A towering novel of three—count ’em—generations of hate, passion, ruthless ambition and turgid prose.

Istanbul, 1928

He sat upright in the chair, because he was that kind of man. Other men might slouch lazily, forgetting Darwin, curling their spines and emptying their bladders at random. But he was not like other men. He could sit immobile for weeks at a time, rigid, imperturbable, not once raising his hand for permission to go to the bathroom.

His waiting had the patience of a jungle predator, or maybe an insurance salesman. The quiet stillness of a man in control of his bowels and his feelings. He was Swedish, with the swarthy, heavily pigmented ugliness of his forbears. He had black hair and pink eyes, or vice versa, and a face you might find on a cough drop box. His nose exuded a brutal fascist machismo, while his delicate, ethereal beard seemed to say, “Hug me, I’m a poor little lamb who’s lost his way.” He was well over four feet tall, with the stiff muscular body of a man paralyzed from the wig down. A man with the musky sexual scent of incipient rigor mortis. A dead man. Quincy Lopez was looking at Istanbul for the last time. It was not a pretty sight.

London, 1953

Chauncey Haggrider lay awake in his pink bunny pajamas, trembling uncontrollably and making a sound like an air raid siren going off underwater. He wasn’t cold, oh no, not him. Chauncey was afraid. Afraid of losing his mind. Afraid of losing control of his bowels. Afraid of any number containing a repeating decimal. But most of all he was afraid of his wife, Angelique. She filled him with an excruciating yet strangely delicious fear far greater than his everyday fear of giant spiders and farmhands named Wilbur. Angelique was tall, sleek and hard, with beauty like an elegantly engraved ice pick. Her kisses were like liquid nitrogen. Her touch was like falling into a bottomless glacial crevasse. Sex with her was like a weekend on the dark side of Pluto.

She made him perform unspeakable acts and suffer unbearable humiliations. Once, at the moment of ecstasy, she slipped a hunk of dry ice down his shorts. His screams were heard across the Channel. Another time they made love in front of a notary public. It was too horrible.

He knew she was only using him to get at Bob “Bunghole” Roberts, chairman of the board for United Carcinogens. How like her father she was! In fact, barring her beard, which was a bright orange (to match her volcanic temper), she was the spitting image of Quincy Lopez. And yet somehow Chauncey loved her despite their age difference. He was 123, and she a mere 121. He had sat in Parliament for so long that everyone thought he was just a dirty old spittoon covered with lichens. He smelled like Gary, Indiana, but she—ah, she smelled like an ocean breeze, like a handful of wildflowers. A musky sexual scent, dark, enticing…nauseating. He turned over to look at her, chained in the bed next to his. She lay so still, so quiet, as if—

“Angelique?” he whispered. She didn’t answer. “D-d-darling?” he said a bit louder. No reply. He shook her lightly. She was colder than the coffee at Joe’s Carry Out (“Eat Here and You’ll Have to Be Carried Out!”). He slapped her hard—once, twice. Harder. No response. He set her hair on fire and warmed himself by the flames. She didn’t move. He took a clawhammer and drove a tenpenny nail into her palm. At that he thought he saw the trace of a sneer flicker across her blue lips. Then he lifted the hammer high and started swinging with the abandon of a child whose parents are gone for the day. He was still swinging two days later when they carried him out. As he was dragged from the room kicking and screaming and biting off his own fingers, she opened one eye, smiled and said cheerfully, “Quiet, please. I’m trying to sleep.” It was too, too horrible.

Los Angeles, 1979

Clancy Haggrider-Roper was the typical happy-go-lucky Irishman: black as anthracite, with a plate in his lower lip and shiny ornamental copper necklaces and bracelets adorning his ritually tattooed body. He was also a simple family man whose only desire was to breed rare man-eating orchids and (in a small way) to rule the world. He had his father’s face and his mother’s wardrobe.

Clancy was, like his father, a swinger. He swung low, like a Sweet Chariot, and he swung high, like the Sultans of Swing and other dudes too gone to mention. He swung at Cindy’s Love-Inn and Bigelow’s Bigamy Bungalow and Sambo’s.

Right now he was swinging very slowly from a gaudy green polyester necktie attached to a unique overhead lava lamp. As the last gurgling breath left his bloated, dissolute carcass, he thought of Mrs. Herpes, whoever she was, and he wondered who would pick up the tab for the lava lamp, which would never be the same. Probably nobody, he thought. It was a stupid thought, even for a congenital idiot like Clancy. But it was too, too true. And too terribly horrible.