Ancient Horror History Unearthed: Douglas D. Hawk's The Occult Madonna REVIEWED

I don't know what happened here. I really don't.

We had a classic set-up. A great cover. Loads of great Gothic atmosphere to start. A pretty cool main villain. This should have been a book I got really into.

But no.

It wasn't.

It was an absolute dump of a book. A chore to read. A literary equivalent of watching paint dry.

I was bored to tears as we get the ho-hum story of a young down on their luck couple fights off the titular creature, amongst other monstrosities, both supernatural and otherwise. In a graveyard. With a crew of retirement home aged ghostbusters.

How the hell did it go wrong?

Monsters in a graveyard vs. The old folks home!? How rad should this be!?

Way radder than it is, my friends.

First of all, the pace is just awful. It kicks off guns blazing, I really thought I was in for a treat in the first few chapters. Then it's a good two hundred pages before the story does anything of substance or semblance off entertainment. Dust settles faster than than this book moves.

Second, you have read most of this elsewhere, done much better. It's like an exercise in pulling cliches from other books, done with absolutely no zest. No thrills, no attempts to divert from the bare minimum of what a horror novel published in 1988 does.

Third, the boldest move the book makes, making it's heroes elderly, could have been the coolest thing happening in the book. And it actually is. It's easily biggest chance the writer takes with it.

Unfortunately, the writer blows it, by essentially making these elders completely interchangeable with heroes from any other storyline you've ever read. He does nothing with the fact they aren't your industry standard clean up crew besides tell you they are old, a handful of times. Other than that, we have 70-something year olds running through the graveyard and fighting off zombies at the same rate the 20-somethings are...so what was the point??

There's hardly any gore to at least make it palatable to the gorehounds. He writes serviceably, but Hawk's certainly not going to make literature majors bat a lash.
Who is the book for?

Noone.

It is the definition of a "Mass Market" horror paperback, those being churned out in mass quantity to be consumed and forgotten in days... Until you read the next one you picked up while filling your prescription or buying a loaf of bread.

This is totally unremarkable in every way and I've gotta recommend it stays buried in the past along with the other recycled trees and glue that we often discover aren't meant for rediscovering.

1/5.