The Hellfire Club

The Hellfire Club is a psychological horror novel by Peter Straub. It was published in 1996 and combines literary mystery with supernatural and historical horror.

The story follows a writer who uncovers murders linked to postwar secret societies and suppressed histories. The investigation turns his professional curiosity into a threat to his own life and sense of reality.

The novel uses the idea of secret societies and the name Hellfire Club as part of its atmosphere and mystery. It is a work of fiction, not a factual history of the eighteenth-century clubs associated with that name.

Both Peter Straub and Stephen King write psychologically rich horror, but The Hellfire Club centers on a writer, murder investigations, and hidden literary and social histories. Straub and King also collaborated on the 1984 novel The Talisman, though The Hellfire Club is a separate book.