JAMES HERBERT - 'HAUNTED'
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton
Paperback
1988
ISBN: 0-330-37628-4
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HAUNTED - JAMES HERBERT
Once in a while a novel comes along that makes the aspiring author weep tears of joy. Haunted is just such a novel, as it should give that self-same aspiring author hope of eventually getting published. The whole thing gives one a lift akin to Pink Floyd's The Wall when feeling down; nothing can ever be as bad as Pink thinks it is and nothing can possibly be as badly written as Haunted.
Set around the efforts of a monotonously
dull if sceptical psychic investigator sent to a stereotypical Big House
to see whether it is, ahem, Haunted, this must be one of the
worst horror novels in print.
James Herbert is a fine writer.
His global appeal, unlimited success and accolades that rank him as
a British rival to Stephen King, are all testament to this. As is his
work; The Dark, Creed, The Fog, The Rats Trilogy,
Others and, especially, The Magic Cottage are all masterpieces
that are guaranteed to keep lovers of the genre awake long into the
night.
Haunted, however, is an
insomniacs dream come true.
Slow to the point of dead (no pun intended),
there is little here to take a reader past the first ten pages, as the
plot unwinds at a funereal pace and then miraculously finds reverse.
The characters - especially the main protagonist, David Ash - are two-dimensional
at best, whereas the plot - such as it is - is nonsense-made-prose -personified.
If anybody has ever had a bad day at
the office, then James Herbert is surely that body, on the day
he sat down and began this horror, of a different sort to which he intended.
Though he should be thanked for giving
heart to those who can wish to be only half as successful.
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