The Children God Forgot by Graham Masterton

I have a soft spot in my black little heart for the works of horror maestro Graham Masterton. Some time in the eighties I must have read close to a dozen of the author’s early work. Personal favourites were The Manitou, Charnel House, and for me, the daddy of them all, The Devils of D-Day, a crazy book that placed demons, angels, and all kinds of mythological beings right at the heart of WWII. I thought it magnificent.

Masterton’s books are literal page-turners. He wastes no time in setting the scene and getting straight into the beat of the story. In his most recent book, The Childen God Forgot, we’re thrown into a series of freaky situations that have doctors and police officers baffled. The setting is multi-cultural London, and our main characters DS Jamila Patel and DC Jerry Pardoe, who appeared in a previous book, Ghost Virus, have to deal with a strange occurence in the depths of London’s sewage system. A man has gone missing, and his colleagues tell a horrifying story of malformed children and an eerie green light. When the man is eventually found, he’s in serious condition, with his life hanging on a thread.

At the same time, a number of women are tormented by creatures that appear in their wombs despite not being pregnant, but having either aborted a foetus or miscarried one. These creatures have the faces of cherubs but have bodies that cannot be defined as human. Yet they live. And they are protected by a mysterious presence who will kill to defend her ‘nestlings’.

Graham Masterton has a way with grotesque set-pieces. He doesn’t pull any punches with his action scenes, and violent dismemberment or death is never far away for any of the characters in these pages. DS Patel and DC Pardoe are an engaging duo, reminiscent of Mulder and Scully in the early days of The X Files. They get the cases no other branch will go near, and often place themselves in danger when others would just cut and run. The truth is not so much out there, but under London, in the sewers.

The Children God Forgot is a great and pacy read. You’ll get exactly what you ask for and expect in a Graham Masterton novel. He makes use of his characters cultural differences to good effect, with DS Patel’s Asian background coming in to play a lot of the time. Masterton has always had a strong feel for the supernatural, and the research he did for this book is there for all to see and read. I enjoyed this book, and it reminded me of a more innocent time when I devoured his early books. He’s been prolific ever since, and I look forward to a return journey into the dark heart of Masterton’s world.