The Master of Horror takes on Hollywood

Clive Barker is a true literary master whose prose flows like poetry. When you add to this that he is also a master at delving into the deepest recesses of our psyche and bringing all of our greatest fears and most forbidden fantasies out into the light of day, you have a powerful combination for a writer of horror fiction.

This time, Mr. Barker takes on Hollywood. Mingling both the Hollywood of the 1920s and the Hollywood of today and showing that they are really not so different. Todd Pickett, a popular movie star on the downward slide of fame desperately decides to get cosmetic surgery to save his dwindling looks. When the surgery goes horribly wrong, he decides to hide out in a remote mansion deep in the recesses of the Malibu canyon area of Hollywood, hoping to heal far away from the eyes of his fans. Then the fun begins. The mansion that Todd rents is inhabited by a beautiful young woman who claims to be a star from the 1920s. She is kept young by a room that was spirited away from a Romanian monastery -- a room built by the devil's wife.

Coldheart Canyon is a scathing view of Hollywood and its emphasis on the superficial, populated by movie stars of both the past and the present. It is very well written -- amusing and horrifying in turn.