Recently I found myself at a loose end so I went down to my local secondhand bookshop and bought six books for $1 from the minda basket at the front. Taken as a job lot these books have been exceptionally good, from the Roman splendour of 'Ben-Hur' by Lew Wallace to 'The Moon's A Balloon' by David Niven.
One of the other books was 'The Rats' by James Herbert. Again, quite good. It was one of the most bloodthirsty books i've read in a long time, an achievement which was only enhanced by the bookmark I found in it which was handmade by someone called 'Ally'. I can only assume Ally was about 12 given the love-hearts and flowers drawn on it. Granted the bookmark was not particularly far into the book, but I do hope Ally wasn't scarred for life too much.
One of the best aspects of this book (after it's being a taught, well-written horror story about terrier-sized rats invading London) was the ending, where the hero (a teacher) figures out where Rat HQ is and drives over there to kill the psychically-enhanced rat king with an axe (that'll learn 'em). I'm used to American horror from Stephen King where cars are used quite regularly, so it was a bit of a shock when, in the middle of the driving scene in which the rats are attacking the car and getting run over and stuff, I remembered that earlier in the book it was mentioned that the teacher's car was a Hillman Minx.
That's right, the one at the top of this post. As far as i'm concerned i'd be packing death* if I were battling killer rats in Battle Truck, let alone a post-war British sedan with a 1275cc engine and a whopping 28kW. In terms of automotive achievement that's like Odysseus swimming home while a shark nipped at his love-spuds. Awesome.
*This marks the first use of this term by the author since 1988.
No comments:
Post a Comment