Graham Masterton, Unspeakable

Unspeakable

Graham Masterton

Pocket, Feb 2005, $6.99, 285 pp.

ISBN 0743462947

Hearing-impaired Holly Summers is very happy with the life she has. She has an adorable little girl named Daisy, works for the Portland child welfare office and is a court-accredited lip reader. She works for the police and when she sees people talking about a crime they are about to commit she calls the cops and her testimony is legally acceptable in trials.

As a social worker she sees many heartbreaking things done to children and when she calls on Mary Joseph, she finds her beaten to a pulp and her son Daniel is unconscious with almost every bone in his body is broken. They arrest Native American Elliot Joseph who puts a curse on Holly that seems to effectively work. Holly is suspended from her job when a young girl commits suicide after she confronts her about being abused. Her daughter is kidnapped and the man she considers a dear friend is responsible because he wants her to participate in an orgy. If she cooperates, Daisy will be released. Is it bad luck or an Indian's curse? Either way Holly's life is in danger.

Graham Masterton is a fantastic horror and thriller writer who knows how to build a growing atmosphere of foreboding. The storyline shows the horrifying things Holly sees in her work as well as the supernatural kind where an evil man persuades a good woman to believe that one person can curse another because of the happenings of certain events in her own life seemingly the result of the curse. Fans of Richard Laymon and Douglass Clegg will want to read UNSPEAKABLE.

Harriet Klausner