Joe Decker drinks because he can. In 1920s Paris, unlike Prohibition America, alcohol flows freely. He thinks he has come to Paris to write his novel, but he has come to Paris to block his visions with alcohol. The visions that started when he touched his first dead thing as a boy, the visions that no longer haunt him—until he sees a beautiful woman on a bridge over the Seine, a beautiful woman who died horribly, a beautiful woman he could have loved.

"[Rusch's horror novels are] horror in the same way that Robert Bloch's Psycho is—horror of the soul."
—Locus

"Like early Ray Bradbury, Rusch has the ability to switch on a universal dark."
—the London Times