Haunted (David Ash)

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His first novel, The Rats, was an instant bestseller and is now recognised as a classic of popular contemporary fiction.

In the morning, when David wakes, the wind is gusting through the house, which is now cloaked in black drapes and littered with fallen leaves. The goods do not need to be in their original packaging however in a sellable condition, and at your own cost and risk. This has been a super quick read, partly because the story is shortish, and partly because it's a page-turner. Three nights in which David Ash, there to investigate a haunting, will be the victim of horrifying and maleficent games.

I enjoyed the ending, except this: the character who is probably the most likeable in all the book gets killed. This theme of ageing is also used to explore how people only really develop a sense of empathy as they mature and grow older.

Much later, the author wrote two more novels with David as the central character, so that they form a trilogy. This is a novel that combines the unsettling atmosphere and subtly creeping psychological horror of something like Shirley Jackson’s “ The Haunting Of Hill House” with the intensity and shocking moments that you’d expect from an especially scary horror movie 🙂 Yes, it’s very different from the type of ultra-gruesome splatterpunk horror fiction that Herbert wrote in the 1970s and early-mid 1980s – but it is considerably scarier! For further information about your statutory rights, contact your local authority Trading Standards department or consumer advice centre (for example the Citizen's Advice Bureau if you are in the UK). Years ago (before I read any Herbert) I watched a movie this book was based on, I couldn't remeber much of the plot, but I remembered some of the cast and so while reading this book I kept picturing Ash as Aidan Quinn and Christina as Kate Beckinsale. As each dark secret is unveiled and terrible, malign forces are unleashed, he will fear for his very sanity.Some readers have been troubled by the fact that the investigator is willing to believe in some paranormal phenomena but not others; I did not find this a problem.

But it didn't send me googling 'ending explained', as sometimes happens with paranormal fiction, and it had some nice touches of black humour which I appreciated. The main character is a paranormal investigator and a couple of chapters deal with his previous cases, - they produced the effect of embedded stories and gave more depth to the main plot. The real magic of this novel is that the mystery slowly reveals itself piece by piece, each clue gradually forming a terrifying picture. She drives David to the palatial Edbrook House, where Christina's two brothers and the withdrawn Nanny Tess live. the way through - That is the wrong use of the word Szchiophrenic - I am really not liking this story.Thankfully, this novel has less lurid sex scenes than his normal (although of course there has to be a least a couple) and while quite short, it packs a good punch. Now, however, when he's been summoned by the eccentric Mariell family to their isolated 16th-century country seat Edbrook to investigate a purported haunting, my shelving this book as supernatural fiction should be a dead giveaway that his worldview is going to undergo some revision. The story is a little weak but is worth indulging if you want to read/listen to the longer books in the trilogy.