of a less skillful writer. The fourth volume has not
yet appeared as of this writing, but the series is al-
ready considered Martin’s most significant work of
fiction.
Masterton, Graham (1946– )
The British writer Graham Masterton’s first horror
novel was The Manitou(1975), in which an Indian
sorcerer named Misquamicus returns to life, physi-
cally manifesting himself within the body of a
woman and eventually seizing control of an entire
hospital before being defeated by a new spirit with
which he is unfamiliar. The novel became a
mediocre movie but was sufficiently popular to
launch the author’s long career as a writer of usu-
ally gruesome and almost always relentlessly sus-
penseful novels of the supernatural, many of
which are quite original in concept. He also re-
vived the Manitou for two interesting but inferior
sequels, Revenge of the Manitou(1979) and Burial
(1992).
Masterton’s initial follow-up was a series of
fast-paced supernatural adventures such as The
Djinn(1977), in which a genie is set loose on Cape
Cod and proves to be a malevolent rather than en-
tertaining spirit, The Devils of D-Day(1978), about
a haunted World War II tank, and Charnel House
(1978), in which another Indian spirit returns, this
time inhabiting an old house. His early novels rely
primarily on fast-paced action and very gruesome
death scenes, although even in his early work Mas-
terton’s ability to efficiently create realistic and
sympathetic characters is evident.
The first of Masterton’s novels to acquire
greater depth was The Hell Candidate(1980), origi-
nally published under the pseudonym Thomas
Luke. An unprepossessing man rapidly becomes
the odds-on favorite to become the next president
of the United States, an outcome resulting from
his deal with the devil. Masterton also used the
Luke pen name for The Heirloom(1982), in which
the action centers around an apparently ordinary
chair that is actually a conduit for evil powers. He
returned to his own name for Pariah(1983), the
story of a sunken ship that is the focus for an an-
cient evil, and none of his subsequent horror fic-
tion has appeared under a pseudonym.
Masterton began using unusual sources of hor-
ror with some regularity thereafter, starting with
Tengu(1983), in which Japanese demons are incar-
nated in the bodies of humans in an effort to un-
dermine the international status of the United
States, a blend of supernatural suspense and espi-
onage. Picture of Evil(1985, also published as Fam-
ily Portrait) concerns the supposedly real family
upon which Oscar Wilde later based the character
of Dorian Gray. The Grays subsist by draining the
life force from others, but the most memorable
portion of the novel is a chase scene that actually
moves through a series of famous paintings.
Death Trance(1986) involves astral projection
and the inhuman denizens of a dreamworld. The
novel contains many grotesque images but is infe-
rior to the similar Night Warriors trilogy that soon
followed, consisting of Night Warriors (1986),
Death Dream(1988), and Night Plague(1991). Fol-
lowing a series of horrible deaths, a group of
strangers discover that they are the reincarnations
of members of an occult group whose duty is to
protect the world from incursions from the dream
plane. They battle witchcraft and the demonic
forces of that other reality in a very imaginative su-
pernatural series. Mirror(1988) has a somewhat
similar premise. A brilliant boy who died tragically
has managed to survive in a state between the liv-
ing and dead, dwelling on the opposite side of the
mirror, from which he plots to change places with
one of the living.
Feast(1988, also published as Ritual) involves
a restaurant that has a very unusual specialty,
human flesh, consumed to appease the forces of
hell. Masterton’s fascination with bizarre imagery
and unusual states of being continued in Walkers
(1990), in which the residents of an asylum are
somehow trapped in a marginal existence within
the structure of the walls that confine them. Their
efforts to escape come at the cost of the lives of the
innocent. The Burning(1991, also published as The
Hymn) less successfully describes a cult whose
members achieve immortality by burning them-
selves alive. Prey(1992) is as close as Masterton
ever came to an homage to H. P. LOVECRAFT, pit-
ting the protagonist against an ancient creature
analogous to a witch who is plotting to bring back
the old gods.Masterton, Graham 231