As a young man I remember thrilling to the phantasmagorical novels of A. Merritt, like Ship of Ishtar, and the novel She by H. Rider Haggard, the fantastical story of an immortal white Queen. Brinckman, owes a huge debt to H. Rider Haggard, as he tells the tale of a modern woman from Ottawa who, as a neglected and abused child discovers the novel She, and interprets and adopts a passage from the novel, which she takes to mean that it's alright to kill anyone who stands between her and what she desires. At twelve she kills her drunken mother's abusive boyfriend, and lets her mother take the rap and go to prison. At fourteen she kills two girls, a former close friend and the girl who broke up their relationship. Her father is a member of motorcycle gang, and she quickly learns about keeping books for the club as well as the intricacies of money laundering. She eventually steals half her father's assets and rips off the Hells Angels for some twenty million dollars. Faking her own death, she heads for a Caribbean Island where she discovers an isolated tribe that immediately worship her as the reincarnation of their long dead leader. As with Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, absolute power corrupts and the girl, now known as Ayesha, becomes involved in voodoo and her subjects in cannibalism. The melodramatic happenings are told in a calm narrative voice and the pace is excellent. The downside is that Brinckman tells a little too much about a multitude of subjects, ranging from voodoo rituals, to turning cocoa leaves into cocaine, to money laundering. Still, this is an entertaining novel.

W.P. Kinsella (Books in Canada)

A young Ottawa girl finds a copy of H. Rider Haggard's 1888 bestseller She in the old Carnegie library and finds a strategy for life.

A police officer falls in love with a beautiful and courageous young woman without realizing that she is a killer. Hattie considers murder to be good for the planet Earth, for the goddess Gaia, whom she calls Ayesha, and to be consistent with Kant's Metaphysicis of Ethics when limited to one's enemies, and those who are in her way.