Most helpful customer reviews
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"The evil that men do lives after them",, Aug 17 2007
James Herbert's latest book, The Secret of Crickley Hall, uses an old and established formula - an ageing, deserted Gothic house that has been left to decay because of some tragic event whose circumstances have been clouded by the passage of time. The villagers in the neighbourhood all have their own theories about what happened but no one really knows the truth. However, when a family - in this case the Caleighs's move in, they find the house has been haunted by these past events, and is inhabited by ghosts with 60 years of repressed anger to vent.
Even though this is an old, established formula, it is also a very good one. Most horror writers use it at some point in their writing careers. (Herbert has used it at least once before with Haunted.)
An old Gothic mansion is a great starting point for a ghost story, with wind and rain crashing against the windowpanes, and strange noises and visions that have either ghostly explanations or, for the more cynical in the story, more rational explanations, such as tricks of light, and wind rattling through the floorboards. (Cynics are always the idiots in these stories: in this book the Dad of the family, Gabe Caleigh, insists that nothing is wrong, and there are no such things as ghosts, while everyone else - even you, the reader - is yelling at him just to get the family into the car and drive away!) But that's what we love about these stories - the atmosphere, and the stupidity of the people being haunted. (Personally, if I saw ghostly spectres dancing around my house or if my child insisted she had a new set of friends to play with who I couldn't see, I would be out of there!)
James Herbert's new book is a refreshing visit back to this old formula and fails to disappoint. It builds atmosphere, while recounting the tragic circumstances surrounding the happenings in the house, leaving you, the reader, to figure out the truth behind the mystery of what actually happened to the characters. This book has all the elements a good horror novel should. (An array of suspicious villagers, a psychic and a few covered up murders.)
In sum, The Secret of Crickley Hall is a good read - a must for Halloween, when the wind and rain are pelting against the windowpanes, and the only sound you can hear is the wind rustling through the floorboards... ...
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
MIXED FEELINGS, Nov 13 2009
I'm only two-thirds of the way through THE SECRET OF CRICKLEY HALL by James Herbert. And yet, I feel compelled to write this review now.
This book is a supernatural thriller, right up my alley, and James Herbert is a well-known, very successful British writer. Some parts of this book are good, like the general plot, for instance. But there are some major problems with the writing:
1)Characters' motivations seem to change drastically from one chapter to the next in illogical ways that completely contradict the way normal people would act.
2)The author has the annoying stylistic habit of jumping around within a chapter from one character's thoughts to another, with the result that the reader is never able to completely settle into a character's point-of-view and consequently feels removed from what's going on.
3)Characters are always speaking to each other by name which is NOT the way humans talk!
4)Every now and again, the author delivers a clunker of a sentence that has me wondering: WHERE WAS THE EDITOR???? For example, after the main female character has a meeting with a paranormal investigator, she reflects back on the things he said and considers what she thinks of him:
"He was a tall, big-boned man, but he seemed trustworthy."
(Are only short, small-boned men trustworthy as a rule?)
Or how about this:
"Crossing the hall's stone floor in sneakers, jeans and half-sleeve sweatshirt, he grabbed the receiver from its cradle."
(He must have a really long arm to be able to perform these two actions simultaneously!)
As I said, I'm only two-thirds of the way through this book - but I can't wait for it to be over and done with....
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5.0 out of 5 stars
who wrote the book description?, Jul 2 2007
I don't know who wrote the book description on Amazon but it couldn't be more wrong. The children didn't find places in the walls and drown. I don't know where that assumption came from. The children (who were Orphans sent away to escape the bombings of ww 2) were hiding from their evil guardian who punished them on the night of the great flood of 43, they hid in closets and under desks. Their spirits haunt the house, as well as the evil spirit of augustus cribben (their guardian). A new family moves into the house after a personal tragedy and deals with the horrific terror from the past. This was a really good read, i was dissapointed after reading "once" but this book surely makes up for it.
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