Tampa, Florida, 1898: a frontier where the old world meets the new, and where miracles of transformation are possible. Dominating the town is the new Tampa Bay Hotel, with its tangle of Moorish minarets, cupolas and arches, its Byzantine domes and thirteen crescent moons, and its electric lighting designed by Edison. This fairy-tale castle anchored by the water's edge is a winter magnet for the best sorts of people - bankers and industrialists, stockbrokers and shipping merchants, attorneys and architects and celebrities who come form the big northern cities and from Europe. But the hotel does have one permanent year-round resident, a most exotic creature by the name of Monsieur Goulet III, wig-maker to the rich and glamorous, and indeed to any resident of Tampa whose desire for the transformations he creates is keen enough to meet his price. As the winter of 1898 nears its end, Goulet is entranced by the head of hair belonging to the young widow Marion Unger. But the raw material he needs to complete his greatest masterpiece is hard to come by, so he drives his gifted night-scavenger - a teenage cigar-maker who is a refugee from the war in Cuba - to increasingly extreme efforts.
As these three unlikely accomplices become ever more tightly entwined, the secret depths of Goulet's nature rise to the surface, leading to an electrifying conclusion.
Industry Reviews
A sinister French wigmaker plies his trade in late-19th-century Florida: New Zealander Chidgey's third outing (after The Strength of the Sun, 2002, etc.). Foundling Lucien Goulet learned his craft in Paris from a perruqier who took him on as an apprentice. Over time, Goulet's work excelled that of his master, who claimed it as his own-so Goulet murdered him and fled to America. Thus far the tale bears a striking resemblance to Patrick Suskind's Perfume, which also featured a Parisian foundling with an extraordinary gift who progressed to murder; but Chidgey lacks Suskind's ability to integrate the lore of a trade with a killer storyline. In 1895, after lying low for a year, Goulet establishes himself as a wigmaker at the spectacular Tampa Bay Hotel, setting for the climax. Parallel plotlines focus on Marion Unger, a young American widow with gorgeous white-blond hair, and Rafael Mendez, a Cuban teenager and apprentice cigar-maker. It's hair, of course, that brings them together by maddeningly slow degrees. Marion commissions a commemorative hair bracelet from Goulet, who later hires Rafael to scour refuse for hair clippings. When Marion catches him going through her trash, it's not exactly meeting cute, but she's gracious, and Rafael develops a serious crush on her. Unfortunately, readers are constantly drawn away from this welcome romantic interest by Goulet's pronouncements on the hair business and the stupidity of women. When Marion asks for a "transformation," he's ecstatic; she means a few extra curls, but Goulet, exhibiting a carnal joy in hair of such delicacy, produces a massive wig, even kidnapping a little girl to harvest more white-blond hair. Marion rejects the wig. Will this fire up Goulet's killer instincts? In the event, the close is more farcical than deadly. Weighty with period research, but with little narrative payoff. (Kirkus Reviews)
