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Simon and Schuster has billed Sarah Rayne's ROOTS OF EVIL as a psychological thriller, but the novel exceeds and questions the conventions of the horror aesthetic in all its genres and permutations. Lucy Trent works for a distribution company that digs up and re-releases obscure films from the early decades of film history. "Lucy rather liked horror stories, especially the dark-house, killer-prowling-up-the-stairs kind," we are told. "She liked the way they reinforced your own sense of safety." Lucy has to rethink that view when an inquisitive MA student, Trixie Smith, who is researching the life of Nazi-era Viennese film star Lucretia von Wolff -- Lucy's grandmother -- comes to her for information. Allegedly, after emigrating to England, Lucretia murdered her lover and another man in her film studio, then committed suicide, witnessed by a child who then disappeared, if the child ever existed in the first place. Trixie does not believe that this is the true story, and her investigations catalyse murder. The truth must be uncovered before more crimes are committed to protect the lies. As the characters piece together the real history of Lucretia von Wolff and chase murderers past and present, Rayne plunges readers into a horror story of a different sort: life in Nazi-occupied Austria and in the concentration camps. Obvious allusions to classic 19th century horror novels that have been made into films -- Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Picture of Dorian Gray -- transposed to this setting prove very uncanny. Investigating Lucretia's fans' association of the supposedly eastern European actress with Allraune, her 'born evil' signature role, skewers the irrational fears upon which Bram Stoker played in creating the Transylvanian Dracula. The outlines of Frankenstein and his creation frame Rayne's depiction of Dr Joseph Mengele and a child subjected to his experiments at Auschwitz. Whereas Sibyl Vane's murderous brother chased Dorian Gray across London for 20 years, Lucretia von Wolff is chased across Europe by her onetime romantic rival's sadistic brother -- an SS officer. These juxtapositions of imagined and real horror stories highlight in an urgent light the questions both have long provoked. What turns humans into monsters? Is anyone born evil, or is cruelty always learned? Can an evil person be made good? By learning what causes atrocities, can we prevent them? Why are horror stories so fascinating, and do they have any connection with real fears and dangers? ROOTS OF EVIL is a page-turner and genuinely disturbing book. It is also a story that cannot be put down once the murderers are unmasked and the last page read. If you like horror stories, read it. Then give it to one of those people who don't see why anyone would read them, and maybe they will understand.
Reviewed by Rebecca Nesvet, February 2005
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