Highly recommended for vintage horror fans!! 4.5 evil eye stars, rounding up! Ehly, an Egyptian-American, must have drawn upon some Egyptian lore for the evil eye idea I have never seen it presented as such before at least. Evil Eye is not really scary per se, although some of the body horror is pretty cringeworthy, but it really packs a punch. What makes this novel so special has to do with the superb pacing (relentless!), the wry, dark humor which animates the text, and the absolutely wicked way in which the Forrester family get taken down. Toss in a Japanese connection via a Kyoto land developer who has eyes on the Forrester firm, the only son of the Forrester clan who lives in Hong Kong as an opium addict up to no good, a few pimps and high class call girls among other characters and you get a rather tasty meal! It also has a strong class component, however, as it pits poor John and his grandma against the powerful and connected Forrester family. In a way, this is a body horror story and Ehly serves up some doozies here. Of course, this happened under the watchful eye of granny who promptly gives the evil eye to him as well.

Big mistake! When Tony eventually finds his grandma outside of John's house and goes to take her home, he gives a little lip to John, John decides to make his live miserable, basically getting him fired from his job as a messenger and blackballing him to boot. It seems she makes the rent by just sitting on various stoops and people give her money, especially if they know her rep! John sees her and tells the doorman to get rid of her. One day old evil eye granny is parked in her rags outside of John Forrester's Upper West Side townhome.

This girl eventually finds her way to NYC and is now the grandmother of a 20 something Tony the two live together in a run-down tenement in Harlem. This starts off with a rather bizarre prologue where an exorcism ceremony in Alexandria, Egypt circa 1919 goes wrong and a young, hunchback girl is given the evil eye. First off, great cover art on this 1989 Leisure edition! Evil Eye has a wide range of characters but centers on the Forrester family: two brothers (John and Joseph) who run a rather nasty and ruthless real estate/development company in NYC and their respective wives.

You never quite know what you are getting into with 80s horror novels, but this was a great surprise and one of the better gems I have found in the genre.

Evil Eye by Ehren M. Ehly