This is the first book I finished for Halloween Bingo. As a Clive Barker fan of course it went straight to the top of my list. It was a wonderful book. I had to stay up most of the night to finish it before travelling - the book's a brick. I didn't want to pack it for the final 100 pages.

Coldheart Canyon looks at Hollywood circa 1920s and "present" 1990s. It shows how much the landscape has changed in that time and how little the people have changed. The descriptions are lush, erotic and terrifying all at the same time, especially of course when we are dealing with the fantastical monsters of Barker's imagination, spawned by The Devil's Country. 

What Barker does in this book is pretty extraordinary. He juxtaposes the fictional world of Hollywood (which people believe is real) with the nightmarish reality of Coldheart Canyon (which people believe is fiction). He describes vacuous stars and entitled movie producers with a mischievous venom that suggests he has met many of these people. 

There is a huge amount of dropping of famous names, although Todd Pickett the main male character is perhaps by necessity a fiction, as I imagine is the boarish movie producer who meets a violent but poetic end.

I haven't chosen which square to use this for. I'm kind of waiting to see which of my lines has the best chance of winning, but it was originally chosen for American Horror Story and would easily satisfy Ghost Stories, Horror, or Modern Masters of Horror.

If I don't finish the book today I will have to find space for it in my suitcase. I can't leave it for a week and not know how it ends.

It feels as though we're entering the final stage. We've learned ugly things about most of the characters and the ghosts are becoming emboldened, more persistent in their demands to gain entrance to the house and Devil's Country beneath.

Will Tammy be the hero Zeffer expected? There is never the guarantee of a happy ending with Barker. 

One of the rules of Halloween Bingo was that I couldn't finish the first book until today. Well no worries there. I'm only a third through it, but what a read! The dark erotic scenes are incredibly graphic and heavy in BDSM and human/animal hybrids. The best part of Barker is the way he can make the incredible seem credible. How a person led by lust can ignore every warning sign. 

We are now in a Hollywood house on Coldheart Canyon so named because the starlet who once lived there (or perhaps still does) was considered a cold-hearted bitch. Why? Unsurprisingly because she doesn't live her life by anyone else's rules and embraces her own sexuality. How dare she?

The ghosts in the canyon are an intriguing mix and I think I have some idea now of how the plot may progress, although with Barker as author the chances are I will be completely wrong. A great read that I grabbed for the American Horror Story square, although if another suitable one is called instead it is flexible.

It's a wonderful feeling to be back in the twisted worlds of Clive Barker. So far this story seems to revolve around a mosaic of painted tiles transported from Romania to Hollywood. His description of the strange design of the tiles is pure Barker. Viva la Halloween Bingo!

My first book for Halloween Bingo (as long as I don't finish before Sunday).