Warlock, A Novel of Possession

“There are people all over the world, Allen, who’ll sell anything to anyone. You must know that. We use those people; it’s as simple as that. . . . I can’t tell you any more.”

“It was not even a bite like a regular tooth bite, but more like what I imagined a night moth’s scouring tongue might make as it channeled darkly into the silken complexion of a gardenia blossom. Now, I felt ready. I cannot say I loved this, but it no longer terrified me quite so much, as he withdrew something deftly out of my scrotum and into his mouth.”

“What I wanted to deal with in my new novel 'Warlock, A Novel of Possession,' ” says novelist Perry Brass, “was that classic element of horror — human transformation at its most nightmarish. I also wanted to deal with submission, power, and the kind of unleashed passion that I like to write about. I wanted to write about the struggle for sheer survival that is such a mark of our time. And also, I wanted to tell a hell of a story, which 'Warlock' does.”

And what is that?

“Two men meet in an underground sex venue in Manhattan. One, Allen Barrow, is soft-spoken, polite, and has a low-paying job in a bank. He is inhibited and insecure about himself. His whole life will explode when he meets Destry Powars.

“Powars is ‘Destiny’s child.’ Larger than life, a true urban cowboy, wild, smart, uncouth, vulgar — from generations of poor, footloose losers. He has reinvented himself over and over again and has become spectacularly rich and successful. He has learned the language that moves vast sums of money: the language of power, force, success at any means. But who taught him this, and at what price? The price is his own goodness, his own real soul – and he can find this again only by merging with Allen in a way that is intensely dark, sexual, and very threatening.”

"Warlock" is a book of hypnotic splendor. Some people might describe it as a gay "Rosemary's Baby" — it has the urban jolt of that classic horror thriller. It is full of erotic suspense. If you ever wanted to find your own “Man of Destiny,” who will pull you away from the problems of your life, who will satisfy your every wish — "Warlock" will tell you how to find him, what price you will pay . . . and make you see the ancient and hard work of warlocks everywhere.

“The message of Warlock,” Perry Brass says, “is that the business of business is . . . often evil. Just how evil, I write about here. Many of the world economic excesses of the last ten years are coming back to roost. The World Trade Center terror and its political and economic aftermath; the multinational manipulation of arms, deadly chemicals, and people for greed —these are things we can see and know about. I’m glad that I have published a powerful novel that deals with so much of what we have seen, but in a way that is both entertaining and moving.”

"Warlock, A Novel of Possession," that is as paralyzing in its suspense as it is starkly insightful.