I know as a reviewer you’re meant to have a cool remove, but I can’t tell you how much I love this novel. It’s one of the best reads I’ve had in awhile and in my line of business you get to read an awful lot of books, invariably with the emphasis on the awful because when you spend your working life panning for gold amongst the paperbacks you quickly realise that writing a good, original, engaging piece of fiction is actually a pretty hard ask. And that’s what makes Lee Thomas' The Dust Of Wonderland such a high-carat nugget because it does stand out amongst the slew of half-baked, half-arsed attempts to harness the fiction beast as a tautly written, tightly plotted thriller - perhaps that's why it's been nominated for the Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBT Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror.

Pre-Katrina New Orleans is the setting for this stylish supernatural tale about ghostly queer apparitions and menacing sexuality. Placing the plot in such a hotly evocative city as The Big Easy is Thomas’ first smart move. With its dark history, turbo-sexualised sweaty heat and survivor spirit, the city almost becomes a character in its own right; a constant cloying presence against which the rich story unravels.

That story orbits around Ken Nicholson, just out of the closet after years in an unhappy marriage, as he returns to his old stomping-ground of New Orleans when his teenage son is beaten into a coma. The Deep South city means a lot to Nicholson because it’s where he led the classic straight/gay double life when he was younger and, as a result, it’s where his ‘real’ life took the fateful turn it did. As soon as he gets back there, though, he’s haunted by nightmares starring his one-time secret lover, the charismatic and predictably callous owner of a notorious local party spot, the Wonderland of the title, where a couple of decades previously several young gay men met gory deaths.

The secret lover has long since trotted off this mortal coil, but Nicholson fears the twisted spirit of his former master has resurfaced in the form of his son’s mysterious and malevolent girlfriend, who makes Heather Mills look stable as she stalks his ex-wife, his hormonally-moody daughter and the man Nicholson tried to love before he fled town in a futile attempt to escape his past, in effect, to escape himself.

Eloquent, ambient writing, beautifully realised characters and spooky, jolting atmospherics motor this compelling combo of unsettling horror story and quietly moving love story along with great pace and verve. Thomas has plotted a novel that interlocks intense, credible suspense with characters that breathe off the page and consequently manage to banish disbelief, which when you’re dealing with the horror genre is no mean feat.

A chilling, affecting, spine-tingler that just leaves you wanting more.

Read our interview with Lee Thomas.

The Dust Of Wonderland, by Lee Thomas
Published by: Alyson Publications
Released: 27 September 2007
ISBN: 9781593500115

Buy The Dust Of Wonderland online and save some money to put towards Lee Thomas' Bram Stoker Award winning novel Stained.