The Scare Salon

Plus there are three adorable hero dogs who are fleshed-out characters in their own right and also don’t get killed. Hooray!

The tale is set in Hollywood in the early 1920s, during the days of silent films and Prohibition. The way the setting is described is so gorgeous and mesmerizing that you can picture everything as clear as crystal in your mind, from the lavish parties at lush mansions peopled with glamorous ingenues and cigar-chomping wheeler-dealers to the narrow, busy avenues of Chinatown with their curious little shops, smoky opium dens, and teeming to and fro of industrious workers.

Our main character is Norah, a young English woman whose husband Jim was killed in World War I. After his death, she ended up somewhat destitute and was forced to work as a maid/companion to a crotchety, abusive old woman in Manchester. There isn’t a massive amount of detail given about Norah’s past, but there’s just enough to get the gist of what she went through.

Quite by chance, however, Jim’s sister is a famous Hollywood actress and the mistress of a powerful studio head. She goes by the fabulous (and fake) name of Chrysanda Flamande, though her actual name is Christine, which is what she’s usually called throughout the novel. Christine happens to visit Norah in England while she’s there purchasing dogs and decides she’s going to rescue her sister-in-law from her situation and bring her back to Hollywood to act as her assistant/dog handler. Norah is happy to agree to this plan, though she’s quite reserved and down to earth, and is therefore somewhat bemused by the freewheeling debauchery of the movie business and the seedy glamor of Los Angeles in general.

The dogs Christine bought, by the way, are three tiny Pekingese whose names are Black Jasmine (or Jazz for short), Chang Ming, and Buttercreme. These darling little puffballs play a huge part in the plot, and every single scene featuring them is utterly delightful, as they each have their own distinct personalities.

So at the beginning of the story, Christine is filming a scene from her latest movie, Kiss of Darkness. It’s pretty much common knowledge that Christine can’t act her way out of a wet paper bag, but she’s beautiful and charming and is sleeping with the head honcho at the studio, so everyone good-naturedly lets it slide. Said honcho has given Christine a beautiful opal necklace that was purportedly stolen from the Imperial Palace in China; Christine is crazy about all things Chinese, which is historically accurate, as there was a huge Chinese design trend in fashion and home decor in the 1920s, though actual Chinese people in California weren’t treated all that hot, a fact this story occasionally alludes to.

Anyway, Christine is wearing the necklace for the scene, and later on, after the shooting is over, an elderly Chinese man tries to get to Christine, saying he has to tell her something that’s a matter of life and death. He’s escorted from the premises, and everyone thinks it’s a little odd, but figures he’s just an obsessed fan.

There’s a party later that night that Christine is invited to but Norah isn’t, though Norah doesn’t mind too much as she starts hanging out with Alec, the cameraman on the film. The two of them develop a sweet, low-key romance over the course of the story, but if you’re not into romance novels, don’t worry; it’s really kept very much on the edges of the main narrative, and it’s fairly understated.

After the party, a tragedy occurs. An older actor in the film named Charles Sandringham goes home with his latest, much younger paramour, a stuntman named Keith Pelletier, and Keith ends up brutally murdered. No one is sure if Charles did it; he was so drunk he doesn’t remember anything, but everyone who knows him doubts he could have done such a horrible thing. Just in case, though, the studio execs make him go into hiding, telling the press that he had to rush to Vermont to take care of his ailing father and couldn’t have been responsible for the slaying. The studio execs also go to the crime scene before the cops are called to get rid of any incriminating evidence, which is also historically accurate, as big studios would do that kind of shit all the time to avoid scandal if one of their stars did something illegal or morally questionable.

Hours later, Norah is awakened by the three dogs going nuts, acting like there’s something or someone outside. The next day, she sees a bizarre set of marks on the side of the house, almost like something very large was clawing or chewing on the building. She and Christine later find the same marks at Charles Sandringham’s house, where the murder took place.

The Chinese man from earlier, whose name is Shang Ko, turns up at Christine’s house too, and actually seems like a nice fellow. He warns that Christine is in terrible danger, and though Christine doesn’t really believe him, she likes him enough to give him a job as a groundskeeper and lets him live in a small house on the property.

Meanwhile, Norah is starting to have disturbing nightmares involving a young girl wearing Christine’s necklace who seems like she’s about to get sacrificed. We find out through Shang Ko that the necklace is actually something of a cursed item that essentially draws the attention of a sort of demon to whoever wears it, and though the characters naturally think this is all ridiculous at first, as events get stranger and stranger they’re forced to wrestle with the fact that ancient black magic is absolutely real and is threatening all their lives.

Bride of the Rat God was a beautifully written book, with so much vivid period detail that you felt like you’d been transported back to the 1920s. The characters were also fantastic, especially Christine, who actually started out as your stereotypical self-absorbed, airheaded drama queen, but revealed layers of complexity, strength, and intelligence as the story went on. Her relationship with Norah was a highlight of the story too, as the pair were basically opposites but had a deep, sisterly love for one another that shined through all of their interactions. Alec was also a great character, heroic without being a standard action hero type; he was actually just a short, AV geek dude with glasses, but when push came to shove, he proved himself just as fearless, resourceful, and noble as the other characters.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t reiterate how awesome the three dogs were; I loved the way they were woven into the story and played an integral part in the events, culminating with a starring role in the epic climax.

If you’re into stories set in old Hollywood that take a peek behind the façade to show the dissoluteness of the industry, with all the drugs and alcoholism and overwork and scandal, then you’ll find a lot to like here. And as a bonus, there’s also a scary Chinese demon going around terrorizing characters who are so well-drawn that they seem like living, breathing people who you’re actually rooting for all the way through. A fun, completely absorbing read that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to fans of historical-set fantasy tales with a veneer of Hollywood luster and Chinese mysticism.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.