SOURCE: "Magical Mystery Tour," in Entertainment Weekly, February 9, 1996, pp. 46-47.

Below, De Haven provides a plot summary and favorable review of The Hellfire Club.

Peter Straub's novels (Ghost Story, Koko, The Throat, If You Could See Me Now) feel terrifyingly plausible till they're over; then they seem preposterous. Nobody else working the horror-and-suspense field—not even Stephen King—concocts anything remotely resembling the audacious, labyrinthine plots that Straub serves up year after year. He's puzzle maker as much as he is a storyteller, and if his narratives are often as unwieldy, baroque, and zany as a Rube Goldberg contraption, they're also unique. Yes, and as maddening to synopsize as the federal budget. The Hellfire Club begins with a familiar, tired premise—a serial killer is on the loose—in the swank Connecticut town of Westerholm. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, he's captured during a botched assault on an elderly woman...