Books & Poetry

I think it was Mr Peacock who spotted the book sticking out of my bag. What was it, he asked. ‘James Herbert’s “The Fog”, sir.’ ‘Let’s have a look, Royle. Show the whole class.’ So, I did, and the whole class, led by Mr Peacock, dissolved into snorts of laughter. It took me a long time to get over being ridiculed for my choice of reading matter. It’s not like it was even an English lesson. I felt resentful of their laughter and protective towards Herbert. I loved ‘The Fog’. It was my first Herbert and I read it several times, savouring the bit with the shears in the gym, the bit with the lesbians in Brighton, and many other bits as well. Feature continues

I caught up with ‘The Rats’ later, but it wasn’t as good. ‘The Survivor’ was tremendous (the film adaptation with Jenny Agutter and Robert Powell well worth tracking down). I didn’t fancy ‘Fluke’ or ‘The Spear’, couldn’t get into ‘The Dark’, still hadn’t read ‘The Rats’ by the time ‘Lair’ came out, didn’t like the look of ‘The Jonah’, and gave up halfway through ‘Shrine’. By then I had graduated to Stephen King, whose stories were better told, more convincing and, for these reasons and others, far, far scarier.

King and Herbert both debuted in 1974 and published a book a year, more or less, for the next two decades. Gradually, King crept into the broadsheet book reviews, achieving mainstream respectability, while Herbert, for some reason, never really did, although he still shifts units and pleases the fans. His new novel, ‘The Secret of Crickley Hall’, is getting a big push. In it, a minor character, a reporter on a local paper, says, ‘The public likes a good ghost story now and again.’ That may be true, but is ‘The Secret of Crickley Hall’ any good?

Gabe and Eve, whose young son Cameron has been missing presumed dead for almost a year, move to a big old house in Devon with their two daughters Loren and Cally. The house is apparently haunted by the ghosts of children who were evacuated there during World War II to be looked after by a strict guardian, Augustus Cribben, and his equally unsympathetic sister Magda. One fateful night in 1943 there was a great storm and terrible flood…

I so wanted to be able to say this was vintage Herbert, a quick, compelling read peppered with gory scenes that I would consume with the same relish I did ‘The Fog’. Sadly, however, it’s bobbins. It’s also 600 pages long, and I read every last blinking page. Life is too short, this book too long. ‘There’s nothing people like more than a ludicrous haunted-house story,’ says another minor character. That’s just asking for trouble. As in countless other ludicrous haunted-house stories, the characters are slow to catch on. What had rattled the door? What had banged the pipes? What had stirred the dust? Ghosts, for fuck’s sake. Get up to speed.