I’m not a massive horror reader, preferring the crime and thriller genre, but I dip my reading toe in every now and again. Graham Masterton is a prolific author whose name I’ve seen a lot, he’s written a lot of books, but who I’ve never read. I decided to give this one a go, quite on a whim, and I have to say I’ve not been disappointed.
Allhallows Hall, a rambling Tudor mansion on the edge of Dartmoor, is owned by Herbert Russell, the retired governor of Dartmoor Prison. After he’s murdered, his estranged children and their partners return for the will reading. They soon learn that the house has been left in trust to young Timmy, Herbert Russell’s grandson (and the son of his least favourite son), and the only child present. This obviously causes friction with Herbert’s other children.
When Timmy goes missing this is just the first in a long line of events that soon reveals the house not to be what they thought, and that Herbert’s death was not a simple murder. Strange whisperings, the characters pushed and shoved by invisible people is just the start, soon other’s in their party go missing, and even people trying to assist them.
A House of a Hundred Whispers is not a gory or violent novel, well apart from two very gory scenes towards the end, which are also incredibly imaginative in how the victims meet their ends. From what I understand, Masterton can do blood and gore with the best of them (as he demonstrates with the two examples mentioned), but this is much more a supernatural chiller than a gore-fest. I wouldn’t even say it’s particularly frightening. But that shouldn’t put readers off, because it’s a supernatural tale well told which compels you to turn the pages and handles it’s competing elements well. And there’s a lot of elements here: ghosts, witches, demons, spells and lots of local folklore.
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