The old saying, "don't judge a book by its cover" is proven right once again with this story of mental patients using druid rituals to escape by literally absorbing themselves into the walls. It jumped right off the used bookstore shelf into my basket because horror cover art doesn't get much better than this.

The story was compelling enough to keep me reading - lots of inventively gruesome deaths at a remarkable pace, once it gets going - but ugh I was not at all surprised when I read the author's bio. It 100% reads like the weirdly adolescent sexual fantasy that can be found in vintage skin mags like Penthouse and Playboy. If he'd left that out and focused on just the horror, it might have made it to 3 stars for me. As it is, half my rating is for the cover art, which is also the only reason I'm going to keep it on my shelf instead of tossing it in the donation bin. ( )

This is, without a doubt, my least favorite Masterton book thus far. The main protagonist is unlikable, his actions are inexplicable, and instead of feeling for his plight, I just found him to be annoying. The plot was one I had a hard time getting into. I don't really understand why, this type of content is normally right up alley. By the last few chapters I found myself rushing through just to be done with it. I had no real interest in finding out conclusion. I usually really enjoy Masterton's work....but, this one just wasn't on point for me. ( )

Entertaining supernatural horror. Sixty two years ago all the resident of The Oaks asylum for the criminally insane vanish without a trace. One day a man is lured to the forgotten mansion and convinces himself that he can turn it into a resort. Mayhem ensues.

Effective gross out moments at the expense of anything even remotely approaching plausibility. I've gone through King, Barker, James Herbert and (the under appreciated) David Martin; now I'm going to read more Masterton.

Another book from my past tracked down on Amazon, all I remembered about this was the (rather memorable) cover and the fact that when I originally read it a number of years ago I was terrified. So would the book still have the power to scare me now?
The story revolves around Jack Reed who stumbles across, quite by accident, an abandoned Gothic mansion which he discovers used to be a mental asylum before being mysteriously closed down and seemingly forgotten about. All of the inmates disappeared one night from the asylum and eager to prevent a scandal or panic with the local residents the authorities hushed this up, claiming they were transferred and closing down the institute. The truth however, as always, is a lot scarier. They did disappear that night … into the walls, and now Jack has to follow them to rescue not only his son but also, it seems, the world from this unholy menace who can literally come out of any surface to drag screaming victims down with them.
This book hasn’t lost the power to scare the reader, it’s more visceral than a Stephen king horror novel, the terror is perhaps more in your face but this does seem to come at a cost to the characters. Not only are their actions sometimes inexplicable, they’re also quite un-likeable which is a shame as it is a good wait-till-night-time and read with a flashlight honest to god horror story. ( )

In Masterton's latest, quite effective horror novel, Jack Reed, who runs a muffler shop, comes upon a "castle" that serves as the setting for this gruesome horror story. Jack decides to turn the abandoned mansion into a resort--not that he really knows how. He knows even less about the Druid magic that allowed the recent occupants, dangerous mental patients, to "escape" into the building's walls. Led by a vicious brute, Quintus, the "earth walkers" kidnap Jack's son, Randy, and demand the return of the priest who had trapped them in 1926. The priest is "persuaded" to free them from the confinement of the castle's grounds, but they will not be freed from the earth until each has killed 800 people as sacrifices to the gods. Wasting no time, the tribe "walks off" for a murderous orgy of killing, dragging their screaming victims into the "underworld"--where Randy is still a captive. Readers who fancy unrestrained terror won't mind indulging in the wild suspension of disbelief that Masterton (Mirror) demands.
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