When I was an adolescent, or just the other side of same, I fell head over heels in love with Saul Wernick's 1976 debut novel, The Fire Ants. Upon reflection, that's probably because I was (still am) a sucker for bug novels. Creepy crawly things scare the hops out of me, especially with the eco-nuts spouting their nonsensical spew. Hey, when I was ten years old, it did seem like a real possibility that fire ants would wipe out the whole country by 1980. So I was gullible. Sue me.

I finally tracked down another of Wernick's five (to the best of my research abilities) novels. Cain's Touch, released in 1978, was Wernick's second novel, and there's not a creepy-crawly to be found therein. In fact, it's oddly reminiscent of the Werlin Brothers' novel The Savior, released by Doubleday the same year Cain's Touch came out. Whether it's the lack of bugs, the proximity to the Werlins' novel (I've no idea which was released first), or some combination of the two, while reading Cain's Touch I found myself less able to ignore the pitfalls of genre writing than I was with The Fire Ants.

Not to say that the diehard fan of psych-horror novels won't find a lot here to sink his teeth into. Cain's Touch is the story of Michael Hietala, who has the ability to lay on hands. In the novel's opening scene, when Michael is nine, he heals an old fisherman's arthritis and mentions that he used his laying on of hands to kill his twin brother when they were three. We then skip to twenty-six years later, when Michael has become a successful scam artist. He's starting a new church after apprenticing four years with a crooked televangelist, and he seems to have forgotten about his gift altogether. Yet part of what the church does is heal people. Go figure. Problem is, all that healing requires payment. Preferably in advance.

Cain's Touch is an easy, fun read. Nothing terribly deep, certainly nothing that would have pretenses to literary greatness. It does what it does, and it's satisfied doing what it does. As with The Fire Ants, the sexual content of Cain's Touch is a bit over the norm for the genre (even for the late seventies), and may put a few readers off. However, that doesn't mean Wernick isn't worth trying. Next time you stumble across one, if you're a horror fan, give it a try. ** ½