Trying to find a Sci-Fi book from very vaguely remembered details

Question

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.

Answer 1

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.

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.