For a book that was written in the late 70s, the story is still as terrifying as ever. I had a difficult time going from carnage to explicit sex scenes. It was a little surprising to have detailed sex scenes among the gory terror. There were parts of this book that made my skin crawl. The parts of the book that described rats eating and biting people were so vivid that I could feel each bite.

Herbert took the time to develop atmosphere and details in “Lair” and builds to the violence. The second book had a much better plot than the first. The carnage in “Lair” is introduced later in the book. * Unlike the first novel, “Lair” has a slower start but ramps up rapidly. It was nice to revisit some characters and events from book one. It also referred to incidents that happened in “The Rats” without making it seem repetitive. “Lair” had a little more depth and characters than the first novel. “Lair” is set four years after the horrific incidents in London caused by the black rats. “Lair” is the second installment in The Rats trilogy by James Herbert. Herbert died in March 2013 at the age of 69. He wrote six more bestselling novels in the 1990s and three more since: Once, Nobody True and The Secret of Crickley Hall. Herbert went on to publish a new top ten best-seller every year until 1988.

His first novel, The Rats, was an instant bestseller and is now recognised as a classic of popular contemporary fiction. Widely imitated and hugely influential, he wrote 23 novels which have collectively sold over 54 million copies worldwide and been translated into 34 languages.īorn in London in the forties, James Herbert was art director of an advertising agency before turning to writing fiction in 1975. James Herbert was one of Britain’s greatest popular novelists and our #1 best-selling writer of chiller fiction. Its two heads weaved to and fro and a stickiness drooled from its mouth as it remembered the taste of human flesh. But the white slug-like thing that ruled them knew. Now the dark rats were restless, tormented by a craving they could not satisfy. They dominated the others, the dark-furred ones, who foraged for food and brought it back to the lair. The mutant white rats had grown and mated, creating offspring in its own image. Book Two in Herbert’s classic ‘rats’ series.

Lair by James Herbert