Candid and strangely intense work of fiction (12)
I believe the answer is:
frankenstein
'work of fiction' is the definition.
Both the answer and definition are singular nouns.
Maybe you can see a link between them that I can't see?
'candid and strangely intense' is the wordplay.
'candid' becomes 'frank' (synonyms).
'and' says to put letters next to each other.
'strangely' indicates an anagram.
'intense' is an anagram of 'enstein'.
'frank'+'enstein'='FRANKENSTEIN'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for frankenstein that I've seen before include "Animator" , "Mary Shelley's monster" , "disastrous inventor" , "Monster creator (M. Shelley)" , "madman in laboratory" .)