writing takes you down dark paths and within the shadows are a series of mysterious crimes involving brainwashing, murders and mutilations, spanning from Canada to Egypt to France over more than a fifty-year period. It is directly linked to a nightmarish and obscure piece of cinema footage from the early 1950s. The question so far is precisely what secrets will unfold from the mysterious old film reel?

The twists and turns Thilliez creates are dizzying. There are two protagonists, a mentally unstable inspector called Sharko who keeps suffering delusions of a little girl who emotionally torments him, and an inquisitive police detective called Lucie Hennebelle who's juggling the great stress from the sudden illness of one of her daughters with this creepiness and death that's dropped into her lap. The characterizations are sharp and clear--I like that! This is good writing, expertly delineated. I quickly got a strong grasp on these two people's personalities and their growing sense of purpose in their involvement with a case that's so beyond bizarre, it extends into hellish territory.

So far, Syndrome E is an excellent read!

Book Review: "Psycho" by Robert Bloch

This was a fantastic work of horror fiction. It was interesting to see the differences in the book version vs. the film version--ultimately, both are masterpieces. But where I believe the novel has the edge is with character development!

Psycho was a crazy piece of horror blazing, screeching, like the high-pitched shrieks of Bernard Hermann's infamous score, into our national consciousness. Psycho invaded our dreams, sent us peeking behind that shower curtain, white-knuckling our loofas, at the slightest thump in the corner. But what it also did was something I find quite interesting...it flipped what we considered "normalcy" upside-down. The lonely man with the big nervous eyes, twitch in his jaw, and secret in his fruit cellar represented a new kind of horror. Reinventing the genre so that the story of a paranoid mama's boy with much drama called Norman Bates, became MORE than a movie and MORE than a book--it became a symbol of everything dark and twisted that could lie beyond a cheap motel door. But what the 1959 novel by Robert Bloch pulls off compared to the Alfred Hitchcock film, is layers of additional (and shocking) character development!

What makes the book different is CONTEXT. In the movie, Norman is an angsty, gangly, sad-eyed protagonist, who we all consider to be one of the victims of Mother's murderous games. Book Norman is a fat, insecure, woman-hating loser who constantly calls women "bitches" including Mother's latest victim Mary Crane (renamed "Marion" in the Hitchcock film.) Norman is not the shy twenty-four year old with the shock of dark hair flopping on his Hollywood-attractive face, presented in the film. He is an unappealing forty plus year old whose never had a job or a girlfriend and tends to whine at his mother like a teenage brat. The mood is established immediately, with the clear, forceful writing by Robert Bloch. Norman has failed in nearly every important area of life. He's an outlier, he knows it, and it feeds and fuels his ugly mentality towards women and his child-like dependence on the vicious old shrew who emasculates him on a daily...weekly...yearly basis.

What the book also does differently from the film is give additional depth to the character and motivation of Mary Crane and her desperation to make a life with her lover, Sam Loomis. Within the pages, Mary is clearly a more tragic figure than Janet Leigh's portrayal--principally because of everything she's given up for the benefit and comfort of others, along with the happiness she will never experience. That's the saddest! Mary gave up college and went to work at seventeen to provide for her deathly ill mother after her stroke, and is now sacrificing a normal, happy relationship with the man she's fallen in love with, because of a load of financial troubles which include his late father's large debt and alimony he has to kick in for his ex-wife. Like the film, Mary/Marion makes the decision of financial theft to achieve the joy she's been dreaming of, despite the insane, outright ludicrous risks. Sam is a man juggling so many burdens that he's not even aware of his girlfriend's sudden disappearance. So enmired is he in his own miseries, it doesn't set off alarms in his head when Mary doesn't respond to his letters. When her baby sister, Lila, reaches out to him, a sharp detective named Arbogast trails her, setting off a series of events that hurtle at the reader like an out-of-control train. Sam Loomis is of course, of a decidedly secondary nature compared to the psychological horrors of Norman, or the tragic journey of Mary. But what is so phenomenal about Bloch's writing is that each line of dialogue, action, and aspect of personality become jigsaw pieces of a larger puzzle. Sam Loomis and the romance Mary has with him, is at once far from being the focal point of this story while at the same time, deciding the destinies for every single one of these characters. Mary, a humble secretary, has stolen a great deal of money, forty thousand dollars, which in today's society would be worth over a quarter of a million. Whew! The stakes are high and everyone is convinced that the crime begins and ends with the cash. Of course, who wouldn't think that? But what's so ironic about this story, is that other than being the initial cause of Mary, Sam, and Detective Arbogast's troubles, the forty grand is one of the least important details of the plot and is something Norman doesn't even know exists. However, without the romance and the desperation of Mary which fuels this shocking criminal act, the tightly-knit plot would fall apart at the seams. It is Mary and could only BE Mary who discovers and with her death, ultimately unveils the grotesque mask of Mother Bates.

Arbogast ends up following Mary's tracks back to the lonely motel and frightens Norman with his questioning, unwittingly sealing his own fate. There is a little more development of Norman's personality and fear, which is much more immediate, and Arbogast being at the business end of Mother dear's razor. In the film, Norman is laid-back and munching a bag of candy corn, easily putting on his own mask of normal young manhood, complete with a charming grin. His alarm bells are not set off until later in the dialogue with the detective. Book Norman is MUCH more on edge. He is in essence, a total basket case, struggling not to dissolve into screams of panic, unable to carry on a conversation with another adult that does not segue into childish bursts of impatience, frustration, and anxiety. The pleading, whining tendency that tends to run throughout Norman's dialogues with the other characters, really pushes through in his encounter with this "threat" to his and his mother's insulated, deranged little life. And as a big fan of Anthony Perkins' cooler interpretation as well as a reader who can appreciate the difference in how he's written, I can honestly say I have a hard time choosing which characterization I like best! I'd say both are perfectly suited for the medium they were presented in. The thing about book Norman that's so apparent is how UNLIKEABLE he is. Within ten minutes into the movie, 1960 audiences would've been snickering at pathetic Norman, the middle-aged child, rather than emotionally connecting, sympathizing, with the poor burdened kid who just wants to protect his insane mother. Hitchcock and Bloch were both brilliant in how they brought this man to life, expertly framing and pacing Norman's reactions to the random dangers suddenly popping up all around him. Because he's never really mentally grown up, that overgrown childishness being lost in translation to the silver screen in favor of a more youthful angst, Norman does not know how to handle things. He falls apart at the seams, burying his terror in the bottom of a bottle. And that is when "Mother" takes over!

What is interesting about Psycho the novel is that Norman Bates, if you can believe it, is presented as even more of a freakish character than the film version. What was probably not even going to be touched upon with 1960 audiences was illustrated in the book such as Norman's weird obsession with the occult and that his dark delusions are instrumental in his views towards Mother Bates' existence. 

Altogether, this is a book where you can easily see how it became a classic. The characters vividly come to life, the violence that takes place in that dark little motel punch you in the gut with the disgustingness of it all but never teeters over the line into gory exploitation. Bloch was a captivating writer and "Norman Bates" was his chilling masterpiece.

 I give it a solid five stars. Mother would want me to!

(You can also read this review and connect with me over at Goodreads.)