Herbert, James

(British, 1943– )

Born in the East End of London, James Herbert worked as a rock ‘n’ roll singer and art director in advertising before turning to horror fiction. The graphic portrayals of dismemberment and sex in early novels like The Rats (1974), in which a plague of flesh-eating rats lays waste to London, were as controversial as they were popular. The Fog (1975), in which a mysterious mist isolates a Wiltshire village and subjects its citizens to the assault of dark supernatural forces, introduced a greater subtlety to Herbert's writing. The Magic Cottage (1986) took this further, with an almost whimsical tale of dark forces defeated by good, set among artists, musicians, and eccentrics in the English countryside. Haunted (1981) and The Ghosts of Sleath (1994) are updated, and often extremely effective, conventional ghost stories.

Stephen King, Clive Barker.

See SUPERNATURAL  WB