While I’ve read a lot of horror novels from the horror boom of the 1970s and 1980s, most of these have either been Stephen King novels or relatively obscure texts from authors who only published a few books. I’m actually unfamiliar with the work of most of the popular horror authors of that era. I’ve never read anything by Dean Koontz, Anne Rice, Robert McCammon, John Farris or V.C. Andrews. This is largely because those are the only books I regularly see on charity shop shelves any more, and I’m quite sure all of their work is easily available as e-books. I plan to read them all at some point, but I have been focusing on harder to find stuff because I know those author’s works will be accessible at any point.

The other horror author whose books are always available is John Saul. Like Robin Cook, I had heard that Saul’s work became painfully formulaic as time went on but that his first novel, Suffer the Children was worth a read. It also shares its title with a Napalm Death song, so I decided to give it a go.

So the Congers are a weird family with 2 little girls. (This was too close to home for me.) One of the girls stopped speaking because her father assaulted her. The other one gets possessed by the soul of one of her ancestors who was also abused by a parent. This kid tortures some other kids in a surprisingly brutal manner.

I didn’t like this book.

I don’t enjoy reading about kids getting hurt. I get that sometimes this kind of thing is used as a plot device to get the reader to feel a certain way about the bad guy, but when that happens, it usually pays off at the end when he meets with a horrid end. This is not how Saul’s plot works. Here the suffering is the point of the book. It’s truly sadistic stuff.

Some of it’s rather unbelievable too. There’s a part where Mr. Conger tells his wife that he wanted to rape their kid and then tries to rape his wife but his dick won’t get hard. 5 minutes later, the couple are having a friendly chat. The family are cursed, but the curse is never really explained. It’s just a curse that makes people want to rape and murder their kids.

No, I didn’t like this at all. I’m probably not going to bother with any more Saul.