cover image Mine: A Novel of Terror

Mine: A Novel of Terror

Robert R. McCammon. Pocket Books, $18.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-671-66486-2

Primarily a writer of supernatural horror, McCammon ( Stinger ) here abandons the supernatural without forsaking the grisly details. Mary Terrall, aka Mary Terror, one-time member of the Storm Front, a Weatherman splinter group of the '60s, is now 40-something and psychotic. During her dreary day job at Burger King she mentally murders customers; at night she does LSD and dreams of having babies and joining Lord Jack, the Storm Front leader. Deciding to search him out, Mary cases a local hospital and steals the newborn son of Laura Clayborne, whose marriage is disintegrating. With nothing to hold her, Laura sets out after Mary and the baby, tracking them through remnants of the revolutionary group on a trail strewn with dead bodies. McCammon undercuts his story by portraying all his left-wing characters as motivated by adolescent rebellion , rather than by radical politics. That aside, however, he delivers an expertly constructed novel of suspense and horror. (May)