From a Whisper to a Scream » (First Edition)

CHARLES DE LINT and his wife, the artist MaryAnn Harris, live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His evocative novels, including Moonheart, The Onion Girl, and Widdershins, have earned him a devoted following and critical acclaim as a master of contemporary magical fiction in the manner of storytellers like John Crowley, Jonathan Carroll, Alice Hoffman, Ray Bradbury, and Isabel Allende.

Originally published under the pen name “Samuel M. Key”

"Years after the death of a notorious child murderer, children have begun to die again...and a crime photographer begins to suspect he has the one true clue that connects the horrific events."

In the early 1990s, Charles de Lint wrote and published three dark fantasy novels under the pen name “Samuel M. Key.” Now, Orb presents them for the first time under de Lint’s own name.

Publishers Weekly

In this reissue of the versatile de Lint's (The Onion Girl) second "Samuel M. Key" novel, a darker take on his typically upbeat urban fantasies, a serial killer with a supernatural pedigree upsets the peaceful order of the city of Newford. Newspaper photographer Jim McGann stumbles on the first clues to the killer's identity when he spots the same young girl and a graffiti scrawl reading "Niki" in the background of crime scene photos for a succession of murdered teenage hookers. McGann's search for the elusive Niki dovetails with the investigations of homicide detective Thomas Morningstar, who spots unbelievable similarities between the crimes and the handiwork of Teddy Bird, a child killer whom he gunned down two years before. In the course of establishing that Bird's malignant spirit is alive and pursuing the terrified Niki for a reason, de Lint offers the reader some spectacularly horrific moments involving Creole voodoo, Native American mysticism and the strong-arm tactics of an Irish organized crime kingpin. The novel's central idea-that the killer is "the distilled essence of all that was wrong with the city"-is not terribly original, but it gives de Lint a unique angle from which to explore the social ills of the modern city and their impact on a cross-section of well-drawn characters. Fans who missed the book in 1992 will welcome this sidebar to his better known work. (Jan. 27) FYI: De Lint won a World Fantasy Award for his novel Moonlight and Vines (1999). Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.