The Infinite (Leisure Horror) [Mass Market Paperback]

Douglas Clegg (Author)

Book Description

Series: Leisure Horror | Publication Date: October 2002

Harrow is haunted, they say. The mansion is a place of tragedy and nightmares, evil and insanity. First it was a madman's fortress; then it became a school. Now it lies empty. But an obsessed woman and a ghost hunter want to bring the house back to life to find out what lurks within Harrow. Together they assemble the people who they believe can pierce the mansion's shadows.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The indefatigable Clegg concludes his trilogy of terror tales (after the e-serial Nightmare House and sequel Mischief) set at the haunted Harrow boarding school with a novel that once again shows his skill at using classic horror themes to explore the pathos of the human condition. Evoking works by Shirley Jackson and Richard Matheson, to which it will almost certainly be compared, the story builds around the formally engineered meeting of Chet Dillinger, Cali Nytbird and Frost Crane, all of whom are endowed with psychic proclivities that have been more curse than gift in their lives. Like Ivy Martin, wealthy patroness of the PSI Vista Foundation that has hired them to investigate a recent spate of eerie deaths linked to the academy, each is a spiritually scarred survivor who hopes their experiment will exorcise personal demons as well as the school's. Too late, they discover that Harrow's reputation as a charnel house stems from occult influences well-schooled in exploiting the vulnerabilities of unwitting human victims. The plot builds sluggishly, with affecting if lengthy profiles of the principal characters and a paucity of supernatural incidents once they descend on Harrow. But Clegg knows how to balance horror with human interest, and when all hell breaks loose in an electrifying finale, the narrative's supernatural and psychological landscapes carefully converge in a cavalcade of nightmares. Memorable for its evocative, disturbing imagery and haunting emotional insights, this novel adds a new chapter to horror's tradition of haunted house fiction.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the Publisher

From Bram Stoker winning novelist Douglas Clegg comes his most disturbing and terrifying novel -- The Infinite, the story of an investigation into a haunting by those most likely to awaken what lies in wait at the house called Harrow. Three psychics are brought to Harrow: Chet Dillinger, a boy with a wonderful and dreadful gift; Frost Crane, a bestselling author of books on psychic phenomena; and Cali Nytbird, a psychic criminal investigator whose memory of her dead twin has stalked her imagination. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 377 pages
• Publisher: Leisure Books (October 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0843950552
• ISBN-13: 978-0843950557
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #652,633 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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I'm a novelist living on the New England coast. My first novel, Goat Dance, came out in 1989, and since then, more than 20 of my novels have been published.

I'd recommend: Neverland, Isis, Afterlife, The Words, Purity, or The Priest of Blood (and the entire vampire trilogy, The Vampyricon) if you're new to my fiction.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clegg's best yet, November 1, 2001

By 

C. Fletcher (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Infinite (Hardcover)

If you're a fan of horror fiction and haven't yet discovered Bram Stoker Award winner Douglas Clegg, you've got some enjoyable reading ahead of you. Clegg's latest, The Infinite, is probably his best novel to date, and is a good place to start.

A kind of riff on Shirley Jackson's classic The Haunting of Hill House, The Infinite tells the story of three psychically-gifted individuals invited by the leader of a psychic research foundation to spend a few days in a haunted mansion in the Hudson River Valley of New York state. The haunted mansion in question, Harrow, has figured in two of Clegg's earlier works, Mischief and Nightmare House. Although The Infinite picks up on story elements and characters common to those two books, it's not necessary to have read them first.

What makes The Infinite such a great read is the richness of its characterization. Clegg takes his time setting up the three principles before bringing them together. Cali Nytbird, a young woman who uses her psychic abilities to help the police catch killers, Chet Dillinger, a young man who experiences his ability more as a curse than a blessing, and Frost Crane, a strange man with unhealthy compulsions who has used his ability to achieve some degree of fame all come together at Harrow like tasty ingredients in an exotic dish.

Also in the mix are Jack Fleetwood, the leader of the psychic research foundation, his tempestuous sixteen-year-old daughter Miranda, and Ivy Martin, the mysterious woman funding the whole endeavor for her own personal reasons.

All of the characters are well developed and fun to read. Clegg does a great job putting you inside the hearts and minds of each character, making you feel his or her pangs and desires. One of the greatest pleasures of reading is getting to experience the world from a new vantage point--if you're a man, knowing what it's like to be a woman in love, or vise versa. The Infinite really succeeds in this and also happens to be quite a scary haunted house book. If you're looking for an intelligent, character-driven horror novel, Douglas Clegg is your man, and The Infinite is the book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars UnCannY, January 15, 2003

By 

CRISTIAN MARRERO "cris marrero" (NORTH BERGEN, NEW JERSEY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Infinite (Hardcover)

This book is incredible. 377 pages. Smooth Introduction of the characters and their stories which made them the people they live like today. Once they enter Harrow, everything changes. A true page turner, it will make you try to guess what will happen next and what the characters may or may not do.
Psychometry.....Opening doors and facing truths. Keep it coming Clegg

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly Harrow-ing Horror, October 29, 2001

By 

"waynenf" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Infinite (Hardcover)

With 'The Infinite', Douglas Clegg has published his finest and most complex work. 'The Infinite' is the third book in a loosely related series that began with 'Nightmare House' (a serialized novel sent via email) and then continued with 'Mischief' (a paperback original). In 'Nightmare House', we were introduced to Harrow, a bizarre, twisting house that hid more than it revealed. In 'Mischief', Harrow has been converted into a boarding school, and one of the students unleashes a terrifying and hidden power trapped within the house. Now, with 'The Infinite', Ivy (a woman with some secrets of her own) decides to gather a number of strangers with paranormal powers under the ruse of investigating the house and the strange hauntings that have occurred within. Nothing is as it seems in Harrow, as the reader is soon caught up in Mr. Clegg's tight and breathless prose. A number of seemingly disparate plot lines are tightly woven together, leading to an ending that is truly frightening and memorable. Do yourself a favor this Halloween, and indulge yourself in one of the finest works of horror to hit the shelves this year. 'The Infinite' is a truly terrifying work sure to delight the fans of King, Straub, Barker, and Saul.