White Bones

Graham Masterton

Average Rating 8/10 (1 Review)

One wet, windswept November morning, a field on a desolate farm gives up the dismembered bones of eleven women...

Their skeletons bear the marks of a meticulous butcher. The bodies date back to 1915. All were likely skinned alive.

But then a young woman goes missing, and her remains, the bones carefully stripped and arranged in an arcane patterns, are discovered on the same farm.

With the crimes of the past echoing in the present, D.S. Katie Maguire must solve a decades-old murder steeped in ancient legend... before this terrifying killer strikes again.

About the Author:
Graham Masterton was a bestselling horror writer who has now turned his talent to crimewriting. He lived in Cork for five years, an experience that inspired the Katie Maguire series.

'One of the few true masters.'

'One of the most original and frightening storytellers of our time.'

Review by A. W. Colclough (310316) Rating (8/10)

Review by A. W. Colclough
Rating 8/10
The soil of a remote farm in Cork yields up the bones of fifteen women murdered in 1915, examination of their bones suggests they died to fulfil a grisly ancient ritual. A young woman is abducted and then killed by someone copying the decades old crime, Garda detective Katie Maguire must solve a murder with links to the darker aspects of Celtic mythology before the killer strikes again.

Better known as a writer of horror fiction Graham Masterton has undergone a late(ish) career switch to a new genre, on the strength of this first novel in the Katie Maguire series the transition has been a success.

His writing is every bit as gruesome as the work of younger writers, but Masterton due probably to experience understands the benefits of rationing out the gore. This book contains some scenes that are genuinely horrific, clever pacing gives them an impact that might have been reduced had he chosen to follow fashion and ladle blood over every other page.

Masterton puts the experience of having lived in and around Cork for a number of years to good use, showing a strong feeling for the beauty, remoteness and link to the uncanny of the Irish countryside, this, he suggests, really is a place where the fairy folk might be up to no good around the next corner.

As a central character Maguire has the right mix of steel and vulnerability with a back story that gives options for the series to take any number of different directions as it progresses.

This stylish and frequently unsettling novel marks a confident change of genre for a veteran writer who is still firing on all cylinders.
A. W. Colclough (31st March 2016)