This novel was riddled with stark illogic, bad pseudoscience, and a weird combo of low-key racism and white guilt. Even trying to explain the plot to my partner, I was in tears laughing.
I think I've found the granddaddy of all "white people writing bad horror fiction about Native American culture." In Masterton's world, all Native American nations share a single, mangled mishmash of religious belief. The entire plot revolves around the "Magical Native" trope. The painfully obvious moral of "white people bad, Native people good" is bungled horrendously. It becomes an opportunity for the all-white (besides the Native medicine man) cast of characters to signal their virtue by repeating how sad they are about historical exploitation of Natives (sorry, "Red Indians," as the book calls them). "Red Indian" magic is constantly used to hand-wave major plot problems. Meanwhile, the horror in the plot relies on casting Native culture as parasitic, disgusting, inscrutably alien, evil, and (surprise, surprise) a threat to the innocent body of a white woman. Oh dear.
Before this devolves into an essay, I'll just list a few more low points:
** MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW**
- Absolutely everyone the hero meets is super easily-convinced. Even though he's a fake psychic, and literally just met the victim yesterday. The worst offenders are the patient's doctor, her PARENTS, and a professor of Native American anthropology. All of them hear his insane theory (which is basically held together with spit and encyclopedia entries) and are like "Sir, I'm offended that you'd even expect me to believe such nonsense! You have no expertise and what you're saying goes against my whole conception of reality. Buuut I don't have a better answer and you did see a picture in a library book one time. So...dammit, I guess I'll immediately and completely trust you."
- Within two days of meeting the hero, the woman's doctor gives up on all medical interventions and lets her continue dying while this random dude tries to fix her with magic. No one even tries to ask for her consent for this super insane medical decision.
- Doctor explaining that they don't X-ray pregnant patients because the X-rays destroy cells, which is no big deal in an adult because adults are big, but babies have so few cells that if you X-ray them it might zap off a toe or finger or something. This is ACTUALLY HOW IT THEN WORKS in the novel.
Because they X-rayed the tumor he was growing from, the bad guy comes out with no shins. Just no shins. The radiation apparently kills cells in a really specific, orderly fashion.
-X-rays would have solved the entire plot by killing the bad guy before he could finish forming inside the woman's tumor. Despite realizing this, the characters never attempt it.)
- According to [generic "Red Indian" magical lore], everything has a spirit. Okay. Even manmade stuff has spirits. Okay. A police supercomputer would have a super powerful spirit aligned with Christianity and law. Oookaaaaaay... BUT ONLY A WHITE DUDE (our hero, of course) can invoke and use that spirit's awesome power to save the day. Because supercomputer spirits are...racist?
- The bad guy's defeat by a computer spirit is basically explained as "white man's magic is just more powerful than Native magic and that's why white people will always win."
I don't have the energy to list any more of the many problems with this book. It's funny, I'll give it that. Just not intentionally so.