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The Ghosts of Sleath - James Herbert
Although this one was a bit gorier than I was expecting at some times it was still a good story.
It is all about a small, peaceful English village that gets decidedly less peaceful as the book goes along. It all starts with the local priest calling in a psychic researcher. The person who goes to investigate is David Ash. He is a man with a past and who has been toughened up by the frauds and idiots he has seen in his investigations into the paranormal. He is one of the best in the business and nothing spooky gets past him. He, off course, has a bit of a past and this is hinted at throughout the book. We find out exactly what it is that haunts him in the end and it ties in nicely with what is going on in the main story line. David is a man who has not been unaffected by what has happened to him in the past but it seems that it takes what is going on in the village to make him really connect with the knowledge within himself.
The story starts with David going to the village and almost crashing his car because he sees a young boy standing in the middle of the road. Straight from the word go you kind of know that it is not a real boy David sees and it immediately outs your senses on alert for the next creepy thing. Fortunately we do not have to wait long as we are introduced to Ellen and her dead son, Simon. She is the reason that David was called in and her story links us very nicely to the next ghost in the village. Simon's dad. Apparently burned to death inside a mysterious fire in a haystack and now come back to haunt the son he did not think was his and torture the wife... oh and to drown his son in the bath... possibly again?!
David is in Sleath to meet the village priest, the reverend Lockwood. The priest does not seem to be a well man and he also seems to be hiding something, a thing that seems to have gone unnoticed by his daughter (he predictable love interest for David). Throughout the story we find out that the Lockwood are a bunch a creepy degenerates that have been trying to cheat death for the past couple of centuries and all this seems to have created a bad... BAD vice in the village. It seems that the powers of planet bad are focusing all their powers on the people in the village and everything around it. The village pond starts to develop a strange depth, the wood from the stocks is bleeding on it's own and things are shaken up at the local inn (and not just because David and Grace are getting jiggy in the bedroom) and... my personal favourite.. the local poachers in the middle of the forest come across a mass of body parts floating around in a clearing in the woods (that was the creepy bit I kind of skipped along a bit).
In the end all the ghostly activity centres around the old Lockwood estate and a mad heir.. well several mad heirs but more specifically the one in the present time and lots in the past. The heir is properly "reclaimed" by the dead and after a lot of mayhem David gets out alive by the skin of his teeth. Once evil is conquered things get back to normal and village life resumes as if nothing had happened.
I enjoyed this one, apart from the flying around body parts. Sure, the whole story with David and Grace is a bit convenient and the fact that their minds really open up to one another and connect when they first kiss is a bit "whatever" but nonetheless Grace is a nice enough character and it is a bit of a shame to lose her at the end of the story. David is a bit of a tortured soul who is trying to get over the death of his sister and his betrayal at the hands of some ghosts which makes for a character with a bit of body and interest to him. Reverend Lockwood is the tortured soul in the whole thing.. the one that is almost redeemed as he has seen the error of his ways. Phelan is a fun character who brings a bit of light relief as a cheeky Irishman and also turns out to be a fine psychic investigator with a past.
All in all, a good one... apart from the flying body parts.
Title: The Ghosts of Sleath
Author: James Herbert
408 pages
Harper Collins
ISBN# 0-00-647597-3
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