Book Review: The Venus Complex
I don’t know about many of our listeners, but I look at the world we live in today and can’t help but feel how ugly it’s becoming. With each passing day there’s a heightened anxiety when I walk outside around other people, and I don’t like it. Maybe that’s why I was constantly finding myself relating to Michael Friday, the pissed off, art historian and psychotic anti-hero in Barbie Wilde’s highly disturbing and sexy crime novel, The Venus Complex.
The story begins with Michael starting a daily journal to cope with his recent downfall into depression after the death of his wife Angie in a car accident. Surprisingly, in the first entry he confesses that he drove the car into a tree on purpose because she was having an affair with one of his best friends. It’s not much of a loss since he didn’t care for her that much anyway. Afterwards, he’s left with severe head trauma which causes him to experience perverse dreams ranging from memories of his sad childhood to having sex with dead women. With each new entry, Michael’s mental state slowly begins to breakdown into a silent rage that only gets worse through lack of sex and the continuing deterioration of the civilized world. That’s until he meets a woman by the name of Elene Sheppard, a psychologist who helps the police with profiling serial killers. He becomes obsessed with her. She’s going to be his new project, so he can have a reason to live again. But when she declines to take him on as a new patient, he snaps.
So, what’s the only thing a potential psychopath can do when they don’t get what they want? Well, become one of course. Barbie Wilde does an excellent job of creating a psychopath with a psychosis that’s more sophisticated than your typical killer. Instead of creating a Hannibal Lector or Patrick Bateman clone, she’s made Michael a more artistic serial killer that who uses the goddess of love Venus to create a series of murders that he wants to stand for something. I compare him to the sadistic murderer John Doe from David Fincher’s classic horror film Se7en. The only difference between them is that Michael is into kinky sex. Lots of it. Wilde doesn’t hold back on the eroticism here. The sex gets juicy in certain passages. It’s only when Wilde starts to throw murder into the mix, that it all turns bizarre and sinister. Make no mistake, Michael’s one sick puppy when he carries out his killings.
She also creates very horrific, sexual imagery when it comes to Michael’s dreams. One of my favorites is when he imagines himself as superhero serial killer and he has to save Elene from the Devil. Her description of Satan is one of the most unique I’ve read in quite sometime.
While the sex and death elements are certainly disturbing, the parts that I found getting under my skin were the rants Michael would write about concerning the decline of our civilization. To put it simply, he thinks mankind is going to the pits and I couldn’t agree more. These sections of the book made it hard for me to read because of the truth of how stupid humans can be sometimes. Or maybe all the time? I found that much scarier than anything Michael did to his victims. But, maybe I’m being too serious? Wilde does inject enough humor throughout the story to make sure it doesn’t become all gloom and doom. Some of Michael’s rants on the decline of humanity had me in stitches. Jesus Christ, do we really need books on dating?
Overall, The Venus Complex is a solid piece of storytelling that has a lot more on its mind than murder and sex. Also, I don’t want our listeners to think I’m agree with Michael’s actions. I don’t believe in them at all, but if you look at the subtext of some of his entries, I believe Michael is pleading with humanity to get over itself and be happy with the simple things in life. Now, that I can agree with.
HIGHLY RECOMMENED!
The Venus Complex is published by Comet Press and is available as a paperback and Kindle on all the Amazons, etc. It’s also soon to be an audio book narrated by Doug “Hellraiser’s Pinhead” Bradley.
