The Cult
(EHRLICH, MAX)
ABSTRACT ? EHRLICH, MAX ? THE CULT (1978) BANTAM BOOKS a near documentary like look at the tragedy that comes of involvement in a religious cult. This is a great and highly under-rated novel that was sadly marketed as a horror story, when in fact it is a thriller, with no supernatural elements, and a very realistic look at how cults operate. The story begins with a cult member committing suicide by hanging. The story then switches to that of a family rendered powerless to help their son as he is slowly brainwashed and indoctrinated into a sinister cult. The family become so desperate that they hire a deprogammer, (someone who will forcibly kidnap and counter-brainwash a cultist). Initially, the deprogramming is very harrowing, as the son abducted, bundled into a car and locked in a room while the deprogrammer denounces the cult and its leader (a man who has revised the Bible and added his own passages to it to make it fit in with his own doctrines). Just as it looks as if the boy will return to his family, he returns to the cult, which he then uses its own lawyers to sue both the deprogrammer and the family, with the leader of the sect and the son, successfully suing the family for their efforts to get the boy back. It now transpires that the suicide was that of the deprogrammer?s own child. There was much speculation on whether the cult was based on a real one, and it shows some similarities to the Unification Church (Moonies). The author insisted that the book is about an entirely fictitious movement, though he undoubtedly researched the subject thoroughly. Interestingly the book failed to stop me personally from getting involved in a cult a few years after I read the novel, which remains one of the best of its kind; a timely warning to us all.
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