Imagine the scene. I’m casting around in coversation for the name of a popular author, the sort that sells well in airports and whose books have embossed covers with their names in gold as though they were a brand of cheap chocolates, and I come up wth james Herbert.
He writes horror and thrillers, a bit like Stephen King, but I’ve never read any of his books. Not letting that get in the way of an example I cast aspersions against his writing skill to a few nods around me, probably also by people who’ve never read him.
Then one voice chirps up to defend him. There’s ‘48, says the voice, it’s a departure from the usual stuff into an alternative history of Britain after the second world war. The nazis still lost, but they put some biological warfare agent onto the last V2s and now no one but the people with a rare blood group have survived.
The plot centres on an American airman stuck in London, living on his own pursued by a group of British blackshirts who want his blood to replace their own so they’ll become immune. A small group of other survivors save him from them in the first chapter and they carry on together.
I’ve already told you too much now, as that lone voice defending James Herbert was absolutely wrong. This is a terrible book. It’s hackneyed and predictable, the characters are made entirely of cardboard and plot-device glue, the violence is boring and the sex is toe-curlingly prudish. If you’re going to write about sex at least have the decency to write about bodies and passion, not abstract hardnesses and peaks.
At least it’s short. I defy anyone to spend more than three hours reading this book, including breaks to throw it across the room and swear at it.
Worst of all, having given it a portion of my life I’m never going to get back I find it’s not a departure at all, that all of his books are about biological agents and British nazis and bad sex. Not just rubbish, but exactly the same rubbish that he has been churning out every year since the seventies.
I can now use James Herbert as an example of a truly dismal author without fear of contradiction. For that, lone crappy horror fiction fan, I thank you.
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