Trauma [Paperback]

Graham Masterton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2002

Something is happening to Bonnie Winter.

She's a working wife and mother, and her job is cleaning up crime scenes. Considering what she sees everyday, it must take a lot to disturb a woman like Bonnie Winter.

You can't imagine.

In this brilliantly unnerving novella, Graham Masterton speaks the unspeakable with terrifying precision and elegance, and finds menace in the most ordinary turns of an ordinary day. Step into Bonnie Winter's world and just try to forget it.

Praise for Graham Masterton:

"One of the few true masters of the horror genre." (James Herbert)

"Masterton is a crowd pleaser, filling his pages with sparky, appealing dialogue and visceral grue." (Time Out, London)

"Masterton's novels are charming, dangerous, and frightening...but all based on enormous erudition." (L'Express, Paris)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Within the span of a couple hundred pages, prolific horror writer Masterton (Spirit; The Manitou, etc.) successfully spins an entertaining, fast and disturbing read packed with dramatic tension, tightly drawn characters and realistic dialogue. Bonnie Winter sells cosmetics for Glamorex of Hollywood Inc. and runs her own business cleaning up domestic crime scenes. The creepy task becomes even worse after she discovers infestations of maggot-like, black caterpillars at her clean-up sites. A local entomologist confirms that the caterpillars grow into Clouded Apollos large butterflies with white, black-veined wings. In Aztec culture, the insect is considered the daytime disguise of a demon named Itzpapalotl, who drives people to kill their loved ones. Indeed, each of the scenes at which Bonnie finds the insects involves family members killing each other. Masterton's descriptions of the grim crime scenes are intoxicating (a man's blown-off head had "fallen backward so that, juglike, it had emptied its blood all over the floor") yet never gratuitous, and he neatly intertwines the Clouded Apollo story line with the saga of Bonnie's lackluster home life and budding affair with her Glamorex boss. As the novel draws to a close, the two plot threads converge, triggering a sequence of events that is both chilling and tragic.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Signet (January 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451205553
• ISBN-13: 978-0451205551
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,182,257 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars My first Masterton, certainly not my last, April 22, 2005

By 

Craig Clarke "Living After Midnight: Hard and... (New England) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Trauma (Paperback)

Bonnie Winter is having some personal problems. Ever since her husband Duke's job was taken away by a Mexican, he has been bitter (and won't eat Mexican food) and she has been precariously holding down two jobs: one for Glamorex cosmetics as a representative, the other for her own crime-scene (or trauma-scene) cleanup company, Bonnie's Trauma Scene Clean.

Things take a strange turn when Bonnie finds an odd-looking caterpillar at three of her crime scenes. With some research, she discovers that the caterpillar is connected to an ancient Aztec legend about a demon (Itzpapalotl) who inspires people to kill "the ones they love the most." Coincidentally, all of the victims at these houses were loved ones of the murderers, including one doting father who killed his three children.

Originally published under the title Bonnie Winter as the tenth entry in the Cemetery Dance novella series, Trauma is 200 pages of relatively large print -- which makes me wonder if Signet couldn't have lowered the price a bit -- but in the end, it's worth the extra dollar or two: a tight little package of suspense that fires on all cylinders and doesn't waste a word.

I had never read a book by Graham Masterton before, but this one will not be my last. It has everything I look for in a novel, and more. Plus, its surface similarities to my current favorite guilty pleasure all but guaranteed that I would love it. (Murder mystery aspects combine with gruesome details and entomology to make Trauma, in some ways, resemble an insect-heavy episode of CSI, but with a tone of terror as opposed to puzzle solution.)

Masterton's skill at description is what truly carries the day, however. The crime scenes are lovingly described while not verging into exploitation. Also, the author evokes the day-to-day aspects of Bonnie's professions (and the relationships that come with them), grounding this novella in reality so well that, when the story takes a shocking turn near the end, we are all the more willing to follow right along, even when it veers occasionally into the surreal. Masterton takes a banal narrative and a seemingly-minor plot point and delivers a surprise that is wild yet completely organic to the story. Trauma is a quick read, but Bonnie Winter is not a character that you will soon forget.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Masterton's best, July 13, 2004

By 

gothic cowgirl (NorCal) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Trauma (Paperback)

I really enjoyed this book. In fact, I was totally surprised by just how much I enjoyed it. It's got a completely different feel and atmosphere than his usual adventurous romps. It's moody, subtle, and very satisfying. Caution - by subtle, I mean it is not overtly scary or shocking. It is, however, pretty gross. Just FYI.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Something Dreadful May Have Happened...", April 26, 2002

By 

Bruce Rux (Aurora, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Trauma (Paperback)

This is the best book of its type I've ever read. Only two books ever made me scream by their end, and this is one of them.

Thirty-four year old Bonnie Winter is undergoing too many life crises, of late - her husband has been out of work for a year, her seventeen year old son is discovering violence to prove himself as a man, she's working two jobs to make ends meet and wrestling with the idea of embarking on an affair - and her second job doesn't make things any easier. Bonnie is a "sanitizer," one of those people who cleans up messy suicides and crime scenes, and the endless wash of blood and violence across the decaying fabric of her life's seams is taking its toll. On top of everything else, she's discovered something unusual at the scene of three messy family suicide-homicides: a rare species of caterpillar that doesn't exist in our part of the world, and is legendarily attached to insanity and familial murder...

This book is the most superior example of minimalist horror you could hope to find. It succeeds as a crime novel, as a supernatural horror story and as a tale of descent into psychological and spiritual madness. However one ultimately chooses to interpret it, Trauma is a horror story par excellence. Graham Masterton has written many fine novels of the type, but this is by far not only his best, but one of the best to be found in any of the aforementioned genres.

If someone doesn't make a movie out of this clammy nightmare of a book, it'll be a crime. But don't wait for Hollywood to discover it. Beat them to it, and treat yourself to one of the shudderiest suspensers in the English language.