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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Haunted., 5 Sep 2005
In "Haunted" James Herbert has taken us back to horror basics with a tale of a creepy mansion house, creaking floorboards, strange goings on and mysterious ghosts.David Ash is a paranormal investigator, although he prefers to be known as an irregular normal investigator. As part of his role with the Psychical Research Institute he is tasked to make a visit to the remote stately home of Edbrook, where the occupants have requested he investigate some strange happenings. Edbrook, inhabited by the Marriell family, is the archetypal haunted house; there's a snarling evil looking dog who takes an instant dislike to Ash, shadowy figures who flit through the gardens, a stagnant pond with a aura of malevolence about it and so on. Things go from bad to worse for Ash, as he finds himself witnessing all sort of horrific sights, being chased through the woods and finding himself being attacked in the cellar. The book is quite short, only 250 or so pages, and this is where I felt it sort of lost its way. It's not really a short story and at the same time there's not enough flesh on the bones to make it a credible novel in its own right. There are some attempts to lay some background on the David Ash character but for me this doesn't work. Some of the passages are just too sketchy to really get into and some of the characters just too minimally described. I didn't buy any of the relationship between Ash and the head of the Psychical Research Institute, Kate McCarrick and likewise the relationship between Edith Phipps (a medium at the Institute) and Ash seemed unlikely to say the least. What does work though are the sections in the house when Ash is investigating the hauntings. Although the elements Herbert uses here are as old as the hills, he still writes about them extremely effectively. Reading these sections when alone in the house is more than a little bit scary. All in all not a bad old book, but I have read better from Mr Herbert.
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by James Herbert
by James Herbert
by James Herbert
by James Herbert
by James Herbert
