Los Angeles is no stranger to organized crime. But when several crime families work together and, with with the help of four witches, completely nullify the police's ability to stop them, the City of Angels becomes easy pickings. The crime families do what they want, go where they want and, if someone or something stands in their way, they utterly destroy it.
Detective Dan Fisher is running out of options. He's the only member of the LAPD who knows exactly how powerful these witches are, but cannot get anybody to believe him. Can the assistance of his neighbor, a witch named Annie, prove to aid him in any way against these mafia witches? And on top of everything else, Dan's deceased wife, Gayle, haunts him at night. Can an officer whose life is slowly falling apart do anything to stop the city he loves from following suit?
The 5th Witch is the first Graham Masterton I've read; I've heard his name and just never got around to reading anything by him before. I must say, The 5th Witch was not a bad place to start. It's a well-paced, well-researched and well-written novel and I must honestly admit I thoroughly enjoyed it. Masterton takes different ethnic witchcrafts and uses these to for each of the different crime families. The results are varied and enjoyable, generally leading to twisted scenes of violence and chaos and leaving the reader with a 'Damn, I'd like to see that done in a movie'-type reaction. It's very visually written, with scenarios easily playing through the mind's eye chapter after chapter.
My only complaint here, and it's a minor one, is overall the book is formulaic. It seems to me, the more and more I read, the more and more authors generally tend to write their book outline based on the generic skeleton of novels: eye-catching intro, main plot, add subplot(s), crazy twist, shocking revelation, everybody who hasn't died yet and needs to gets thrown in a chipper shredder, THE END because I hit the 350 page mark. It's the same basic story progression here except Masterton leaves the ending to The 5th Witch ambiguous as opposed to open-ended; it's a big difference and it means the difference between a writer and an excellent writer. Based on The 5th Witch, Masterton is the latter.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mass Market Paperback: 325 pages
Publisher: Leisure (April 29, 2008)
ISBN-10: 0843957905
ISBN-13: 978-0843957907