Had not read a James Herbert book in a while so I went looking in a pile for a copy of this which I knew was somewhere in the house. I knew it involved the character Ashe from the book of the same name, the last book by James Herbert I actually read. I had thought it was the book which introduced the character. Turns out I was wrong. He first appeared in an earlier book; Haunted. But I had started this one so I decided to continue.
Glad I did too, it was a fast and entertaining read. Hit the ground running with ghostly and ghastly goings on in the remote English village of Sleath. Tucked away and not easy to reach even with a map, its a local town full of local people doing local things, the full Roysten Vasey by Jingo. Yet scratch the surface and this picture postcard little sleepy village proves itself to be haunted on an increasingly dangerous curve. Bad things have happened, bad things are happening and things are about to get a lot worse. Unkempt but likeable physic sleuth Ashe arrives and provokes the restless spitits to bring forward their spooky agenda.
The narrative switches between Emmerdale like day to day small village happenings to a Lucio Fulci level of otherworldly horror. Its not for the faint hearted and some of the events are genuinely stomach turning....ugh, James Herbert thought of some really horrible things. People die awfully. Actually, some of them live awfully...
The edition of the book I have, which I picked up in a hospice store, is a compact nicely covered book club edition with a nice inner illustration of the village of Sleath. The sort of map one could expect to find in a tourist information office. Although this is not the sort of book which lends itself to the notion of sleepy eventless days dozing on a deckchair next to the duck pond on the village green. Not the suff of dreams, more the stuff of nightmares.
