Haunted (David Ash)

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While listening, I thought two things, it must have been written in the 70's and that it was written for a movie. It was actually published in 1988 and it did start out as a script. The book has a sort of Ira Levine feel do it. Most of the scary happens toward the end and by today's scary, gory books, it is not that scary. It does build to a pretty good climax and from chapter 23 on it really gets good. So me and James Herbert do have such a hit and miss relationship! This book ended up frustrating me, it could have been a five star read for me but in the end it just didn't cut it. Everything is unusual… Everything is unexpected and unpredictable… And with every elapsed hour things turn more and more mysterious… It's so contrived it left me cringing at times. It's not touching or moving in any way, the only emotion it evoked in me was frustration. But where it really does itself no favours atall in my opinion, is the bloody love story that runs pretty much all the way through the book. And it's not even believable due to the extremely unconvincing nature of the dialogue.

Delphine was SO PERFECT and yet SO PERFECTLY USELESS and as a result so flat it was painful. I didn't want to read one more thing about the woman. Their dialogue together was stilted to the point of being painful. I found out later that this was the third book in a trilogy, I don't think I missed much by not having read them.Then there’s ‘the boy’. Oh, well, that certainly wasn’t a big surprise to me. The boy has a curious condition. His skin is so translucent you can see his veins, organs and what not. This is because he was born ridiculously early. Also, he’s a hermophiliac, which instantly said ‘royal family’ to me. So he’s apparently Diana’s son, but they never told her he was born alive because of his condition. We’re to believe in all this that ‘the boy’ is the good guy, and hey, he is. He’s pretty good and decent, but his treatment is such a stark contrast as to how Hitler’s daughter is treated that it made me even more angry. Why should he get all the love and care? Because his mind functions properly and his only special condition has to do with his body? Everyone deserves to be treated with the same care, regardless of who their parent is. I've not read James Herbert before, but I understand this book had been an effort to branch out from the more usual fare of horror and chills into something broader and deeper. Sadly though endless meandering sentences does no more equal deep insights than awkwardly written sex equals expressions of human desires whilst a man meeting a bunch of fairies and wondering a bit whether it could be real is no kind of investigation into the nature of belief. Perhaps ironically the only brief moment when I found the book did come to life was at one of the moments of straight horror featuring a bottomless jar of spiders. The rest of the time the tale remains resolutely lifeless, rendering almost comical its apparent pretensions to some deeper insights or truth. He is and always will be the reason that I fell in love with reading and will always remain up there with my favourite authors. My top 10 James Herbert books 1. Haunted (1988)

I normally would not read another book by the author if the first book is only worth three stars, but in reading Herbert's bio, it sounds like his very first book Rats, might have been his best and pretty good by today's standard. He was criticized for it being too gory and too negative about London slums.

David begins to perform forensic examinations of the house, trying to detect evidence of paranormal activity. Complicating the investigation is Christina's continuous flirtation with David, and his own infatuation with her. However, older brother Robert is against their friendship, and the two have a suspiciously close relationship. David begins having paranormal experiences. Christina, who had originally told David both her parents died in India, admits that in fact her mother drowned herself in the lake and Nanny Tess was the one who discovered the body. David believes it is the trauma of this which is causing Nanny Tess to see the ghost of Mrs. Mariell. Masterton, Graham, ed. (1989). Scare Care (Tor horror). New York City: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-93156-8. Instalove, in an adult novel. No explanation, nothing but twoo wuv from the instant they laid eyes on each other. With all of the play about how connected he felt to her, I thought it was a set up for something horrible and supernatural. How disappointed I was. Even at his old age, Herbert never seems to have had sex far from his mind. Even when Ash is in the dungeons with the mental patients (literally referred to as "lunatics" and "retards" in the enlightened year of 2013), one old women has her garment slip down, revealing her massive breasts. Ever the gentleman, David throws the exposed women into the throng of brain-dead "crazies", using her gang-rape and probable death as a convenient distraction. What a nice man. And yet, I continue, every second or third year, to read this guy's books. It's become more of a lark at this point. Have a disappointing experience with one of his mediocre novels, avoid him for at least a year, then finally return thinking surely he must have a few more worthwhile stories out there. He is, after all, one of Britain's "most celebrated authors".