Carrion Comfort is a science fiction/horror novel by American writer Dan Simmons, published in 1989 in hardcover by Dark Harvest and in 1990 in paperback by Warner Books.
The story begins in 1942, with a man named Saul Laski who fears for his life while at the Chełmno extermination camp built by Germans during World War II in Poland.
They discuss a game that involves using an innate power they have, which they call an Ability, to take remote control of people simply through thought and cause them to do anything.
As each member of the group presents their recent exploits, such as the murder of John Lennon, a tension and unease between them is revealed as a kind of truce.
After realizing they are both looking for answers, Saul reveals to Natalie that he has a past with supernatural violence, having been used by someone with the Ability in Chełmno long ago, ever since looking to find the SS Officer, an Oberst, who controlled him in a perverse series of ways, including as a living pawn in a life-size game of chess with a Nazi General where each piece removed from the board was executed.
It is revealed that the reason the FBI was quick to stop investigating is that it is in part controlled by elements of the 'Island Club,' a Cabal of influential people with The Ability in the United States, such as Charles Colben of the FBI and Special Agent Haines, as well as billionaire C. Arnold Barent, Senatorial aide Nieman Trask, an influential Televangelist, and others.
Tony Harod, a vile Hollywood producer who only uses his Ability to subjugate and rape women, has been offered a membership in the Island Club if he agrees to help hunt down Willi and Melanie.
As Natalie and Gentry investigate, the Island Club uses a bus full of people to attack them—and they flee to the safety of the gang since no authorities arrive to help.
Melanie has been driven more insane by the thought of Nina being alive, and sees the violence erupting around her through her lens of racism as a bad northern neighborhood gone worse.
Melanie manages to destroy the helicopter and Colben through use of the old woman who appears dead but can be pushed beyond human limits by her Ability, and escapes to a park where she meets and takes over a family.
They kidnap him in Los Angeles and take him to a secret interrogation room operated by the Mossad in an abandoned barn east of San Juan Capistrano, California off the Ortega Highway.
They eventually kill Haines just outside Lake Elsinore, CA and escape, lost in a stolen car along fire service roads until ending up in Fallbrook, California.
Willi has shown his power earlier by using one of two people stationed in the control room at an Air Force missile silo in Meriden, Wyoming to demonstrate his ability to instigate United States-USSR nuclear war.
The book ends with Natalie going that same night on a suicide mission to finally kill Melanie and her collection of family, nurse, and doctor pawns.
The book ends with Melanie comfortable and unchallenged in her abilities in France, keeping tabs on control of officers of a nuclear submarine.
The timelines of the story in 1940s Poland and Israel, and as well as The United States in the 1980s are framed within and often reference actual events being directly or indirectly manipulated by characters with 'The Ability':