Review 106: The Red Fog by Nicole Tanner

The Red Fog
by Nicole Tanner
Copyright: © 2009
CreateSpace
$9.99 Paperback
$5.99 Kindle E-dition
ISBN: 1442141115
168 Pages

Reviewed by Guest Reviewer and author Linda Welch

Apart from noticing that the content would benefit from right alignment and some tidying up, I found The Red Fog by Nicole Tanner to be skillfully written, intense and mesmerizing.

When I looked at the first chapter, before I got into the story, I was immediately impressed by a writing style which is highly descriptive and manages to express such atmosphere. This is what draws me into a story more than anything else. Deana, the protagonist and narrator, talks in a casual, natural manner, and (I feel) projects a somber sense of foreboding appropriate to her tale.

In chapter one, college student Deana drives to her local store one bitterly cold evening and on the way back as she stops at a red light she sees Brent, the man who raped her and several other girls, standing in the crosswalk right in front of her car. As is the case with many rape victims, Deana and the other girls blamed themselves for the rape and therefore did not report Brent to the police. Brent recognizes her.

He twirled the blade around, tossing it over and through his fingers, still smiling and leaning to the side, putting his weight on one foot. My lungs still refused to work properly, and I opened my mouth in an attempt to successfully breathe. He looked right at my eyes and ran his tongue over his lips. His smile grew wider. Then my vision started to cloud, started to take on a reddish tint, like the light of a lamp with a red scarf draped over it. I suppose it could have been from the blood rushing to my head because of my difficulty breathing, but I’ve come to believe now it was much more than just that.

Overcome by terror, Deana deliberately runs into him and then drives over him to make sure he is dead.

At first Deana is torn by guilt. Visions of Brent increasingly intrude into her life. When she makes love to her casual boyfriend, Jon, she atypically takes control and finds herself identifying with her rapist, and sees Jon as herself, as the victim. She feels an incredible sense of power. From thereon, while she holds internal arguments with herself, one moment justifying the murder and the next feeling guilty and appalled, the feeling of unparalleled power takes over her life.

Weaving through the narration are flashbacks to earlier, significant events, including traumatic incidents of child and spousal abuse, giving you insight into what motivates Deana’s behavior. You realize that the rape was not the beginning, it was the climax, the catalyst, the point at which her subconscious cried, Enough!, taking Deana in a tragic direction.

Deana witnesses an off-duty cop kill a prostitute who refused to supply sexual favors and discovers he has murdered other prostitutes for the same reason. She decides to keep quiet about the murders but her inner demon won’t let her be.

I became confident and malicious, feelings my life up until that point had never given me the pleasure of experiencing. My vision blurred. I wasn’t really thinking about anything but getting that bastard back for what he had done. I started to plan, very methodically, very carefully. I had to go to the park that night. That was clear. I had to pose as a prostitute and accept the proposition put forth by Officer Kalowski and then at the perfect moment, I would strike, avenging the death of all the other women. That was the right thing to do.

Officer Kalowski will not be her last victim.

The pressure on Deana’s fragile sanity builds when Jon leaves her for his old lover, and when she confesses all to her best friend Brian, the one steady influence in her life, his fear and rejection of her sends her over the edge and to a final, fated confrontation.

This is a fascinating look into the mind of a victim become perpetrator as we watch her disintegration. It is not light reading but it is enthralling. It is also not a story for the faint-hearted. Scenes of sex, rape and murder are fairly explicit, but not gratuitous.

By the end of the book, although I could not condone Deana’s actions, neither could I condemn a person who clearly was no longer in her right mind. I thought, how sad, the poor girl never stood a chance. She was doomed since childhood, and eventually the red fog of insanity claimed her.

The Red Fog is an impressive debut novel by Nicole Tanner. I stayed up far too late reading it each evening and laid it aside with reluctance. I hope to see more from her.