The Rats opens with a tramp being devoured alive. Herbert's early novels were literary nasties.
The rat remained but eventually it was the name of Herbert, who has died aged 69, that dominated the cover. Edition after edition came out and changes were subtly made. Behind its cover star, the title was printed in bold, red type. Copies of the book – produced cheaply in paperback with a vicious-looking rodent on the cover, its jaws open and eyes bloodshot – flew off the shelves, the initial print run of 100,000 selling out in three weeks. When James Herbert published his first novel, The Rats (1974), at the age of 30, it was an immediate bestseller.
0 kommentar(er)
