By the time Herbert died in 2013, he was the United Kingdom’s most successful horror novelist, with 54 million books sold worldwide. He wrote ghost stories, alternate histories, and thrillers, but his first two books—The Rats and The Fog (1975)—are proto-punk ragers: nasty, mean, anti-establishment sleaze ripped straight from Herbert’s id and redeemed by his complete and utter conviction to go there.
