The Others by James Herbert

Herbert is one of my favourite authors. When I used to read a lot as a teenager I read stuff like "The Rats", "Fluke" and "The Magic Cottage" ... and enjoyed them all. Returning to novels last year I read another Herbert which was very good, one of my favourites of the year. I'm not one of those people who can read the same author consecutively, I like to have some diversity. So, after a few other authors I returned to Herbert and read "The Others" and it was ................ ok. Yep, it was quite good, nothing special, but pretty good. The story of an errant 1940's film star cast into hell. He is given the opportunity to redeem himself in a new life. All this happens in the first chapter and seems forgotten as the real plot, of a deformed private investigator takes shape. He is enlisted by a greiving widow to find her son, who was born terribly deformed and, apparently, dies a few minutes after birth. After some chasing it turns out that a doctor is taking malformed newly born children (and "monsters") and keeping them under his old peoples home. He carries out experiments on them and .... get this ...... produce bizarre porn to earn his funding!!!!! Our hero eventually rescues them all, apart form those who perished in the fire, but boy, did the finale get dragged out some!!! I've procrastinated loads about it but I've finally decided upon a change and will revert to another teenage love of mine ..... fantasy. I've downloaded Groege R R Martin's "The Game of Thrones". I'm not sure it will be my thing. Sounds like it is a bit like the bbc series "Merlin" and it's 864 pages. Watch this space!!!!