Tooth and Claw (Rook) - Hardcover

Masterton, Graham

3.7

252 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0727851888 ISBN 13: 9780727851888

Publisher: Severn House, 1997

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College teacher Jim Rook has a special talent: a near-death experience in childhood gave him the facility to see ghosts and spirits that nobody else can see.

Into his remedial English class at West Grove Community College comes Susan White Bird, the daughter of a Navajo Indian. Susan is beautiful and shy, but all her life she has been closely protected by her two older brothers, Sam and George. And when college senior Brad Dolman takes a fancy to Susan, there are frightening consequences. Brad's body is found one morning in his automobile, his face and body terribly mutilated - almost as if he has been attacked by a wild animal - and it is Susan's brothers who are immediately arrested.

Only when two more students are attacked do the police realise that the brothers are innocent, and that there is something terrible lurking around the college campus ... something that threatens to transform Susan into the most horrific creature known to Navajo myth. And there is only one man who can save her, a man who can see the oncoming danger - Jim Rook.

It is now left to Jim and his engaging class of slow-lane students to face a shattering confrontation between the cultures of new and ancient America.

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About the Author:

Graham Masterton's first novel, T""he Manitou,"" was a bestseller and an instant classic and was made into a feature film. Masterton has won an Edgar Award and France's prestigious Prix Julia Verglanger. Several of his stories have been adapted for television.
Masterton's more than one hundred novels include ""Charnel House, The Chosen Child,"" and ""Maiden Voyage"" (a"" New York Times"" bestseller). He has written for adults, young adults, and children and edited several anthologies. Earlier in his career, Masterton edited men's magazines, including ""Penthouse,"" He has written a number nonfiction books on sex, including ""How to Drive Your Man Wild in Bed,"" which has sold more than three million copies.
Masterton and his wife, Wiescka, live in Ireland.

From Kirkus Reviews:

In Masterson's second Jim Rook series installment (Rook, p. 246), Catherine White Bird, the daughter of a Navajo, is able to turn at will into a huge, raging creature whose 12-inch claw- spread can tear holes in steel when not ripping out human hearts. A bout of pneumonia in childhood left Jim Rook equipped, like it or not, with psychic insight. Today, as a teacher at a community college in California, he runs a remedial class for slow learners, whom be brings up to speed by exposing them to modern poetry (Whitman, Ginsberg, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and others)--a terrific hit, as it turns out. But poetry is not all balm, either. It just so happens that one of his students, the lovely Catherine, was promised in marriage at age 12 to the demonic and detestable Dog Brother, who can call forth the terrible spirit known among the Navajo as Coyote. Catherine, now 15, has a boyfriend, Brad, who is suddenly found clawed to pieces. At the same time, the locker room for the school's football team is savaged, its lockers bent and ripped by giant claws, the team's uniforms shredded and helmets burst. Rook's apartment and all the contents are similarly shredded--and his cat murdered. Catherine's brothers, Paul and Grey Cloud, have a heavy-handed way of protecting their sister, which angers Rook. But he's informed by Catherine's father, Henry Black Eagle, that if he really wants to appease Dog Brother--and save Catherine- -then Rook must take his girlfriend Susan, two students, and Catherine and pay a visit to Dog Brother on the Navajo reservation. When Rook does so, though, he finds that the students and Susan are actually intended as sacrifices to Coyote. He also discovers that Catherine herself, not Dog Brother or Coyote, is Changing Bear Maiden, the raging black beast. . . . Styleless but straightforward, very nearly a YA novel. -- Copyright �1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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