Graham Masterton - The Wells Of Hell

[dem bones]

Graham Masterton - The Wells Of Hell (Sphere, 1981)

An Evocation Of Total Evil

Blurb:

LEGIONS FROM HELL...
New Milford was a peaceful old town where nothing ever happened. Until overnight the water turned a hideously sinister colour. Then Alison and Jimmy Bodine disappeared and the body of a young woman was discovered — the gory remains of an inhuman feast. Rumours of the scaly crab creatures on the outskirts of town had already thrown the citizens into a state of total terror but nothing had prepared them for the unimaginable horror of the evil that had worked its way with young Oliver Bodine's body:

SOMETHING HAD CHANGED AN INNOCENT CHILD INTO A LOATHSOME, SOULLESS MONSTER, A NIGHTMARE VISION FROM THE BOWELS OF HELL ...

Far beneath the town a legacy as old and as evil as Satan, a legacy of supernatural force and destruction, had returned to claim fresh victims to swell the ranks of a race that sprang straight from the WELLS OF HELL

Classic review/ Commentary by Franklin Marsh from old place, obviously:

Owing to a crowded late train and a cock-up (thingy up?) with my mobile library I ended up starting Graham Masterton's The Wells Of Hell yesterday. There's much to enjoy. Failed psychiatrist turned plumber Mason Perkins and his cat drive around in a 'Country Squire' (whatever that is - I wonder if GM drives one?).The Bodine family's water is a nasty urine-yellow and some say it smells fishy. Mason takes a sample and delivers it Dan Kirk (the Sherlock Holmes of H2O) in the worst-run laboratory in America - if not the world. Nobody seems to mind Mason lighting up his cigarillos in there, there's a wild (not lab escaped) mouse nicking people's lunches and top scientist Dan thinks nothing of sloping off to the local hotel for a few beers (Schaefer) with Mason before returning to work. GM has obviously contacted the Agency For Sexy Lab Assistants - Rheta Warren - who Mason would like to get it on with. There are some sinister micro-organisms discovered in the water. Returning from boozing at the Hotel (the plumber hitting the Jack Daniels as well as the beer - and he's driving!) Mason catches the lab mouse and he and Dan are horrified to see it's growing a scaly insect-like skin over its nether regions. They notice the water sample is reduced. Could the mouse have been drinking too? Despite the fact they've been on the sauce and Dan is in the middle of a swine fever investigation they decide to go and check on the Bodines as they're not answering the phone. The house is in darkness. The wind is whistling in the trees. It's dark.......

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Still plugging on with The Wells Of Hell. Here's a sample - 'Carter rested his hands on his hips and sighed. "If you don't beat everything. You think you can go in there, right into those goddamned brambles and holly bushes, and chew the fat with some homicidal lobster that just tore five people to shreds in one morning?" '. There's been a mid-book lull but things are beginning to take off again. Mentions of McDonalds and Volkswagen. After a monster encounter Dan attempts to revive Mason by whipping out a hip flask and apologising 'It's only Old Grandad'. Mr Masterton must have had a well-stocked bar after this one.

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Finally completed Wells Of Hell . Not bad at all. On reflection, very derivative of Quatermass & The Pit in parts. The 'monster' is Satan, only not quite. You have to applaud Mason's dedication to booze. Before the end the sheriff gives him a swig of confiscated moonshine, and after the final confrontation an ambulance man passes him a miniature bottle of Yukon Jack.

[erebus]

I'll be perfectly honest, but I've never been compelled to read Graham Masterton's works. I did once try Burial a while ago, but I just couldn't get into it. And the plots and summaries of his other books do not pique my interest ( Thats rich coming from someone called Erebus and who reads Guy N Smith ) Anyway I stumbled upon Charnel House and Death Dream recently and picked them up. Also on a bookshelf at work, which I religiously check everyday, The Wells of Hell miraculously appeared, Is it fate. I'm willing to give him another go, and this looks like a place to begin. It echoes The Festering by Guy N Smith, a book I love. I doubt it will scale the heights of that wonderful pulp classic But I'll give it a go and see what happens. Maybe I'll get the Masterton bug.