by James Herbert
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by James Herbert
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by James Herbert
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by James Herbert
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by James Herbert
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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
Review
James Herbert's reinvention of himself as a writer of style and consequence is supported by this chilling epic, a world away from his early books. The memorable first line - 'My redemption begins in Hella' - may not quite have the du Maurier ring, but it's a good index of the stylish writing on offer here. Nicholas Dismas is a private investigator, but one with a remarkable secret to which not even he has the answer. Hired to find a missing baby, his investigations take him to a clandestine location called Perfect Rest. Is this a nursing home for the elderly? As Dismas investigates the bizarre secrets of the Others, revelations about his own past are in the offing. Herbert concentrates on the power of an inexorable narrative rather then on artificially injected shocks, and Others is all the better for that. (Kirkus UK)
Prolific horror writer Herbert (Portent, 1996, etc.) revives a sentimental favorite, Victor Hugo's Quasimodo, dresses him up in a modern setting, and sends him forth as Nicholas Dismas, private investigator. Dismas was so malformed at birth - hunchback, spinal curvature, twisted and withered right leg, birdboned chest, a forehead overlapping his eyes, overlarge ears, flat nose, backhair that formed a tail between his buttocks, and so on - that his mother left the newborn monster by the trash bins behind a nun's convent in a poorer part of London. A prologue set in Hell reveals that Dismas is actually a damned soul, a once irresistibly handsome movie star who is being given one last chance at redemption. This time around, he must live in an exemplary fashion completely at odds with his former evil ways - which he will not be allowed to remember. Thus, Nick Dismas struggles daily with God: why has he been born such a hideous monster to suffer an entire lifetime of humiliation, vilification, and punishment? (The reader knows: every card is stacked against Dismas's atonement.) Now, he's hired by widow Shelly Ripstone to find the bastard she bore before she married. Shelly never saw her baby, having been told by the hospital that it died almost at birth. But Louise Broomfield, a clairvoyant, has confirmed Shelly's intuition that the child lives. Will Dismas find it for her? As birds and whisperings invade Dismas's mind, Herbert leads his hero into ever more shocking traps while dropping in spells of garden silences under vast clear-blue skies. All clues lead to the Perfect Rest nursing home, whose care-supervisor has the same malformed body as Dismas but an inner beauty that rings bells: her name, Constance Bell ("The bells, the bells!) Midway, the gore gathers and the plot veers into The Island of Doctor Moreau territory. Even so, Nick Dismas remains one of the most tenderly drawn monsters since Hugo's bell-ringer. (Kirkus Reviews)
Prolific horror writer Herbert (Portent, 1996, etc.) revives a sentimental favorite, Victor Hugo's Quasimodo, dresses him up in a modern setting, and sends him forth as Nicholas Dismas, private investigator. Dismas was so malformed at birth - hunchback, spinal curvature, twisted and withered right leg, birdboned chest, a forehead overlapping his eyes, overlarge ears, flat nose, backhair that formed a tail between his buttocks, and so on - that his mother left the newborn monster by the trash bins behind a nun's convent in a poorer part of London. A prologue set in Hell reveals that Dismas is actually a damned soul, a once irresistibly handsome movie star who is being given one last chance at redemption. This time around, he must live in an exemplary fashion completely at odds with his former evil ways - which he will not be allowed to remember. Thus, Nick Dismas struggles daily with God: why has he been born such a hideous monster to suffer an entire lifetime of humiliation, vilification, and punishment? (The reader knows: every card is stacked against Dismas's atonement.) Now, he's hired by widow Shelly Ripstone to find the bastard she bore before she married. Shelly never saw her baby, having been told by the hospital that it died almost at birth. But Louise Broomfield, a clairvoyant, has confirmed Shelly's intuition that the child lives. Will Dismas find it for her? As birds and whisperings invade Dismas's mind, Herbert leads his hero into ever more shocking traps while dropping in spells of garden silences under vast clear-blue skies. All clues lead to the Perfect Rest nursing home, whose care-supervisor has the same malformed body as Dismas but an inner beauty that rings bells: her name, Constance Bell ("The bells, the bells!) Midway, the gore gathers and the plot veers into The Island of Doctor Moreau territory. Even so, Nick Dismas remains one of the most tenderly drawn monsters since Hugo's bell-ringer. (Kirkus Reviews)
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