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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
High adventure, low horror, 23 Mar 1998
By A Customer
Regular readers of David Morrell expect a crisp writing style, brisk pacing, and above all, relentless action. Morrell delivers once again with The Totem, but this time there are elements of the classic horror story mixed in with the thrills. The residents of Potters Field, Wyoming, have fallen under the attack of wild animals that kill on sight, mutilating their prey. They hunt in packs, and their shadowed forms can be glimpsed running through the night forests, howling at the moon. Police Chief Nathan Slaughter soon discovers that these feral beasts are not animals at all, but the townspeople themselves. A new virus is loose in Potters Field, not entirely unlike rabies, that gives control back to a previously dormant area of the brain, in effect transforming men and women into the primal creature mankind was hundred of thousands of years ago. Morrell's writing is as clean and tense as always, yet the book does not live up to its horror billing. Action dominates, and while the author's take on the origins of the werewolf mythology serves to deepen the theme of the book, the horror elements are only a faint undercurrent in what is essentially an action/adventure tale.
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by David Morrell
by David Morrell
by David Morrell
by David Morrell
by David Morrell
