- Hardcover: 512 pages
- Publisher: Macmillan (9 April 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0333761170
- ISBN-13: 978-0333761175
- Product Dimensions: 23.8 x 15.8 x 4.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 312,430 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
A book that starts in Hell has got to be expertly paced, and no-one has ever accused British King of Horror James Herbert of lacking any of those skills. Hardly has a damned soul agreed to an angelic offer he cannot refuse than Nicholas Dismas is limping down the mean streets of contemporary Brighton searching for a child who may not even exist. Nicholas has only one eye and is short, lame and hunchbacked; he finds himself living daily with the hatred a society obsessed with normality dishes out to those who cannot conform. This is a book about exploitation and prejudice which touches some raw nerves; it makes you think as well as making you shudder. Dismas--who feels sorry for himself but not too much of the time--is one of the more three-dimensional characters in Herbert's work, and his love for the tiny and beautiful Constance is genuinely touching while not entirely avoiding sentimentality. There is horror of a classic visceral kind here--one of Dismas's colleagues dies in a peculiarly vile fashion--and a nursing home turns out to contain a real heart of darkness, but the real horror is the shabby ways in which people treat each other. --Roz Kaveney
Product Description
Nicholas Dismas is a private investigator, but like no other that has gone before him. He is hired to find a missing baby and his investigation leads him to discover the dark secret of the "Others", and resolves the enigma of his own existence.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Disturbing but brilliant,
By
This review is from: Others (Paperback)
This James Herbert book was very different from the other books I have read by him (The Rats, The Fog, The Dark). The whole story is told by the ppint of view of one charactor and there are only a few gory scenes (although when there are bloody scenes, they are very gory and vividly described).
Although I found this book quite upsetting as the main charactor has spinobifoda and is physically deformed and for the first half of the novel we are told a lot about how unhappy he is and how hard the world is for people like him. However, the story is origional and very well told and I found it very difficult to put down. The last 200 pages are amazing, very creative and suspenceful. Nicolas Dismas was a handsom, famous and well-loved actor in the 1930's and 40's, but on the inside he was a horrible person. 50 years after his death he is given a chance to live again to put right what went wrong and show that he is a good person (but he will have no memory of his previous life). He is born as Nick Dismas, a man made miserable and lonely by his deformity's. He is a Private Investigator and is one day asked to look for a woman's long lost son, which leads him on a terrifying and disturbing journey to Peacefull Rest, a nursing home for the elderly, and the horrors that it conceals.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Absorbing Work of Horror Fiction,
By
This review is from: Others (Paperback)
Upon reading the synopsis and having read other Herbert books before, you would be forgiven for thinking this book is about a private investigator who is hired to solve a mystery and is pulled into a world of ghosts and spirits he can't control. To an extent, part of this is true. What however makes this book so different and so original, is the central character Nicholas Dismas; a man with such physical deformities, he resembles the elephant man. Quite a stark contrast to other "heros" who are 6ft tall, handsome and charming. Whilst by it's own admission Others is a gripping thriller expertly written, it is society's intolerence and prejudice of Nicholas's character that will linger a long, long time after you have turned the last page of this book. Enthralling.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Herbert's best... by far,
By
This review is from: Others (Paperback)
Not only is the premise extraordinarily clever, the pacing of the story is perfect.
A matinee idol, after inhabiting hell for half a century, is given the chance to leave in a very rare offer from on high. The conditions are that he will be reincarnated, will help a group of innocents, and, crucially, will not know anything about the deal. Cruelly (perhaps), he is put into the body of Nicholas Dismas, a private detective with spina bifida who was abandonned as a newborn, who is contacted by a mother who suspects that her "stillborn" child has, in fact, been kidnapped. Told in the first person, Others spirals rapidly from an apparent cut and dry PI story into a very disturbing (indeed) tale of extreme "medical malpractice". If you can stand the deranged ending, this is excellent.
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