19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A bloody addition to the perils of casual niteclub liaisons, January 26, 2004
"Portrait" has many things going for it; deep and likeable characterizations, intense suspense, unfathomable torture, unbearable suffering, unspeakable acts of mutilation, bloody kisses and homicidal mania.....and buried in all of this is a rather beautiful love story.
Kathleen Shade is a writer, producing an "Answers" column for a modern woman's magazine, mostly consisting of women writing in with their love woes and misadventures. While her writing is tough and no-nonsense, Kathleen is a scarred and insecure soul, fixed into a daily ritual that both calms and annoys her. Until the day she opens her mail and finds a grisly morsel within, along with a fan letter asking her "Would you like to write my story?"
Kathleen goes to the police with the ghastly evidence and macabre letter, and her case is assigned to Lt. Jeffrey Spence, a man hardened and insensate from his own inability to love not only those who have cared for him, but also himself. In his questioning of Kathleen, he is predatory and ruthless, peeling away all of her layers of privacy and exposing her painful past while attacking her fragile sense of self-worth. He uncovers the scars left on her psyche from years of sexual abuse from her own uncle, loosening her tenuous hold on her own lucidity.
Though Kathleen is a virtual well of emotions, and Spence a virtual void; veritably opposite poles of empty souls, I found myself liking each character immediately, so well fleshed out were they at the very beginning of this story. After tossing empty threats at each other during her interview, Spence gives Kathleen a dire warning to notify him immediately if she receives any more mail, either letters or body parts, from her newest fan.
When Kathleen appears for a speaking engagement, she meets a poet named Maxwell Platt, who was the speaker before her. Her mind is in a whirl after another confrontation with Spence, and they go out for drinks where she proceeds to get drunk. Finding herself at Platt's apartment, she decides to up the level of intimacy with him and sleeps with him.
Platt came across as a man who was overly mellow and a mild push-over; a man too placid to be of interest under normal circumstances. But with Lee & Steffen's amazing ability to flesh out the characters in this book, I actually found myself caring deeply for a person who in real life I would normally overlook. His easy going manner against Kathleen's often harsh behavior, his acceptance of her nervous and tactless mannerisms, only made him a more likeable character rather than sinking him into the role of pansy. Lee & Steffen managed to make this character strong in his gentleness.
Our killer, meanwhile, is very busy. She has more letters to write to Kathleen, and needs the subjects in which to tell her tales. She finds her victims by cruising the bars, and picking up the most hateful men you can imagine. I'm not talking bad looking or anything like that, I am talking about men who are truly hateful human beings. The authors delve into these personalities also, despicable men with callous and brutal thoughts that under normal circumstances you would love to see tortured. It is almost unimaginable that you will find yourself feeling sorry for these pathetic excuses for men; but trust me, you will.
So brutal is our psychopath, so thorough and devoid of empathy as she literally tears the men apart, making sure that they remain conscious as long as possible in order that they feel the punishment she metes out to them, you will actually pity the monsters being tortured. Of course, there is also a great deal of empathy for our lovely psychopath herself as she unwinds her story in the letters to Kathleen Shade; commentaries on the most brutal, horrific sexual and physical abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of both strangers and her own parents.
Life is a snake pit, especially when you can find yourself feeling compassion towards the sickest of the human collective. Pay particular attention to the psychopath's letter to Kathleen entitled "Manburger", where one of the most vile of men meets an extensively gruesome ending at under the tender administrations of an authentic, veritable psychopath.
This book has many fine points to it, amongst which is the ability to immediately identify with and like the characters despite their obvious behavior flaws; not to mention the blood and the guts and the mindless torture. And don't be afraid if you find a tender spot in your own heart for the blooming relationship between Kathleen and Platt, as I did. I found it to be a warm and human thread in an otherwise brutal story.
Do not miss out on this book! I cannot stress that enough. Lee and Steffen have truly created a monster of unfathomable proportions here, and I guarantee that your own twisted need to read the bloodiest of scenes will be utterly satisfied here; finger lickin good even. If you are not an aficionado of horror and grotesqueries, don't pick it up or you will find yourself barfing out your lunch.
