SEEDS OF EVIL

by Margaret Bingley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1989

Well-written British horror suspenser, something like The Bad Seed grafted onto Children of the Damned. Meg Marshall, rather than divorce homosexual husband Charles, undergoes artifical insemination and gives birth to white-haired, cold-eyed twins Orlando and Olivia. The twins are psychic sorts who never tie in with other children and even as four-year-olds refuse to acknowledge Charles as their father. As the story grows, the unemotional kids find they get the ""tingles"" from murdering playmates, usually cutting their throats with a knife. One day Meg meets Ashley Webster, the sperm donor who is the twins' natural father, and Ashley is much the same cold fish as the children. Ashley, it happens, has some thirty whiteheaded monsters scattered about the country. He induces Orlando and Olivia to do in Charles (they push over his ladder while he's palming the second story), then Ashley courts and marries Meg. Soon he reveals his sadistic bed-tricks, which Meg ashamedly likes, gets her pregnant and then her next-door sister Catriona as well (Orlando has already bashed in the head of Catriona's son David). Gradually Meg discovers the extent of Ashley's brood and the kids' love for blood and ""tingles."" Meanwhile, Ashley's monstrous ten-year-old son from a former marriage comes to live with them while Meg gives birth to whiteheaded Ophelia and her sister Catriona as well bears Ashley another little monster. Alas for Ashley, the psychic powers of the children have weakened their immunity to a certain strain of meningitis, and the kids start dropping like flies. Some survive, though, and Meg herself finds her number is up. Hypnotic reading, with lively dialogue among the adults--although one is hard put to really relish the little monsters, while origins of Ashley's terrible psychopathic strain stay a mystery.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Carroll & Graf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1989

Categories: FICTION