Puzzleman

By Christopher Alan Broadstone

A MACABRE THRILLER For Those Who Love POE, Clive BARKER, and The TWILIGHT ZONE.

"It's impossible," Erik told Amanda. "Ya can't kill him. Not even God can do that."

Fall into a world of Grumemonsters--ghastly creatures that thrive in the Pipeworld, a living hell created by the Puzzleman--where no one is sane down a drain, and down a drain no one is sane.

Follow Amanda Zimmerman, a young sculptress despondently searching for understanding after the tragic death of her infant son...
John Rainbow (a professor of classical history) and Jeannette Orf vre (a beautiful French vintner) still longing for the love they shared during World War II...
The legless man, seeking retribution and escape from a horror worse than death...
And Ben Henfry, a retired detective itching to get back in the game...

Disparate lives, yet each are meticulously woven together over time to play a special part in the Puzzleman's twisted vision of eternal life. Into the black Cathedral Fleur du Sang and into the pipes they must go--into a terrifying world of Grumemonsters, where the inaccuracies of accepted history and the gruesome future of mankind are laid bare. For Amanda, Professor Rainbow, Jeannette, the legless man, and Detective Henfry, the Puzzleman is a personal demon awakened into a living nightmare--and it's up to them alone to wage their fight for sanity and salvation. A fight that swells into a harrowing escape, spanning two continents and the supernatural perversion of time and dimension. Welcome to the Pipeworld.
Welcome to truth and eternity.
Welcome to the world of the Puzzleman...where no one is sane down a drain.
And down a drain no one is sane.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1502729695
• ISBN13: 9781502729699
• Release Date: October 2014
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 414 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Excellent fiction from a very dark and twisted mind

Christopher Alan Broadstone is one of the darkest authors in horror fiction today. Puzzleman, as a character, is more twisted, more evil, and more demented than anything Clive Barker or Steven King has ever created. The Dark Man (The Stand) and Pennywise (IT)would do well to take lessons from Puzzleman. The book is incredibly well written. The graphic imagery of Christopher Alan Broadstone's writing is the stuff that nightmares spring from. There are multiple story lines being told and Christopher's ability to keep them straight, believable, and memorable is unmatched in anything I've read since the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Chris creates a history behind the Puzzleman that creates a deep horror of the knowledge that Puzzleman's existence is eternal and he's responsible for the most horrific acts of history including the holocaust. If you buy one horror novel this year, make it this one! And then get THREE DEAD GIRLS (DVD) to witness this incredibly dark and twisted mind bring three shorts to terrifyingly beautiful imagery with the outstanding actor Tony Simmons!

Deep In The Pipes and Beyond...

Visionary filmmaker Christopher Alan Broadstone, whose cutting edge shorts MY SKIN, SCREAM FOR ME and HUMAN NO MORE rank as some of the most unnerving and artistic films of recent memory, allows his morbid imagination free reign with the 400 page novel, PUZZLEMAN. Upsetting, enthralling and charged with visceral energy, it features one of the most twisted villains of the entire genre, and drags us through an atmosphere that is bizarre, gruesome and incredible. Buying an ancient wire-coiled earring whose layered, random patterns house a terrible secret, Texas sculptress Amanda Zimmerman falls under the influence of a preternatural creature. Called the Puzzleman - because of his horribly mismatched body and lop-sided head - he attempts to lure Amanda into the grue-filled, gummy hell that is the pipeworld, so that he can feed off her emotional pain amid a torrent of perpetually squirming body parts and "grume-monsters". Using one of his former captives, the quite literally "Legless Man", as bait, The Puzzleman drowns Amanda in the vertiginous nightmare of her own personal demons. Playing off her torment at the death of her infant son, which she blames on God's absence and absolute lack of interest, the unbalanced creature takes possession of Amanda, forcing her into his terrifying limbo, frozen in the fleshy agony that exists before one spirals into death. Meanwhile, a disparate thread of characters, including Professor John Rainbow, Detective Ben Henfry and wine merchant Jeanette Orfevre, all find themselves entwined in the Puzzleman's sick designs. Linked by their associations with black, blood-caked Cathedral Fleur du Sang that stands on the ominous "Hollow Hill" in France, the diverse group must transcend the barriers of space, time and logic, to put an end to the primeval freak, when they find the key that will take them down the dreaded pipes... From the beginning, when we are introduced to the aggressive, bitter Amanda, as she argues with a crack-addicted street vendor, PUZZLEMAN is a hard-edged piece of work. Concerned with angst, Broadstone uses the bereaved, insecure young woman as a springboard for his own rumination on the dread that haunts us all. A tormented artist, Amanda immediately reminds one of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman's complex and brooding protagonists. Fittingly, Amanda creates sculptures in order to, as it is put, "recreate life", to strike one mark against the dreaded D word. Despite invoking other works, PUZZLEMAN is committed to achieving its own ends. Like the best extreme visionaries, the writer takes a notion and explores it with conviction, through a myriad of beautifully drawn characters and otherworldly situations. In an extraordinary sequence, Amanda flashes back to her childhood, where she agonizes over the "ultimate truth" of mankind. Pressing her father why exactly the grass is green, insistent Amanda finds that meaning constantly slides away, that truth cannot be grafted onto our questions and that r