Enjoy!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
More Frustrating Than Terrifying, January 13, 2005
I bought this book as a guilty pleasure hoping that I would expose my mind to images and ideas so unsettling and shocking that the memory of the story would stay with me like a stain on my soul. That's what the other reviews suggested would happen, as well as the back of the book. Indeed, the first account of the young lady torturing and killing her helpless male victim was slightly unsettling, and I revised my expectations for the book from a soul stainer to more of an opportunity to dig that cellar in my mind I have always wanted. What really began to derail the story, however, was when I met the other characters in the book who are drawn into the world of the killer.
In addition to the characters being dull and unbelievable, the dialog was laughable and ridiculous. For example, Kathleen, one of three "good guy" characters in the book is having a drink with Platt, another good guy, who is also a poet, and the conversation includes the following exchange: "'I've written better,' Platt said, 'and I've written worse, a lot worse. Poetry's weird; it never succeeds unless the poet realizes its utter failure.'[to which Kathleen replies]'That sounds like something a poet would say.' [...] 'I guess none of us succeed as real people,' she theorized, 'unless we realize all our own failures.'" Others may like this kind of stuff; I didn't. Unfortunately, it is these three characters' experiences (the third character is the obligatory hard boiled cop who is on the trail of the killer) that take up almost all of the book. Of the book's 287 pages, only 53 of them contain descriptions of the actual tortures and murders.
The killer thankfully doesn't have much to say other than her internal monologue describing how she feels as she tortures and dismembers her victims. One recurrent device in the book is the detailed description of the instruments being used to torture and kill her victims. It's like Tom Clancy writing about torture and murder. It's okay at first, but after hearing about "Bruns serrated plaster shears" several times, it would be no less scary to just describe them as "the shears". Don't get me wrong, there are a couple of scenes that are disturbing, but it is basically the same scene over and over: she captures an idiot male who deserves to die, she tortures him while he is awake by sewing his lips shut, gluing his eyes closed, sticking needles in his ears and other places, then cutting off body parts. Pretty disturbing, but only the first couple of times. After that, I felt like I had already read that part of the book and wanted something different. Not necessarily something worse, but just something to keep my interest and move the story forward.
There were a few misspellings in the book. There were many grammatical errors. There was information about the characters that didn't seem relevant. For example, the cop's homosexuality added nothing to the story, but the way it was presented suggested that it was relevant to something that would happen later in the story. It wasn't.
This book cost about $20, and I was hoping to obtain for myself a twisted and sick literary jewel that I could enjoy from time to time when I wanted to really offend my sense of decency. What I got was a poorly edited book with dull characters and a clunky plot. I may check out another of Lee's work to see if he is any better when he works alone rather than with Elizabeth Steffen.
If I were asked for constructive criticism, I would say to make the characters either truly hip and cool, or make them completely outside of society, but somewhere in between is boring. Focus less on the hardware used to torture and kill people, and focus more on other details that are just as morbidly fascinating such as the sounds of bones breaking, the smells in the air, and just paint a little more detailed picture in general of these gruesome episodes. Find an editor who can help with the dialog, or use a lot less of it. Spell and grammar check thoroughly. Read and re-read to make sure that it is technically sound. The outline of this story is good, and parts of the execution are good, but I am not a professional and I could go through this book with a red pen and in about 12 hours I could improve it tremendously by correcting the spelling and grammar problems, and tweaking the dialog to make it a little less dumb. I'm surprised that someone didn't do this before the book got to me. I gave the book two stars because, as another reviewer noted, writing is hard, and I appreciate writers who are exploring such taboo and twisted subject matter. But if the gory subject matter were removed, the glaring flaws with this book would be very obvious. The fact that it deals with torture and murder serves to hide many of these flaws because the book is so shocking to some people. As I read the book, however, I became more and more exhausted trying to maintain the illusion of the story while trying to overlook problem after problem in the way the book was put together. This old saying crossed my mind often as I read the book: easy to write, hard to read.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Splatterpunk at its Best!, October 30, 2000
This review is from: Portrait of the Psychopath as a Young Woman (Paperback)
Wow! This has to be one of the best horrors I've read for quite a while. Nothing is spared, the killer so chilling and perfect. I liked every character, every change through the chapters, the pace of the plot. Edward Lee took great pains to learn about medical instruments and he must have studied at length on the male human body. I'm still reeling from the impact. Yes, it is very graphic and shocking, but that's the whole reason of reading this type of horror. The only one negative I can comment on is - I'm not sure whether I'll read another Lee book again, it may be disappointing after this wild ride. Utterly brilliant.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
