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The Alchemist in the Attic
Antonio Urias, author
San Francisco 1899.
As the city prepares to welcome the new century, a twisted killer enacts his final, grisly legacy.
Theodore Atwood is a disgraced reporter desperate to find a story that can save his career. No one knows San Francisco's seedy underbelly better, but the deeper he digs the more grotesque and bizarre the case becomes.
Haunted by dreams and phantoms, Atwood follows the killer's trail from the den of thieves and bodysnatchers to a secret society of spiritualists and occultists. Meanwhile, hidden in the shadows the alchemist readies for his enemies. Disgraced and dying, he will sacrifice countless lives to complete his terrible work.
As the city descends into a fevered nightmare around him, Atwood is caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse. He will have to fight to the brink of madness and beyond in order to survive. For he has entered a world of dark science and alchemy and there is no turning back.
The Alchemist in the Attic is an occult mystery.
Reviews
The end of the 19th century has brought reporter Theodore “Teddy” Atwood and his newspaper, the San Francisco Oracle, to the edge of ruin. What Teddy needs to survive is a fantastic story with at least a grain of truth—and he thinks he may have it when two notorious grave robbers return to the city. But they and the city’s other grave robbers are only the first step down a dark path leading to murders and a patron who scares even them to silence. Teddy believes that a mysterious recluse named Marius Valencourt is the malefactor, and Valencourt’s tight-lipped neighbors appear to agree. Pursuing Valencourt throws Teddy headfirst against an arcane power that kills some and drives others insane. Urias keeps the pace quick and ramps up the pressure on Teddy, making for a gritty, breathless, sometimes bewildering tale in which financial ruin often seems the best of Teddy’s possible dooms. If the sum of the secrets feels somewhat anticlimactic and well trod, readers will have an exciting ride getting there nevertheless. (BookLife)
