The Spear, James Herbert

"When Steadman agreed to investigate the disappearance of a young Mossad agent, he had no idea he would be drawn into a malevolent conspiracy of neo-Nazi cultists bent on unleashing an age-old unholy power on an unsuspecting world -- power rising out of a demonic relic from man's dark primal past to threaten humanity with horror from beyond any nightmare"














James Herbert has written a lot of books, and some of them are even passably good fiction, although there's a lot of his ouevre that's perennial charity shop fare, and is as indifferently similar as to count as a single story. These are the stories that as a young teenagers I thrilled to, because they contain lashings of violence, sex and the kind of stupid plotlines that would make most writers wince. At his best, and even in his worst books, Herbert can pack a punch, he creates a crude homonculus of disgust. It's never deep, and it's rarely psychological, but it still has a thrill to it.

Of his better books, I have exceptionally fond memories of '48, a book which has probably been helped by the fact I've never revisited it, even though I have a well thumbed copy. From memory, it features a post-apocalyptic London decimated by Nazi superweapons (this may or may not have included Zombies). Hoping for something similar from a book which promises undead Himmler on the back cover I picked this up cheap in Hay-on-Wye.

Frankly, whichever reviewer picked out undead Himmler as a highlight was probably reading a different book to me. Himmler isn't especially resurrected, so much as his (possessed?) corpse shambles around for the final few pages before collapsing when stabbed with the spear of Longinus. All of this is played out as part of a reworking of Parsifal. To say it's confused is to do it a disservice, it's tightly focussed, but the focus isn't very interesting. Usually a NAZI secret society controlling all levels of British Government to fight Israel with biblical weaponery would be enough, without bringing in Wagnerian Opera sideplots, but here neither the motivational plots of the hero, villains or side characters seem to match the up at all.

Apparently a court ruled that James Herbert based most of this on work from another author (The Spear of Destiny by Trevor Ravenscroft). So now you know.

Also Try:
Trevor Ravenscroft, The Spear of Destiny (only seems fair)
James Herbert, The Rats, The Fog, '48
Stephen King, Different Seasons