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Over the years I have tried to remember the title/author of a book I read as a teenager. I have very vague memories of thinking it was good, and every so often something re-triggers me trying to find it.

As a rough guide to time, I was a teenager in the 70s/80s.

The, very few, details I remember are:

  • One of the (main?) characters is a woman who's blind but doesn't know it. She gets all her "visual" information from people nearby (I think it says her flat is laid out exactly the same as the guy who lives above her because that's what she "sees").

  • Some sort of demon thing is killing people (in gruesome ways).

  • Alphabetically the author was fairly early in the alphabet (from where I think it was on the library shelves). Possibly first quarter of the alphabet.

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  • blind lady + killer reminds me of Red Dragon, the first novel by Thomas Harris to feature Hannibal Lecter. The timing fits (1981), author name possibly fits, but the character knows she is blind iirc- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dragon_(novel)
    – NKCampbell
    Oct 25, 2017 at 16:28
  • Ah. So she's got some sort of telepathy / sense stealing?
    – FuzzyBoots
    Oct 25, 2017 at 16:40
  • @FuzzyBoots indeed. Oct 26, 2017 at 1:08

1 Answer 1

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The story about the woman who is blind and doesn't know it is "The Four-Hour Fugue" by Alfred Bester. This story was incorporated into the beginning of the 1980 novel Golem100 which is likely what you read, if it was book length.

enter image description here

Here is the relevant section:

"Were you born blind?" he murmured that night.

She sat bolt upright in the bed "What? Blind? What?"

"You heard me."

"I've had perfect sight all my life."

"Ah. Then you don't know, darling. I rather suspected that might be it."

The novel length work is indeed about a "demon thing", the golem100 of the title.

IMHO, the short version is far superior.

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    Fantastic! Thanks, that has bugged me for years. Oct 26, 2017 at 9:24

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