Creed (Aziza's Secret Fairy Door, 79)

Product Information

Inspired by an image he saw during a late-night showing of Dracula (1931) starring Bela Lugosi – a scene in which Renfield has a vision of thousands of rats – Herbert poured his energies into The Rats for 10 months and sent out six copies of his finished manuscript to publishers. Now I've decided to give Herbert a second chance with Moon and I'm so glad I did, cause this was a very good book. When The Rats was finally published in 1974, the first print run of 100,000 copies sold out in three weeks.

Creed by James Herbert - Pan Macmillan

It was more like a police procedural, with hints of horror that was a little bit too obvious for me. I didn't deliberately misguide my parents by not telling them that they were horror books, it was just that I had read other books by James Herbert in the past and loved them that much that I was dying to read these. I’m not squeamish by any stretch, but I just found it shocking how slimy this book was for a British novel written in the 1980s. From there on it's all demons, cemeteries at night, dark spooky (as if there are other kinds) dungeons, dangerous ladies, menacing creeps, parties with a cast of Universal Monsters and flash photography.

But the book with its unusual tale has stayed with me, in part because of its cleverly crafted mix of horror and comedy. When the supernatural was finally explained, it was done so simply and the story came to an far too sudden end. Herbert had previously tackled the theme of reincarnation in his fourth novel, Fluke, the fantasy story of a dog who somehow remembers his previous life as a human being. The “who’s behind it” side of things is done well, keeping the reader guessing on each page for the first half of the book. Herbert creates an interesting person in paparazzi Joe Creed and that's the best it gets for me, as the main 'demons are amongst us' story line didn't really resonate with me.

Creed (1990) DLS Reviews - Creed (1990)

I've read all of Herbert's pulpy novels as a kid, and im enjoying re-reading them now, sort of as a palate cleanser between more serious or heavy novels. Despite a promising opening scene of squalid childbirth on the floor of an underground bathroom, this winds up being lesser Herbert, despite its circa-1981 anti-drugs hysteria.I have read most of James Herbert's books and with the exception of 'Once' and 'Ash' I think I'll be re-reading them all again soon. It has all the classic eighties horror ingredients already discussed; blood and boobs however this is quite a well paced novel with enough twists and turns to keep me interested which is a contrast to the last book of his I revisited The survivor which I found something of an endurance challenge getting to the end. I began reading his books when I was a teenager, but the Jonah is one of several I missed at the time. Despite a fantastic climax that finally addresses the horror aspect of the story fully, the majority of the plot is a boring police/drug melodrama.