Good old-fashioned ghost story telling and another adapted for the screen. I haven’t seen it so can’t comment on its quality or otherwise.
It was also turned into a film in 1995 (see trailer). It’s a bit of an adventure, written in a simple style for a broader audience than had been Herbert’s core readership at this point. Convinced he was murdered and reincarnated as a dog to solve his murder and hoping for the opportunity to take his revenge, he is now a dog on a mission. You see, he knows he was once human and in his new life, believes he was sent back for a specific reason. Fluke is a stray dog, but no ordinary dog. It’s relatively short and has a YA feel to it which, for a horror writer, is not as common as you might think. In some ways, this is similar to Nobody True. Published in 2003, it is fairly typical of the experimentation that Herbert was going through in the late 90s and early 00s.
It’s one of my favourite Herbert’s and at the time of reading, didn’t expect it to be. A disembodied spirit solving his own murder is not a new idea, but this is a new twist and an edge of the seat thriller. Somebody has killed his body and mutilated it, which is quite rude under the circumstances. Except one day after a jaunt, he returns to see he has been murdered. He’s got so used to them that they are a part of his daily leisure experience. Jim True has out of body experiences, he’s had them since he was a kid. So simple, yet so effective and you don’t really know what direction it is going in. Unfortunately, I feel the book was a disappointment so here, I list my five favourite titles in no particular order. Over an illustrious career, he had many best sellers – not least of all what many consider his greatest work The Rats.
A few days ago, I finished that book – it was the only novel of his I had left to read so this feels like the end of an era. The last book published before James Herbert’s death at age 69 was Ash.
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