A review by belanna2
Garden of Evil by Graham Masterton

medium-paced

1.0

    For a world–renowned author that has published a slew of books, I would think Masterton would know that doing one's research on the subject matter is paramount to a believable and authentic story.  This author is British and imparts the British school system into a book set in America.  The story setting is in a community college: a 2-year college to obtain an associate degree or to transfer those credits to a four-year college/university; you attend community college/university after graduating from high school.  In the UK, their secondary schools are the equivalent to our high schools and are often called colleges.  So, the protagonist is teaching adult college students, but is acting like they're in high school: he mentions school assemblies, the principle (headmaster), parents waiting to pick their kids up, etc.

    Another pet peeve was how the author through his protagonist, stereotypes ethnic characters and blue-collar students--It screamed British class system, projected onto these characters. The casual racism stood out. Oh, and that brutal, unnecessary rape scene with no consequences for the character's actions; it's just a blase, "oops, my bad. I wasn't myself."  The Rook character is completely unlikeable. I was rooting for the "bad guy", who was such a cartoon level villain, that was constantly telegraphing his intent through this book, and no one noticed or took action. This book sucked.