Sad news today that the horror author James Herbert has passed away. I've read many of his books over the years and never failed to not enjoy them. A great author who wil be sadly missed.

RIP and all that jazz but as for his writing, it was a bit scary back in the day when Stephen King was scary but like a lot of popular contemporary American authors I found him to be formulaic, writing to a template, this is particularly prevelant now in American crime writers where you can churn out ten or twenty books based on one detective solving pretty much the same crime time after time and if you're on chapter ten then you know exactly what plot twist will be coming next.

Indeed, both of them ceased to be remotely interesting once they became a commercial entity, Herbert and King seriously deteriorated as writers after the mid 80's IMHO.

crap adaptations to films didn't help either, either.

I remember during my truck driving days, reading The Rats while parked up for the night on Barrow Docks. I must admit that there was no way I was getting out of the cab until daylight, so when I was bursting for a slash, I knelt on the seat and pissed out of the window.

Loved James Herbert, never found his writing as sophisticated (or long-winded) as King but enjoyable nonetheless.

The 'Rats' trilogy was a favourite, in fact liked all of his novels until I drifted away from horror in the early 90s.

RIP man who gave me many scary dreams as a kid.

He loved his sex and horror in his books and his books are easy to read unlike Stephen King who, at times, was long winded but still bloody good.