Others

James Herbert

Others is the story of Nicholas Dismas, a disabled private investigator named after a biblical thief, who is drawn into the case of a woman trying to find her lost child. One whom, according to all the facts, died in childbirth. The woman had visited a psychic who convinced her that her child was still alive. At first Dismas is sceptical, yet his investigations soon find him experiencing some distinctly paranormal events. These investigations eventually uncover a disturbing secret that has remained concealed for decades. Herbert is one of those authors you can always rely on for an enjoyable ride, some books will be worse than others yet most are at least worth reading. This is no exception to that rule, yet doesn't really rank amongst his best work. Despite the occasional psychic episode the vast majority of the novel concentrates on the investigation, and for the most part that element of the book works really well, though pales in comparison to the classic detective novels. These occasional lapses into the supernatural are used to keep up the tension during this opening section, yet suffers from being overlong, this may work in a detective thriller but not so well in a horror novel.

Running through the whole novel is the idea that the main character is seeking redemption for past misdeeds in a previous life run all through the novel from the first chapter, touching on the rather contraversial idea that disability is a repayment for pass misdeeds. Nicholas Dismas is very much an outsider, one who suffers untold torment from others for his disability and results in some of the most uncomfortable scenes in the novel.

Those who enjoy detective thrillers may manage it through the first two thirds of the book, but are unlikely to enjoy the final third unless they also enjoy James Herbert's brand of horror fiction. The tone is very different from the rest of the novel and is also something of a weakness from which the novel only partially manages to recover. He spends a lot of time introducing a group of characters, the descriptions of whom are meant to create a sense of shock and revulsion, and from then on plays it for the shocks. Some may find it hard to progress beyond this point. It's not that this is the bastard child of two different novels forced into one, for in the end it represents a whole that he was building from the beginning of the novel. The real problem though is that it is a chaotic mess that is also overlong, a grand finale that is dragged out far longer than it needs to be, and one that stretches credulity even for a horror novel. Herbert used to be the master of pacing, but here he seems to have stumbled a little, leaving this book to be more an interesting oddity than anything else.