Reviews

Nick "Dis" Dismas, a private investigator in London endowed with an unusual physique, is hired to find the son of a recent widow, missing for 18 years. It seems the child was spirited away immediately after birthÄthe mother was told that he had diedÄbut a recent visit to a psychic has prompted her to try to find him. Against his better judgment, Dis takes the case, and what he learns about the missing child and, ultimately, himself leads to the disturbing conclusion. A fictional homage to Tod Browning's movie Freaks, this work is intense but not necessarily frightening. As always, Herbert's (Portent) writing is compelling, and his characters are vivid and complex. The only weakness here is plot predictability. Recommended for all suspense/horror collections.ÄAlicia Graybill, Lincoln City Libs., NE Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Herbert's reputation as the king of British horror is founded on his early gore-oriented "nasties" (The Rats; The Fog; etc.). His newest novel (after '48) packs powerful shocks, but continues the recent trend in his writing toward narratives steered by the complex motivations of his characters. Narrator and private investigator Nicholas DismasÄ"Dis" to his friendsÄis a self-described "monster," afflicted with grotesque birth defects that give him uncommon insight into human behavior. But the search for a child declared dead at birth 18 years before triggers a befuddling cascade of events that defy even his understanding: birth-record traces lead to dead ends, knowledgeable authorities can't be located and Dis finds himself haunted by visions of malformed souls that periodically materialize in his mirror. Collaborating reluctantly with Louise Broomfield, his client's psychic adviser, Dis tracks a suspicious former midwife to the Perfect Rest nursing home. There, he encounters both the repellent Leonard Wisbeech, one of the most diabolically perverse doctors in all medical horror fiction, and secret experiments that shed light on the case and on Dis's own obscure origins. Readers who stick with this tale past its lethargic startÄin which Herbert labors to contrast Dis's normalcy and the "ugliness" of more physically appealing peopleÄwill find a payoff in the over-the-top climax, in which the freak show Wisbeech secretly presides over runs amok. Though punctuated with long expository passages that explain the novel's central mystery, the finale crackles, finding an admirable balance between terrors of the supernatural and the darkness of the human heart. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.