Bitter Pill

April 27, 2020
In Church’s intricate third and final Dark Web thriller (after Dark Video), Carlos De Palma, who runs a pornography business from his home in a wealthy Seattle, Wash., suburb, offers a special service. For a steep fee, clients can acquire amateur “talent” to participate in their sexual fantasies. These teenage girls and boys are drugged by bartenders and then delivered to the client’s door. Meanwhile, in Cape Town, South Africa, Robbie Cullen, a university student, is gradually ensnared in Carlos’s web; Julian Lynch, one of Carlos’s clients, is becoming increasingly violent and demanding; and disgruntled police captain Maryka Vermaak dismisses the claims of drinks tampering at local bars, feeling that she’s wasting her time “playing cry-on-my-shoulder with snotty-nosed university students.” A kidnapping ups the ante; oddly, a series of murders is of no interest to the police in what comes across as a neglected subplot. Church expertly juggles the multiple story lines all the way to the sordid, frantic maelstrom of the denouement. Established fans will best appreciate this trip through the seamy, dangerous terrain on the borders of sexual desire.