The House That Jack Built [Hardcover]

Graham Masterton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1996

Craig Bellman and his wife Effie purchase a derelict old mansion with a terrifying history of tragedy and death, and despite efforts to rid the mansion of evil vibrations via a local spiritualist, it appears that the spirit of the original owner, Jack Belias, is still with them.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A savvy lawyer's wife watches in dismay as her husband fixates on a bizarre abandoned mansion in upstate New York as the key to restoring his virility. As he dives into the daunting restoration project, he soon transforms into a rapacious gambler from the '30s. His wife enlists a practical New Age witch to help her out, and a battle for their souls ensues. Masterton delivers tight pacing and satisfying climaxes and conveys a delicious aura of decadence through details such as dry rot, baccarat, Sobranies, Mallarme, unusual sex, liniment, the music of Nirvana and the scream of the mandrake.

From Publishers Weekly

Lacing an atmospheric tale of haunting and possession with heavy doses of gore and sex, Masterton (Burial) screams out a story better told in a whisper. High-powered Manhattan lawyer Craig Bellman and his eager-to-please wife, Effie, are touring the Hudson River Valley when they chance upon Valhalla, a decrepit mansion that broods on the bluffs north of Cold Spring. A monument to the towering ego of textile mogul Jack Belias, who vanished mysteriously in 1937, the edifice has understandable psychological appeal for Craig, who is recuperating from his near emasculation during a recent mugging. At first, Effie is happy that Craig's obsessive interest in rebuilding Valhalla has restored his confidence and potence. But when he becomes sexually insatiable and a suspect in the deaths of several colleagues and acquaintances, she probes the house's history for an explanation and discovers that Belias?an occultist who excelled in ruining his gambling companions and who "used his virility to dominate people too"?is engineering his return from a dimension beyond time through her vulnerable husband. The spooky events climax spectacularly during a thunderstorm atop the Hudson Highlands, but not before the author has numbed the reader with countless scenes of sexual humiliation and offended sensibilities with the suggestion that physical abuse is titillating to its victims. Masterton's evocation of Hudson Valley history and his re-creation of the era of the pre-Depression robber barons is outstanding. Hopefully he will exploit this rich material, rather than his characters, in the sequel telegraphed in the novel's closing paragraphs.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 385 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub (October 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786703539
• ISBN-13: 978-0786703531
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,788,063 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fast moving and full of surprises, July 14, 2000

By 

Alan S. Golub (Totowa, New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The House That Jack Built (Mass Market Paperback)

I was pleasantly surprised with how great this book is. It's full of haunting set pieces that will stay with you -- to describe them at all will ruin the thrill of surprise for you (and there are a host of nasty surprises throughout the book). I was reluctant to start this novel, thinking, "What can he possibly do with the haunted house theme that we all haven't seen before?" Well, Masterson has come up with something new here -- a fresh twist on the traditional ghost story, with lots of interesting ideas and a terrifying villain that you won't soon forget.

I read many horror novels each year -- it's one of my favorite genres. Like many reviewers here on Amazon, I'm always on the lookout for something I haven't seen before, something exciting and original that will have me flipping the pages as fast as I can. By that standard, this book delivers. It's my first book by Masterson, but it definitely won't be the last!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It's nasty and gorey, but it's not scary., September 18, 2005

By 

J. Fercho (Calgary, AB. Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The House That Jack Built (Mass Market Paperback)

Sorry fellow scare seekers, this one just didn't cut it for me. It really isn't a "haunted house" story at all, more like a time travelling possession story. I say this because the "haunting" if you can call it that is not limited to the house, but rather inhabits the characters of the story who travel around and do some very nasty bidding on behalf of the house (or should we say on behalf of Jack) The premises of time and ones perception of it were very thought-provoking, but the actual rationale behind some of the events just didn't ring true. I agree with another reviewer who mentioned the killings of some of the characters that came totally out of left field with absolutly no motivation behind them. Now don't get me wrong, there are truly disturbing scences here, and many that are fraught with such a level of misogyny that some individuals may have a hard time reading them. But as a lover of ghost stories, there is a real difference, between being shocked or repulsed by what I'm reading, and being scared by it. This one covered the repulsion factor just fine, but it sure didn't keep me up at night. I'm going to suggest "The Ghost Writer" by John Harwood as a much better example of the genre.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Read, June 20, 2000

By 

J. Elattar "j101024" (NY,NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The House That Jack Built (Mass Market Paperback)

I have read other works by Graham Masterton, and I found him to be a very good horror writer. In his latest work, The House That Jack Built, it starts out a bit slow at first, but picks up the pace. The setting in New Orleans is what really made me pick up this book since I have read other horror stories by Anne Rice and Poppy Z. Brite that took place in the same area. It was a good ghost story and I found myself finishing it in what seemed to be a day and half. It isn't the greatest book of horror that I have read so far, but it was enjoyable and I think it was worth my time.