Ghost Virus by Graham Masterton
If you are unfamiliar with Graham Masterton then I would imagine you are not much of a horror buff, or perhaps someone who does not look upon the recent movement toward classic era horror fiction of the 70's and 80's that has led to restorative projects like Paperbacks from Hell, and loads of entertaining pastiches and homages to a distinct period of two decades' worth of gore-filled, often horrifying, sometimes ridiculous, fiction from a time when small paperback formats ruled supreme. If you want to know more about this I recommend finding a copy of Grady Hendrix's Paperbacks from Hell overview of the era, a fine read which gives you some firm footing on which to stand in exploring this very specific style of horror fiction.
If you want to go real deep, just start by reading Graham Masterton! His prolific decades as what I like to think of as the Steven King of Europe (or would that be that King is the Masterton of America?) have led to some of the wildest, goriest and most bizarre stories in the genre. His early career kicked off with Manitou and then The Sphinx, and it just got better and better from there. I loved to read his books back int he 80's, and was pleasantly surprised to see that he is still up to no good even today.
I actually grabbed the fourth book in the Patel & Pardoe series first (What Hides in the Cellar) and quickly caught on that this book had recurring characters from prior novels so I sought out the first in the line: Ghost Virus. The protagonists of the series are both detectives in London district, Jerry Pardoe who normally likes to run down pretty thieves, and the somewhat more enigmatic detective seargent Jamila Patel, who happens to be especially good at what she does due to a little gift she has in which she can divine whether a person is telling truth or not. A weird murder involving a local immigrant family draws the two together as subsequent murders, each with an inexplicable cause of death, begin to form an odd pattern. That pattern grows over time as the detectives catch on that something very weird and supernatural is going on, and around midway through the book it goes off the rails. Then you get to the final act and realize you weren't even close to going off the rails until then.
I really hesitate to say anything about it because the sheer audacity of the source of the supernatural killings is so nuts, but I have to say a little bit: I will put it this way: the source of the murders, and the gradual build toward an explanation (which is, similar to many other horror tales a somehow acceptable yet also ludicrous explanation) is so over the top that I can't readily imagine anyone ever being able to turn this into a movie and be taken seriously; it works so much better in print than it ever could on a medium like film, simply because Masterton himself can make you desperately nervous around your own coat, thanks to the power of word in imagination....a feat that a more visual medium would have a very hard time pulling off without aiming for farce or campiness.
Masterton is such a great writer that it is hard for me to put a book of his down once I start and I blew through this over a couple days. I am now looking forward to starting the next book in the series, and I am intrigued to see where Masterton takes his two hapless detectives next. Solid A!
SPOILER SECTION:
Okay! Don't read on here if you want to read the book first. The supernatural threat in this book is a nutty concept: a ghost virus, a sort of propagating infectious supernatural plague that infects clothes. The clothes become possessed by the ghost memories of those who died under duress and desperately want to live....and can do so by finding victims they can get to wear them. At first its a couple coats, but then it turns into pretty much the entirety of everyone's wardrobes by the end of the book. The book suffers a bit from its focus on the detectives, mixed with the in-between chapters focusing on the victims. The ramp up to madness as you get close to the end and the nature of the threat looms large is not unlike the pacing in the movie Weapons, actually. You have a slow burn tale of weird murder and investigation, which slowly escalates to what seems like a supernatural serial killer using a strange medium, and then it turns into a full on zombie apocalypse at the end....but with animated clothing instead of zombies. Deadly, murderous, poltergeist-like possessed clothing flying everywhere and murdering likely hundreds in their wake. It is so utterly preposterous that I just stopped questioning the logic and went with the flow. It was like Masterton was challenging himself by seeing how he could write himself out of the corner he had painted himself into. Lovely stuff.
And that, you see, if why I can't wait to see what the subsequent novels in this series bring to the table!
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