Book Review: The Horrible Secret on Royal Street

Review of R. A. Albano's The Horrible Secret on Royal Street

reviewer: Marta Bay

reviewer rating: 4

“Truth is stranger than fiction.”  This common adage is especially true in the case of Madame Delphine Lalaurie, a Creole woman living in New Orleans in the 1830s.  Although the people of her community respected and even admired her, none of them could guess the shocking secret that she kept for many years.  Madame was a sadist, and in the ante-bellum South this Creole lady could carry out her deepest desires and passions on a race of individuals who frequently became the victims of mad tormentors and crazed perverts at a time when all was not equal in this country.  The race referred to here is, of course, the black race, most of whom lived in squalid and horrendous circumstances, most of whom lived as slaves.  Many slaves were subject to the capricious whims of their masters; and, perhaps, no master was more capricious than Madame Delphine Lalaurie.

That such sadism was a common occurrence at that sad time in America’s history is now common knowledge.  As Harriet Beecher Stowe depicted in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), a slave owner could become quite violent and ruthless in his treatment of slaves.  But where the evil Simon Legree is a character of fiction, Delphine Lalaurie is a person of fact.  Real violence is far more shocking than that which we know is fictional, and that such violence comes from a woman makes it all the more shocking still.

In The Horrible Secret on Royal Street, R. A. Albano delves into the psyche of Madame Delphine and explores the effects that her behavior had on her family.  But Albano’s book is not a novel.  Rather, it contains a short story account of Madame Delphine’s doings followed by a screenplay of the same tale.  The effect of reading both story and screenplay makes for interesting reading.  The story appears to have been written first, and changes were evidently made in adapting it for the screen.  Such changes actually contribute to the mood and effect of the story rather than taking away from it.

In both story and screenplay Albano creates a literary frame.  An amateur historian living in New Orleans in the present time becomes friends with a Creole gentleman and his wife.  As the story progresses, the reader discovers that this wife, Marguerite Gagnon, is a direct descendant of Madame Delphine.  Cleverly, Albano hints that lovely Marguerite may have also inherited a trait or two from her notorious ancestor.  But since keeping secrets is one of the themes of this story, the truth behind Marguerite’s sometimes odd acts of behavior cannot be revealed.

In the short story, Albano also uses the device of a diary, written by Madame Delphine’s young and most assuredly frightened daughter.  The daughter vents her fears and concerns in her writing, and it is through an examination of this diary that the young historian of present-day New Orleans comes to understand the sadistic perversions that became an almost daily routine in the life of Madame Delphine Lalaurie.

The young daughter also appears in the screenplay, but her role here is to prevent a lens by which to view the mother.  The screenplay also presents a far deeper interpretation as to what Madame Delphine may have been thinking during the times when her sadistic obsession consumed her.

Albano’s The Horrible Secret on Royal Street provides a strong addition to the genre frequently referred to as psychological horror.  The use of multiple narrators as well as the double interpretation of the tale (from both story and screenplay formats) draws the reader into an almost dubious role of supporter for the evil protagonist.  The reader, perhaps out of a sense of her or his own latent sadistic tendencies, cannot help but be curious as to how far Madame Delphine will go to satisfy her desires.  After all, what draws a reader to such fiction in the first place?