James Herbert Is Dead!

JAMES HERBERT IS DEAD!

On 20 March 2013 the shock news was announced by his office that the bestselling horror novelist James Herbert had died, aged only 69. He was a true giant of the horror world, and was one of the leading horror authors to change the face of horror literature in the 70’s.  Before Herbert’s first novel THE RATS was published in 1974, the most popular author in the horror genre was Dennis Wheatley, with his leisurely and stuffy black-magic stories. James Herbert changed the landscape of horror instantly with THE RATS, with graphic descriptions of violence and horror; men, women, old people and babies being killed and eaten alive by hungry rats in the heart of London. It caused a sensation and in the days before VHS players or Nintendo’s, the novel sold 100,000 copies in just two weeks, and went on to sell millions of copies. He instantly became a bestselling writer, and he followed it up with hit after hit; THE FOG [“For God’s sake don’t leave it on Aunt Edna’s chair!” said one reviewer] was about a poison gas cloud that caused violence and horror wherever it drifted, THE SURVIVOR, FLUKE, THE DARK, SHRINE and more. He wrote two great sequels to THE RATS; LAIR had the rats grouping en masse in Epping Forest, while DOMAIN saw the rats mutated hideously after a nuclear apocalypse.

I discovered James Herbert in 1994, when I was 16, and probably got the books from that windy market stall I mentioned earlier in my blog. I remember reading THE RATS and LAIR during English lessons when I should have been reading Dickens or Skakespeare and preparing for my GCSE’s. I got wrong off my English teacher Mr.Keegans when some lads in my class pointed out to him that I was reading LAIR in class. He took it off me and said something like “read it after your exams, Michael” when he gave me it back after the lesson. Little did he know I had already read most of THE RATS in his class earlier that week. Anyway, that May of 1994, so my notes tell me, I read THE RATS trilogy [as well as RED DWARF for the fifth time] when I think I should have been revising for, or doing, my GCSE exams. I love THE RATS books; not only are they fast-paced icky reads but they opened the door for me marked “Animal Attack Books”, and in the years that followed I’ve read all sorts of titles, some good [THE SCURRYING, THE SWARM, THE BLOODSNARL, DEVOUR, various CRABS books by Guy.N.Smith,  BATS OUT OF HELL, etc], some not so good [THE PIKE, PIRAHNA, THE CATS, NIGHT OF THE BUDGIES etc], but THE RATS was the original and best and kick-started my love for Creature Feature stories. Thanks for that Mr.Herbert, and I can happily say that my in-progress creature-feature novel DALE OF TEARS owes more than a little to Herberts style and substance.

Like Stephen King, Herbert had his first book published in 1974, and in his native England, in the 1980’s, Herbert regularly outsold King. Film and Television weren’t so quick to adapt Herbert’s novels; the recent three hour series THE SECRET OF CRICKLEY HALL wasn’t bad, but films FLUKE and HAUNTED stumbled at the box office, and THE SURVIVOR, the first of his books to be filmed, turned out to be a confusing mess of a movie. I love the anecdote that when James Herbert was watching THE SURVIVOR, based on his novel, he fell asleep because he couldn’t understand the story.

Over the years I’ve read ten Herbert novels, my favourites of which are the three RATS books, THE FOG, and PORTENT [about sudden and dramatic – and supernatural – climate change], while I wasn’t overly keen on HAUNTED or THE MAGIC COTTAGE [with MOON, ONCE and THE SURVIVOR somewhere in between]. His latest [and now last] book ASH  garnered quite a lot of poor reviews on Amazon, many readers apologising in their reviews for giving a Herbert book such low ratings. I don’t know why, but for a couple of weeks as soon as ASH was published it was released as a Kindle book for just 20p; perhaps the publishers had an idea this might be his last book, and wanted to nudge it to the top of the charts. His output has slowed over the years, and, although I haven’t yet read it, ASH would seem to be poor Herbert; perhaps his health, and talent, has been flagging for some time. But never mind that; the majority of authors flag towards the end of their career. Herbert’s legacy is that he pumped much-needed momentum and fresh blood into the horror genre, and during the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s he was very much the face of, and the king of horror writing in England, and has left behind some cracking books; THE RATS and THE FOG in particular will be remembered with affection.

As my own small tribute to Herbert, I’ve a) written this article, and b) I’ll read another of his novels [he wrote 23], one I’ve not yet read, a Herbert classic.  

R.I.P. James Herbert.

ADDENDUM: It is now five days after Herberts death, and I am reading, and enjoying, his novel THE DARK, that has been sitting on my shelf for many years. A quick check of the Bestselling Horror charts, at Amazons’ Kindle Store [which is used for all the e-book bestseller charts you might see], and I see that all but one [THE JONAH] of Herberts books have shot into the Top 100, with 8 of them dominating the Top 10. Clearly, dying does your career no harm at all.