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Read The Jonah (1999)

The Jonah (1999)

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Genre
Rating
3.45 of 5 Votes: 1
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ISBN
0330376217 (ISBN13: 9780330376211)
Language
English
Publisher
pan macmillan

The Jonah (1999) - Plot & Excerpts

First published back in 1981, ‘The Jonah’ was Herbert’s eighth novel to be published. Moving slightly away from his previous splatterpunk and down right gritty horror subject matters, this well written and intriguing tale delivers a well balanced mixture between a thriller and a horror.Set in a quiet coastal town, Detective Jim Kelso (a typical Herbert style anti-hero) is placed on an assignment to discover the reason behind how a good honest local family came into contact with the drug LSD, that almost saw the death of them during some extreme and vivid hallucinations. The plot thickens as Kelso discovers that there’s a lot more than just honest fishing work going on in this quiet location. As Kelso gets closer to the truth, a much more disturbing turn of events reveals itself.‘The Jonah’ is a well paced novel that draws the reader into the developing storyline with the mysterious events that are occurring. Kelso is written as a very human and easy to identify with character. The interlacing subplots that run parallel to the main thread of the storyline add a good depth to the novel as a whole, whilst fleshing out the characters and their respective pasts.Recurring flashbacks that haunt Kelso throughout the novel add an intriguing aspect to the tale, with a big question mark constantly hanging over the character’s unknown background. Obviously, Herbert draws this out until the end, building up the suspense throughout the novel.Once the novel has set itself in motion, the action comes thick and fast, with regular cliff hangers ending each chapter making the book difficult to put down. The grand finale is quite surprising, with a rather obvious twist that is still over shadowed by the sheer explosion of events and the unveiling of the hideous truth that has been a constant undercurrent during the tale. The novel contains the usual input of sex and edge of the seat violence. The “who’s behind it” side of things is done well, keeping the reader guessing on each page for the first half of the book.All in all, ‘The Jonah’ is another classic piece of dark fiction from this very well respected horror writer. The novel runs for a total of 253 pages.

I am reviewing the supernatural thriller The Jonah by James Herbert which is a very good novel which I bought from a car boot sale. This novel was originally published in 1981 and this book was republished in 1988 presumably because James had achieved more success as an author. He is the most successful British horror author and is probably most famous for his novels The Spear & The Fog. The plot to this book starts in 1950 when the key character is a new born baby a few hours old that has been dumped in a public WC where is found by a lady who works there who subsequently adopts him. He grows up and joins the police but although he always remains safe the people working with him always seem to have something unlucky happen to them. This culminates in a heist on a armoured van in Blackwall Tunnel in London where a police driver is shot and killed and Kelso the key character has his gun jam. The tunnel prevents their walkie talkies from working and they aren't expecting the gang to do the robbery in there. After this although they accept it is through no fault of his own, no one will work with him and he is transferred to the Drugs Squad in another part of the country. There people are being slipped LSD and a lady customs officer and he team up to investigate. There is an airforce pilot flying an A10 that dies when he crashes his plane into the sea and is found to have 10 times the fatal amount of LSD in his blood. The trail leads to an aristocrat who owns a bird sanctuary and has been doing conservation work for various charities. Kelso is ultimately slipped some LSD that regresses him to when he was a baby and he realises why there seems to be a curse on him. I really enjoyed this novel which isn't one of Herbert's more well known novels but is pretty good.

What do You think about The Jonah (1999)?

for one thing, the book was slow – it took forever to get exciting. But most maddening was the character of Ellie. She was supposed to be a police officer, but she was a complete and total wimp, constantly breaking into tears and having to be comforted by the hero. She was completely unbelievable as an officer of the law, and completely unprofessional as well – it is ridiculous that she would not call in the cavalry as soon as Kelso was kidnapped. She doesn't even wait to see if he's okay before driving off on an errand of her own and then manages to get herself captured as well when all she had to do was make a single call to the precinct to come and rescue them both. She was there only to be the love interest and a victim that Kelso had to rescue. Their romance was completely contrived and unrealistic also, and I was annoyed at Herbert's habit of calling her the "girl" in a demeaning fashion when she really should have been called a "woman."
—Sarah

Basically, I have the same complaints and same praise that I have for most James Herbert books. The overly detailed and gratuitous sex scenes just had me rolling my eyes and rushing through the words as fast as I possibly could. Not quite as bad, but also useless and jarring is the switch to random people's viewpoints during an event. I don't much care what some random old man is pondering as he's about to die, I mean, if I wanted to read that, I would have read an introspective book about life or something like that. The love interest was also incredibly obvious and had basically no character of her own, which is sadly typical of Herbert. The villains were nearly one-dimensional and kind of disappointing, but that wasn't a huge issue with me.However, I did like the overall pacing of the book and the length was almost exactly perfect to get the story across and not waste my time. The extra viewpoints at the end padded it out, and were absolutely unnecessary in my opinion. Strangely, I kind of liked the flashbacks, which I usually hate, but here seemed to work once I was about a third of the way in.Overall, this was a rather good Herbert book, probably top ten for me.
—Ubiquitousbastard

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