Lorelei

by Mark A. Clements

Overview

When Stacey Westerman's husband disappears, the rumors begin: he was too handsome for her, too successful, too perfect. He ran off with another woman.

But Stacey doesn't believe it; she hires a detective to find out what really happened. Together they follow a trail that leads from passion to passion, death to death, shock to shock.

Who is this Lorelei, this woman no man can resist or deny? What is the source of her power? What are its limits?

And will ordinary love be enough to stop her?

First ebook edition of a 1993 hardcover original.

"A classic fantasy-as-nightmare of seduction and sexual obsession…fast-paced narrative and (a) powerful finale." - Booklist

Product Details

BN ID:	2940011307096
Publisher:	Mark A. Clements
Publication date:	05/12/2011
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	514 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

From earliest childhood, Mark A. Clements loved both storytelling and visual art. With characteristic practicality, he decided he had a better chance of making a living as an artist than as a writer, so he chose to go to art school and relegate writing to the status of "hobby."

Later, art degree in hand, he reversed his priorities and began his first novel.

The eventual result was the sale of "6:02" to a mainstream publisher. This was followed by the sales of three more novels, all published in hardcover. Two of them, "Lorelei" and "The Land of Nod," went on to win their categories in the San Diego Book Awards, while "The Land of Nod" also took the Theodore S. Geisel Award for Best of the Best of all books competing that year.

All four novels have at various times been optioned for film.

In the interim, children and economics (which so often go together) compelled Mark to ghostwrite for other people. He also teaches writing courses at San Diego Writer's Ink, and leads workshops at various writer's conferences in Southern California.

Meanwhile, he's finishing up a new novel, which he hopes to sell to a traditional print publisher as well as make available in ebook format.

Speaking of which, he's thrilled to re-release his first four novels as ebooks.

Featuring his own cover art.

What goes around...

Editorial Reviews

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 Pern. 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. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

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