So, he wanders across the street to the local pub and has a drink before phoning his boss, Kate, to ask about the case. Widely imitated and hugely influential, his 19 novels have sold more than 42 million copies worldwide. So, naturally, I should begin by talking more about this novel’s genuinely unsettling and disturbing horror elements 🙂 Despite a couple of well-placed gruesome moments, this story focuses a lot more heavily on psychological horror, atmosphere, bleak gothic horror, tragedy, suspense, implied horror, cruelty, creepy characters and the paranormal. Dal passato oscuro e misterioso, David, si trova ora a risolvere situazioni che alla maggior parte della gente farebbe rizzare i capelli.

At the beginning - I love me a Ghostbuster tries to debunk the haunted house story with lots of cliches. Personally, I beg to differ; I found it to be anything but, and in fact to involve more than one jaw-dropping surprise.Much later, the author wrote two more novels with David as the central character, so that they form a trilogy. As for the story itself, even though it was supposed to be scary, I had no trouble reading this at night. Years ago (before I read any Herbert) I watched a movie this book was based on, I couldn't remeber much of the plot, but I remembered some of the cast and so while reading this book I kept picturing Ash as Aidan Quinn and Christina as Kate Beckinsale. Those books were best sellers because many readers (including me) were too horrified to put them down.

For further information about your statutory rights, contact your local authority Trading Standards department or consumer advice centre (for example the Citizen's Advice Bureau if you are in the UK). This novel also includes a really clever – and fairly subtle – nod to Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Shining” too, with a sub-plot about another character sensing that David is in distress and travelling to Edbrook to save him.

He is a man who is troubled ( and driven to alcoholism) by a tragic past and who tries to take a “scientific” attitude towards the paranormal as a way of repressing his own deep-seated fears about it. On the flip side, it was fun revisiting this novel even if I no longer think it's the greatest haunted house story ever told. Born in London in the forties, James Herbert was art director of an advertising agency before turning to writing fiction in 1975.