Destined to become one of the most controversial novels of our time, The Dark Fantastic is an explosive exploration of racial themes and hatreds set within the framework of a terrifying mystery.
Charles Witter Kirwan is sick. He is dying and he knows it. His great pride is the old mansion, now crumbling, in which he lives. He would do anything — anything — to preserve it. He owns the apartment house next door; his great hatred is for the tenants who inhabit it.
The tenants are black and Kirwan hates the way they abuse and despoil the building, the filth they leave in the hallways, the grafitti on the walls, the litter in the streets. He hates the way they fall behind in the rent and then move away in the middle of the night. He hates them.
A grand scheme is invented: rather than wait for his illness to consume him, he will blow himself up, inside the apartment building, taking all the hated tenants with him in one big, beautiful explosion.
John Milano, the private detective who made his debut in Star Light, Star Bright, falls in love with one of the tenants, a beautiful black militant, while investigating a complex case set in New York’s art world.
Kirwan and Milano, appearing in alternate chapters, each is involved in his own quest until, inevitably, their paths cross, leading to a stunning, chilling climax.