The Magic Cottage

The best horror yet from prolific and usually ho-hum Herbert (ten paperbacks - The Rats, Lair, etc.; one hack hard-cover - Moon, 1986), this adult fairy tale of a young London couple who buy an enchanted cottage charms sufficiently to forgive even its silly wizard-villain. Here, the novel's strength rests on the great appeal of heroine Midge, and hero Mike - whose warm, down-to-earth narration invests the magical goings-on with convincing realism. Wishing for a country home, the couple find "Gramayre," a dilapidated but quaint cottage whose last owner, Flora Chadean, has recently died. Midge loves the house at once; Mike, though worried about rotted woodwork and cracked walls, too falls under the cottage's spell. They're a bit short of the asking price, but the estate agent curiously finds the two "suitable" for the house and lowers its cost, just as some lucrative commissions come their way - only the first of the odd occurrences that pile up: workmen sent to repair the cottage find the rot and cracks gone; wild animals eat from the couple's hands; the two learn that Flora was beloved as a great healer. Midge remains blind to this strangeness, but Mike grows uneasier still when a dark side surfaces: he finds the attic infested by bats; a dark figure (Flora's ghost) lurks outside at night. Meanwhile, an esoteric cult housed in a nearby mansion and led by the evil-wizardly (and clumsily drawn) Mycroft visits the couple, eventually luring Midge into its grip - just as Mike learns that the cottage, which Mycroft covets, is a magnet for spiritual energies both good and evil. In the subsequent struggle between Mycroft and Mike (who's revealed as Flora's heir as keeper of the cottage's spiritual forces), Herbert settles for a cheap karate-chop magical battle, concluding with a House of Usher retread - but a happy ending salves the couple's (and the dismayed reader's) wounds. Magical indeed until near the end, when Herbert's penchant for the hackneyed breaks the spell. (Kirkus Reviews)