Headhunter

It all starts when Lilah Kemp, one-time librarian and sometime spiritualist, inadvertently lets Kurtz out of page 92 of Heart of Darkness and is unable to get him back in. While Kurtz is stalking the streets of Toronto, Lilah frantically begins her search for a Marlow to help her deal with this literary villain.<br/><br/>But who will believe a schizophrenic unemployed librarian? Especially after she has discovered that the pale, thin man with the dyed black hair is Dr. Rupert Kurtz, the Parkin Institute's supremely powerful Psychiatrist-in-Chief?<br/><br/>A sickening pall has fallen over the city - a new and horrifying disease called sturnusemia. Birds, apparently its carrier, are being gassed by municipal death squads. Lately, official word is that cats and dogs are also carriers - and the deadly yellow vapor of the D-Squads becomes an everyday sight. Only one lone civil servant - called Smith Jones in Kurtz's file - has voiced his suspicions about the new plague. But he seems to have disappeared.<br/><br/>And in the boardrooms and bedrooms of the city, the powerful and the rich meet and part: the celebrated Wylie sisters, each held in thrall by her own demon - or husband; Warren Ellis, who learns a bitter lesson about the power of image; the surgeon's wife, Emma, whose legendary beauty is testament to her husband's skill with a scalpel - and who falls in love with a mystery man named John Gatz; John Dai Bowen, the society photographer, and his Club of Men where desire and needs can be so seamlessly joined; and Austin Purvis, the psychiatrist whose roster of wealthy and influential patients is being raided by Kurtz himself.<br/><br/>And then there are the children - the growing number of mute, severely traumatized teenagers. What is it they cannot bear to remember? What can they never forget? Why does one young boy react so violently when he sees Kurtz? Who is George - and who is responsible for his dreadful death?<br/><br/>Lilah Kemp, witness to events tearing the very fabric of her society, turns as always to her beloved sources of power and solace - the great works of literature. As she fingers Peter Rabbit's shoes for luck, she prays for Marlow to find Kurtz - the Headhunter - and bring him back from the darkness before it is too late.