Exquisite Corpse

Book excerpt: From the acclaimed author of Lost Souls, Drawing Blood, and Wormwood comes the provocative and thrilling serial killer novel that #1 New York Times bestselling author Peter Straub calls “a guidebook to hell.” To serial slayer Andrew Compton, murder is an art, the most intimate art. After feigning his own death to escape from prison, Compton makes his way to the United States with the ambition of bringing his art to new heights. Tortured by his own perverse desires and drawn to possess and destroy young boys, Compton inadvertently joins forces with Jay Byrne, a dissolute playboy who has pushed his own art to limits even Compton hadn’t previously imagined. Together, Compton and Byrne set their sights on an exquisite young Vietnamese American runaway, Tran, whom they deem to be the perfect victim. Swiftly moving from the grimy streets of London’s Piccadilly Circus to the decadence of New Orleans’s French Quarter, Poppy Z. Brite dissects the landscape of torture and invites us into the mind of a killer. With “intelligence, sweep, nerve, knowledge, and deeply unsettling erotic power” (Dennis Cooper, author of Frisk), Exquisite Corpse is a novel for those who dare trespass where the sacred and profane become one.