Before we actually try to review Silent Scream by Dan Schmidt, I feel we must discuss its existence before getting too deep. (This will become important again in about 3 books, since I picked up a book discussing the era this one got written in.)
This one is out of the mid 90's, and bears the stamp of 90's horror mediocrity, Leisure Books, as the publishing imprint. Leisure Book, much like Zebra books, were commonly found with lurid covers over cheap paper, decorating supermarket book sections, enticing people into what may or may not be a memorable horror story. (Mostly not, although I do remember a few of them, and I imagine when we clean out Mom's attic eventually, I'll find even more.)
Anyway, at it's heart, Silent Scream is a tale of two brothers, and why one hates the other. Mike, the younger brother, starts off a homeless addict currently roaming the streets of Philadelphia. Older brother John, has stayed in Glendale, Illinois, a farming community that's become a prosperous middle class urban utopia. John has a loving wife, 3 kids, owns and edits the town newspaper, and owns and runs a restaurant with the family. Mike runs into a former classmate who runs away screaming. Mike repeats a prayer he found in some obscure volume of self help literature. Mike finds a dead body with an amulet shaped like the symbol in his book. Mike puts it on, and wow, Mike can suddenly hear everyone's thoughts and start using his thoughts to control people around him! (Had this been 80's comedy instead of 90's horror, this would be a sex comedy.)
Anyway, back in Glendale, where Mike will eventually make his way back to, John is having issues of his own, including a letter from Mike that starts off the novel. We see the serene nature of John's life, and the occasional crack in that facade, what with drunk coworkers who want very badly to crack open the mafia connections that brought the money into Glendale.
While John is potboiling his way through, Mike uses his new powers to start hitching rides west, starting with his old classmate. Mike's hearing a voice with his new powers, encouraging his revenge plans.
Until the brothers finally meet up, we mostly get Mike getting revenge on people he feels wronged him and plotting against his brother's "perfect life" and John learning to be a more assertive person. And then they meet.
As far as readability, this is a decent read. I mean, Mike is a sympathetic antagonist, one whom you can empathize with to a point. John is not a great protagonist, as I found myself hating him throughout most of the story, and frankly, Mike does have reasonable grounds to hate him on. I mean, John did know the charges against Mike growing up were untrue, and he also knew the truth about other things that lead to Mike's victimization. And he said nothing. I'm sorry, keeping a trust fund of parental money doesn't excuse silence in the face of oppression of someone you supposedly love.
On the other hand, Mike's actions with powers start losing logic of any kind when he goes after John's youngest, the one who most resembles the Mike as a youth. We never learn whether Mike's powers are inborn (it's mentioned that some of the side effects manifesting with the powers mirror illnesses Mike had growing up), or come from an external being, maybe a demon or a god of some kind. We get very vague hints about some of what Mike went through as a kid, but never enough to really flesh out some of what happened.... I felt like had this been written a bit later, Mike would have been revealed as being molested or even gay, but instead, we just know he was falsely accused or raping a girl, even if it never went to court. We know something happened in the bushes with another boy and his dad beat him half to death over whatever happened there. We also get more than a few scenes of the misogyny that tends to inhabit pulp horror, which does tend to make Mike quite a bit like the monster everyone thought he was as a teenager. And when we find out love and prayer are Mike's weakness, the ending takes on a vaguely moralistic stance that in no way redeems anyone while feeling tacked on to satisfy an editor.
Honestly, I enjoyed it, although I felt like I was checking off boxes on the genre all the way through.
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