Product Description

A convicted serial killer leaves his prison cell a dead man and rises again to build a new life. His journey takes him to New Orleans' French Quater- to the decadent bars and frivolous boys that haunt the luscious dark corners of a town brought up on Voodoo and the dark arts. Anticipating a willing victim he finds an equal, something he never expected even in his wildest dreams...Two men thrown together fate share dangerous desirea and a love that brings fear along with lust, and leaves a trail of blood from London to the USA. 'Treats the human body like a communion wafer..A guidebook to Hell' PETER STRAUB.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2627095 in Books
• Published on: 1997-05-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.com Review
You've probably heard that this love story about two cannibalistic serial killers (loosely modeled after Dennis Nilsen and Jeffrey Dahmer) is over the top. You've been warned about the lovingly meticulous descriptions of murder and necrophilia. But the novel also features a keen look at the AIDS plague, in a setting almost worth dying for: Brite's doomed aesthetes dance in a sweet, heady New Orleans of milky coffee and beignets, alligators, Billy Holiday tunes, scented candles, pirate radio, swamp French, andouille sausage and one bar for every 175 people. And the structure is the tightest of Brite's books so far.

From Publishers Weekly
Blood-soaked sheets, cannibalism, rotting, half-dissected corpses: this gruesome psychological horror novel has all the grue a reader might?or might not?want. Brite (Drawing Blood, 1993), the reigning queen of Generation-X splatterpunks, pulls out the stops in this ghastly tale of two serial killers who find true love over the body of a murdered and mutilated boy in the historic French Quarter of New Orleans. Londoner Andrew Compton, imprisoned for the necrophiliac slayings of 23 young men, escapes from prison by (rather unbelievably) faking his own death and killing the coroners gathered to autopsy his body. Fleeing to Louisiana, he hooks up with Jay Byrne, slacker scion of a wealthy old family, a man whose murders are even more fiendish than Compton's own. Brite is a highly competent stylist with a knack for depicting convincing, if monstrous, characters. Her plot development rests too heavily on coincidence, however, and on an excess of details drawn from the life of real-world serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer. Though Brite shifts point of view throughout, she always returns to Compton's first person. This technique gives the narrative rhythm and emotional force but also seems aimed toward intimating the reader in Compton's acts of dehumanization ("the aesthetics of dismemberment") and depravity. And so what Brite really presents here is, ultimately, yet another crimson leaf in the literature of the pornography of violence.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Acclaimed horror writer Brite (Drawing Blood, LJ 10/1/93) has never been one to mince words, but even the most hardened among us will cringe when reading this latest, which easily surpasses Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho on the gore-o-meter. English serial killer Andrew Compton, who killed 23 boys before being caught, escapes from prison and makes his way to Louisiana, where he inadvertently teams up with another fellow who shares his appetite for dismemberment and necrophilia. Young Tran, a gay Louisiana teen who is evicted by his Vietnamese father, foolishly proffers himself to our vicious pair. Tran's only hope for surviving the encounter with all limbs intact is his ex-lover Luke, a tough but AIDS-weakened writer who rants about heterosexual America on a pirate radio station, using the name "Lush Rimbaugh." All in all, Exquisite Corpse is a rub-it-in-your face novel that is all the more terrifying because of its author's razor-sharp prose. Purchase wherever Brite has a following.?Mark Annichiarico, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Proceed with extreme caution
So you're a Poppy Z. Brite fan? Read Drawing Blood? Read Wormwood? Read Lost Souls? Consider yourself able to handle anything she could possible deal out? Think again. Do not read this book just because you loved her other work, and certainly don't read it if you've never read her other works. There are things in this book that you can never un-read; she makes you feel things you can never forget. Granted, all you hardcore fans out there won't head this warning- I certainly wouldn't have. So do go right ahead, and when you are done you will know what I'm refering to. All of which is not to say that this is not an incredible book- as always, Poppy Z. Brite is the master of descriptions so vivid that they make you feel, smell, or taste her words. And that is what makes this book so profoundly disturbing and so utterly unforgettable.

Gross and Intertaining
The few things I've read by this author in the past have not impressed me -- more splatterpunk than anything else. I was browsing through the mystery section at the book store and stumbled across this (obviously this book was in the wrong place). The back made is sound good, so I decided to read a few pages -- I was hooked! One of the serial killers describes a young man he picked up who had a tatoo across his neck that said "Cut Here" so the serial killer merely had to follow the directions! (this is on the 2nd page!)

The book is extremely gory -- for those of you who have a weak stomach you might want to pass on this one.

AIDS is a theme throughout the book. I found myself thinking how true some of her points were about the amount of research being done to find a cure and the extremes some people might feel like going to so that a cure could be focused on.

This is the best book I have read by this author -- and ranked in my top books I have read. This book is a must read for anyone who is into horror -- but it might spoil you for others...

Amazing Piece of Art!
I've been a huge fan of Mrs. Brite's work for quite some time now. My first book that I read of her's was Lost Souls, Drawing Blood, and then Wormwood. I had picked this one up about 2 years ago but never really got into it. I sat down one day and decided to give it another attempt. The moment I started I couldn't put it down, it is a must for those that love dark literature with twists of homosexuality as well as cannibalism and murder. Truely amazing piece of work, love the descriptions of such sinful acts..her work is awesome! Soon to start on the next three of the newer "series"!