Thrills, Spills and Bone Chilling Action (48 - James Herbert)

Member Name: shewhosmiles

Product:	48 - James Herbert
Date:	24/01/03 (109 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Tense, action packed, Thought provoking and imaginative, Absorbing

Disadvantages: Left me wanting more

The action kicks in straight away with Hoke and his dog Cagney trying to escape from a gang of about 60 Blackshirts who had discovered one of his secret hideaways in London, Buckingham Palace no less. The description of Hoke dodging shots while whizzing along corridors and bumping down carpeted stairs on his motorbike was so captivating that I was drawn into the book immediately and found myself urging Hoke to escape the bullets.

Set in London in 1948, James Herbert produced one of those What If stories by changing history. The allies still won the war but the Germans have the ultimate revenge by unleashing a biological weapon on London with V2 rockets that has a horrendous impact throughout the world. The Blood Death kills horribly and quickly in most cases, but some die from it slowly. Only 3% of the world’s population are immune to the effects of the Blood Death because of their AB neg blood group. Hoke, an American pilot who fought in the war is immune but the Blackshirts are all slowly dying and understandably not very happy about it and are after Hoke‘s blood.

Hoke meets up with four other immune people while trying to escape, their very different backgrounds and characters help to add dimension to the story.

Muriel - a young upper class woman
Cissie – 23 years old and from the working classes
Wilhelm - a German ex serviceman
Potter - a slightly nutty elderly air raid warden

Hoke hates Wilhelm and wants to kill the German. Muriel and Cissie intervene many times, the war is over and Wilhelm isn’t to blame for the dreadful things that have happened. Hoke doesn’t agree and the tension between the two men erupts to the surface often during their evasion of the Blackshirts who relentlessly continue their pursuit of Hoke and then the others once they know that they exist.

London is an almost deserted rubble filled tomblike place; the streets are strewn with vehicles that came to
a standstill when their passengers died. Too many corpses for the few remaining healthy people to dispose of occupy the buildings that still stand in the aftermath of the blitz. An horrific backdrop to set a story in but a possibility if biological weapons were ever used.

Hoke has several safe houses, stocked with food clothes and weapons. One that he takes the small group to is the Savoy hotel, they believe that they would be hard to find in such a large place as London. Not for long, the Blackshirts discover them and all hell breaks loose. Just one of the several battles between them and rudely interrupted by a mad German bomber who doesn’t know that the war is over.

Survival is the aim of both the Blackshirts and Hoke’s little group but they can’t live alongside each other. Led by an English Nazi Hubble, the Blackshirts hunt while Hoke’s group hide. An injection of betrayal and sex into the story helps to make it tenser.

I wasn’t too happy when I saw what the book was about. I’d grabbed it off the library shelves in a hurry and probably wouldn’t have read it if I hadn’t already read 2 of the 4 books that I’d brought home. I like horror stories and have enjoyed reading several of his books previously but have never been too keen on this type of survivor fiction. As it turned out it was a good choice. There was action all the way through and the different characters made it interesting. It was gruesome in parts with so many corpses around that had died harrowing deaths, but Herbert’s descriptions were sad rather than frightening and I think necessary to the story.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading 48. It is well written and the pace fast enough for me not to want to put the book down. I read it in four late night sessions and only that many because I was too tired to stay awake. It isn’t a horror book in the same sense of some of his previous novels, The Lair, The Rats
and The Fog but it is horrifically fascinating because you know that it isn’t so far fetched and that some time in the future it may be closer to reality than you would ever want it to be.

The book made me think about what could happen if biological weapons really were unleashed on the world. We feel safe because we don’t really believe that anybody would be crazy enough to do it. I hope that it never happens; for most of us the world that we live in is a much safer and better place than Hoke’s world.

Although Hoke’s hatred and suspicion of Wilhelm is racially based, I feel that Herbert was making the point that it is wrong and that the way to survive is to live alongside each other without prejudice.

The ending is great, just as action packed as the rest of the book and left me wanting a follow up.

If you like a thought provoking packed with action and tension read then I highly recommend 48. You can find it on Amazon for only £4.79.

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