![]() ![]() What a surprise to us all, then, when the activities in said mansion make the Bates Motel look like a sunny little bungalow. A mausoleum" featuring "dark louring skies", vast galleried hall, and a gothic leopard's head of a door knocker. They see fit to relocate themselves and their daughters to a rain-swept house in a Devonshire ravine named Devil's Cleave: "a tomb of a place. Gabe and Eve Caleigh are trying to start a new life after a terrible incident in which their five-year-old son has disappeared. The Secret of Crickley Hall is being published as a "classic" ghost story, and indeed there are ghouls in every cupboard, but in reality it's a camp haunted-house chiller straight out of Hammer Horror, complete with spectacular lighting effects and creaking cast-iron chandelier. He has written about mutant rats, sexed-up fairies and reincarnation, among other phenomena. ![]() Herbert is Blighty's answer to Stephen King: a leather-clad behemoth of the horror world with global sales of over 40 million. In James Herbert's world, things go bump in the night with spine-tingling efficacy only to carry on bumping, thumping and violently swaying until the tension is interspersed by laughter. For a reader blissfully unacquainted with the horror genre, the real thing is a grisly but risible beast, part feral tooth-barer, part pantomime horse. ![]()
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