Amazon.com Review
Fans of the
X-Files will find this novel of the paranormal a very worthy diversion. With its consistent and intelligent narrative voice,
Superstition heightens the terror with its careful balance of the real, the scientifically plausible, and the fantastic.
When university psychologist Sam Towne assembles a group of eight people to test his hypothesis that group telepathy can call into being a ghost who exists only in their imagination, he gets much more than he bargained for. And Joanna Cross, the cynical reporter who sniffs another headline-making story about fraudulent spiritualists, is glad to play along. But when Adam Wyatt, the Revolutionary War hero created in a group exercise, breaks through from another dimension and reveals himself to be a darker shade than anyone could have guessed, those who thought him into existence are stymied in their efforts to send him back where he came from. As members of the group who would deny him reality begin to die, Sam and Joanna realize the strength of the force they've unleashed, but it may be too late to recapture it. Reason, logic, and faith fail them, and even the power of the love that flourishes between the two attractive protagonists may not be enough to put the genie back in the bottle. Superstition is a riveting supernatural thriller that will keep readers turning pages--each more horrifying than the next--until the shocking denouement. --Jane Adams
From Publishers Weekly
For a scientific experiment in psychokinesis, university psychologist Sam Towne assembles a group of eight individuals who, using the power of their collective consciousness, create a "ghost" with whom they hope to communicate. With ace investigative journalist (and love interest) Joanna Cross on hand to bear witness, the scientific seances at Manhattan University succeed all too well: the entity the group conjures up not only communicates with them but also becomes integral to their lives?and deaths. British author Ambrose (The Man Who Turned into Himself) takes a poor paranormal premise and eventually overcomes it with a ripping good ending. Despite the publisher's play-up of the novel as supernatural suspense and horror, the book is almost science fictional as Ambrose ultimately speculates on a time-travel theory postulating that the past comes out of the present instead of the present emerging from the past. According to Ambrose's acknowledgments, the story is based on "an experiment that actually took place" in the early 1970s. Unfortunately, the author brings neither his almost comically dated fake psychic schemers nor parapsychology into the '90s. But his well-toned technique and winning characterizations carry patient readers along to the core of the story. The plot falters slightly as it falls into a "Don't-open-that-door!" groove and a lot of people suddenly and mysteriously drop dead. Once over the low hurdles, however, Ambrose plays an unflinching mastergame of reality manipulation right through to a chilling checkmate of an ending that is genuinely frightening. Film rights sold to Interscope for $1 million; foreign rights sold in Germany and Holland.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
