Mon 7 Dec 2009
SOME MIXED HYBRIDS [1982], Part 2 – Reviews by George Kelley.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Science Fiction & Fantasy[4] Comments
Reviews by GEORGE KELLEY:
Part 1 of this series: RANDALL GARRETT – Lord Darcy Investigates.
2.) JAMES HERBERT – The Jonah. Signet, paperback original; 1st printing, 1981. UK edition: New English Library, pbo, 1981.
James Herbert has established himself as one of the leading British horror novelists with chillers like The Rats, The Fog, Survivor, Fluke, Lair, The Spear, and The Dark.
His latest novel, The Jonah, features undercover policeman Jim Kelso as a jinxed man, a jonah no one will work with. Through a series of flashbacks, Herbert shows Kelso’s early life in England — his abandonment at birth, the horror of the orphanage in post-WW II Britain.
Even then, death struck those around Kelso — when bullies chase him into an abandoned house, a savage death befalls them. Later, Kelso finds his step-father mysteriously dead, and a few years after that the woman he lives with dies in horrible circumstances.
When Kelso begins his career with the police, misfortune seems to strike those colleagues who work with him. Eventually, because no one will work with him, Kelso is assigned to undercover assignments where he can work alone. Even so, whenever a big bust comes down, the police involved with Kelso are killed or injured.
As a last resort, Kelso is teamed with a woman undercover agent, Ellie Shepherd. Together, they are supposed to break up a drug ring operating around a NATO base where a pilot recently crashed into the sea while taking drugs on a mission.
Kelso stubbornly resists a romantic involvement with Ellie and tries to discourage her from working with him on the assignment before his jinx strikes her. Although one of the pushers is murdered and an attempt is made on their lives, Kelso and Ellie get closer and closer to the secret of the drug ring.
There’s a solid presentation of police procedure in all of this, but all the while Herbert also generates a mood of rising terror through the use of his flashbacks.
The final climactic scene is chilling but lacks the impact of Herbert’s classics, The Spear and The Dark. Nevertheless, for a few hours of suspenseful reading, The Jonah will do.
December 7th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
I like Herbert quite a bit. He writes a mix of thriller and horror with touches of the occult and science fiction that is very British, and that I prefer to much of what passes for horror fiction nowadays — too often recycled Stephen King or Anne Rice.
King himself championed Herbert early on,
If you like Herbert you might also like John Farris, the often underrated American writer who shares some themes with Herbert, and who for my money is and always has been the best American writer in the genre (a judgment shared by Stephen King). Herbert and Farris are prolific, talented, and well worth reading. Farris novel All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By (1977) may be the finest horror novel by an American in the last century.
December 7th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
I’ve read James Herbert only in bits and pieces, but I’d certainly agree that he and John Farris have a lot in common.
I reviewed SACRIFICE, a fairly recent book by Farris earlier on this blog, if you call 1995 recent:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=507
I don’t read a lot of horror fiction, though. I have too many other books to read. It takes an author who adds something special to the mix, without going overboard with the gore, to attract any attention from me.
December 7th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
Steve
I don’t read much new horror fiction myself these days — largely because of the needless grue that resembles the literary equivalent of a bad EC Horror comic more than a novel. I’ve even given up on King for his inability to out grow that twelve year old boy phase, and didn’t finish Thomas Harris Hannibal when I realized he had fallen prey to the same thing.
Herbert and Farris are exceptions though, and while All Heads Turn … features at least one gruesome bloodbath it is neither pointless nor extraneous, and it is perhaps the most controlled such passage written for any horror novel. Chosen one of the 100 Best horror novels of the Century, All Heads Turn … is a first class novel about the sins of the past returning to curse a family, and one of the finest achievements of the horror novel. For my money — and I am not alone in my judgment on it — it stands above Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and King classics like Carrie and Salem’s Lot (King incidentally agrees about Farris and this book). Perhaps the only book that might rival it is Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Pretty good company for any novel.
Herbert and Farris never seem to fall in the trap of so much horror, a sort of phony Dis-Pollyanna view of life that lacks the true bleakness earned by writers like Woolrich, Thompson, or Goodis. Their works feature strong plots, intelligent characters, real suspense, and as often as not the kind of horror that generates goosebumps and a true frisson of unease instead of nausea and nervous laughter. On top of which I don’t think I have read a bad book by either man.
Farris incidentally also wrote the bestselling Peyton Place style novel Harrison High, and a pretty good hard boiled Gold Medal original, Delfina, as Steve Brackeen. He’s been at this since 1956 and his latest, High Bloods, came out this year. Not a bad career. Shave about ten years off that and that’s how long Herbert has been at it, no mean career either.
December 8th, 2009 at 12:26 am
“…goosebumps and a true frisson of unease instead of nausea and nervous laughter.”
That’s a nice phrase. Thank you. It’s exactly what I look for in a horror novel or a ghost story — and so seldom find.