Exquisite Corpse is the third horror novel by Poppy Z. Brite

Poppy Z. Brite

Poppy Z. Brite is an American author. Brite initially achieved notoriety in the gothic horror genre of literature in the early 1990s after publishing a string of successful novels and short story collections...

. The protagonist of the story is Andrew Compton, an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 convicted homosexual serial killer

Serial killer

A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...

, cannibal

Cannibalism

Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...

 and necrophiliac.
The novel unfolds in alternating chapters from the points of view of the four main characters. Andrew Compton, a convicted serial killer (based on real life serial killer

Serial killer

A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...

 Dennis Nilsen

Dennis Nilsen

Dennis Andrew Nilsen also known as the Muswell Hill Murderer and the Kindly Killer is a British serial killer who lived in London....

), leaves his prison cell as a dead man in a self-induced cataleptic trance and rises again to build a new life.