Dante , the Gothic , the Abject , and the Grotesque in Mathieu Missoffe ’ s Thriller-Crime Drama Black Spot
generated in Laurene by atrocity after atrocity , most visually rendered , adds a level of dreadful urgency to the sheriff ’ s unrelenting search for the Mayor ’ s missing daughter Marion , the story-line for which constitutes the series ’ central plot . As the story goes , Marion disappeared sixty days before District Attorney Frank Siriano arrived in Villefranche and during “ initiation night ,” a local ritual requiring local teens who have turned eighteen in the past year to spend a night alone in the supposedly Wendigo-haunted forest . Indeed , Laurene ’ s search is driven by at least two obsessions that , in turn , fuel her compulsions .
One obsession is Laurene ’ s haunting and inescapable recollection of her own initiation night twenty years before . On that night , likely terrified by rumors of the creature , she was kidnapped by a “ woodsman ” ( whom she does not or cannot identify ), chained to a mountainside , and left to die screaming for the help that did not come . The ordeal that Lauren experienced has contributed to shaping the character of the compulsive , unsmiling woman that she has become . ( In fact , to insure her survival , Lauren used a sharp stone to cut off two fingers from her left hand and free herself from the manacle binding her to the mountain .) Additionally , this experience constituted Laurene ’ s own rite of passage into the hellish and therefore terrifying and horrifying dimension of Villefranche . In spite of this ordeal , perhaps because of it , Laurene displays unrelenting determination in her search for Marion Steiner and in her fight against the “ falling ... darkness ” that threatens to consume not only the mayor ’ s daughter but that manifests itself in the town ’ s unusually high murder rate .
However , Laurene ’ s constant , often uncontrollable replaying of the memories of her three nights of horror , combined with her search for Marion Stein , provides the foundation for another possibly inexplicable compulsion , this one to drive the
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