15 January 2021

The Children God Forgot

 

By Graham Masterton
Horror

My Review


I always start a review of any Graham Masterton book with a little of my own (ancient) history. During the 1980s my teenage years were spent devouring Masterton's horror novels. School homework? Pfft, what school homework?! I loved getting my hands on anything he'd written. As he has aged so have I. Now, almost 40 years later, I feel immensely nostalgic whenever a new Masterton book is published.

Well, what can I say except that this was one crazy bizarre read! Malformed foetuses are hopping from womb to womb. Yes, you heard me right! Imagine going to bed and sensing movement underneath the bedcovers. Suddenly you're wide awake fighting off a spider-like creature with an oversized cherubic baby's head. As if that's not terrifying enough, it's creeping up your legs trying to burrow itself inside you, EEK! 

I really enjoyed this book, the second in the series featuring DC Jerry Pardoe and DS Jamila Patel. It was such a fun read with likeable characters. Yes, it was gory and definitely not for the fainthearted but those of us who've grown up reading twisted 1980s horror will love it. 

Set in multi-cultural London, it contained a fair amount of British humour which lightened the mood — there were moments when I literally couldn't stop laughing at the sheer craziness! It was outrageously entertaining and I do hope a third book is in the pipeline.               

Book Source: Review copy from the publisher
My Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Head of Zeus (7th Oct 2021)

The Blurb


A TERRIFYING BIRTH
A young woman is rushed to the hospital with stabbing pains in her stomach. The chief surgeon delivers a living child with the face of an angel and the body of a tentacled monster. The doctors are unanimous that the baby must die.

AN ESCAPE FROM THE DARK
Engineer Gemma is plunged into darkness in a tunnel beneath London. Before she escapes, a strange green light illuminates a cluster of ghostly figures. Gemma is certain they were children.

A SUPERNATURAL THREAT
DC Jerry Pardoe and DS Jamila Patel, of Tooting Police, have investigated the occult before – but nothing as strange and horrible as what they must confront in the city sewers. Down here in the dark, where the dead come back to life, witchcraft is the only force strong enough to save you...

The Author



GRAHAM MASTERTON was born in Edinburgh in 1946, and at the age of 17 he joined his local newspaper as a junior reporter. He was appointed deputy editor of Mayfair at the age of 21, and at 24 he became executive editor of Penthouse. After leaving Penthouse, he wrote The Manitou, a horror novel that became his first bestseller and was adapted into a film starring Tony Curtis.

Graham spent twenty-five years as one of the world's bestselling horror authors before he turned his talent to crime writing. Inspired by the five years in which he and his late wife lived in Cork, he created a series of novels featuring Katie Maguire, the first female superintendent in the Irish police force. The first book in the Katie Maguire series, White Bones, was published by Head of Zeus in 2012 and became a top-ten bestseller. Graham continues to write thrillers and horror novels alongside the Katie Maguire crime series, which has now sold over a million copies worldwide.

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