Came a Spider By Edward Levy

 

Came a Spider
By Edward Levy
1978 Berkley
Paperback, 232 pages

 

Genetically altered, huge, hungry black spiders overrun Los Angeles. I know, we’ve heard all this before but this lesser-known spiders-attack book has plenty of new ideas to offer and is written in a breathless style that kept the pages a-turnin’.

 

Starting off with a young boy getting bitten by a voracious spider in the desert, it never really lets up. Oh yeah, kids buy the farm in this one. In fact, little Lee, the victim, was now an incubator. These spiders lay eggs in their human victims or just completely devour them. “A thick, black, hairy carpet…” is a pretty nice way to describe the onslaught of arachnid atrocities.

 

In addition to the spider juggernaut, Levy gives us some pretty good characters. The police lieutenant in charge is a very relatable guy for me… a bit overweight, getting a bit old and tired. This is not what he needed. There is also a touched upon, but never fully explored, nerd romance between the scientist in charge of finding a solution and one of the scientists responsible for creating the new strain.

 

Real science is out the window here… this new species reproduces super-fast and are ready to eat up LA at the drop of a coin. They eat up the zoo, and there is a wildly entertaining attack on a movie theater. Fuck The Blob… these guys mean business. Containing them proves to be a real problem.

 

Yeah, like I said; nothing brand new here but a very entertaining take on the Spiders Attack genre. It’s as good as a Richard Lewis spider novel and better than much of the swill I read and enjoy. Levy has a few other novels that I’m interested in reading, including The Beast Within which was adapted by Tom Holland for a film for MGM in 1982.

Blood Flies By Gene Lazuta

Blood Flies
By Gene Lazuta
1990 Charter/ Diamond
Paperback, 265 pages

    
                                              

                I just finished this book and I have absolutely no idea what I just read. Never have I slogged through a more confusing book.

                OK… here’s the gist. Pete Blackwell is summoned to Sharthington, Ohio in a dream. His grandfather had basically built the town and discovered an old Indian legend living beneath Black Island. Oh, and there’s a tower on the island. Anyhoo, Pete’s grandad experimented with this legendary life-form, mixing the DNA with other animals, creating new, weird animals.

                The Blood Flies? They’re described in many different ways, but mainly like toads with wings. They secrete a poison that Kyrik, the bad guy-sheriff, milks to sell and do his own nasty experiments. The flies themselves aren’t even mentioned after the half-way point. Kyrik doesn’t last much longer. The last third of the book is the old Indian legend taking over.

                Or something.

                Now, the story did hold a kernel of interest in it for me, but Lazuta overwrites to the point of parody at times. Conversely, some elements are glossed over so I had no idea what he was “talking” about. The story has an epic scope but seems only partially told. An early 10 pages of exposition told by a drunken sot sets it up, but it still never became clear for me.

Overwriting and senseless prose; a case in point, talking about a girl that Kyrik was holding captive for vivisection (yeah, I know…):

                “She wore a pair of dark trousers, with cuffs— Kyrik always liked cuffs, Pete didn’t think, he just knew, somehow, without thinking, he wasn’t thinking, he just… was— and her shirt was pink.”

                I shit you not. I didn’t change a thing.

                At the end of Part 2, the story pretty much seemed like it should end, but no… there were 100 more pages of word soup to go. Other than some cool mutated animals in the beginning of the section, the third part drags on and on and on. I had to power through to finish it. No fucking clue what went on. Cool cover, though.

                Sorry, Gene. I won’t be looking for your other books.

Croc Attack By Brian Gatto

Croc Attack
By Brian Gatto
2022 Raven Tale Publishing
Paperback, 188 pages

 

                When I see there’s a book called Croc Attack, you bet your sweet ass I want to read it. The author mentioned it on the Books of Horror Facebook page, putting it on my radar, and since it is reasonably priced, I grabbed a copy.

 

                A group of twenty-something conservationists head into the Everglades to tag some animals, take some samples and, in general, do science stuff. This rubs some of the locals the wrong way (damn tree-huggers) but even worse is the thirty-seven-foot Crocodile that has started to make itself known. The book does exactly what it promises; there are loads of Croc attacks as well as inappropriate sex. Gatto is obviously a fan of 80s pulp horror and knows what is required for a book of this type.

 

                The characters don’t really matter; it’s a case of set ‘em up and knock ‘em down, which I am a fan of. To an almost comical point, all of the women are stone cold gorgeous, but if I can suspend disbelief for a 37-foot Croc, I have no trouble doing the same for every woman in the book who is a perfect 10 with a huge rack. No wonder everybody is so horny! People hook up left and right and some think about sex even as they are about to be chomped.

 

                The main storyline is similar to Numunwari (aka Killer Croc) by Grahame Webb and the film Dark Age (1987), which is loosely based on Webb’s book. Coincidentally, there is even a common surname of Darwin in both books. Croc Attack isn’t as gory as I wanted for the first two thirds of the book, with the Croc relying more on stealth, but towards the end, the kills get juicier.

 

                Like almost all self-published works, another pass at editing could have helped. There are a few sentences I would have reworked, and some word changes I would have done. (Yes, the mouth is cavernous, and the hide is scale-laden, but both terms were used too often.) Also, ecosystem, not echo system. These quibbles don’t put me off, they just bug the editor in me.

 

                I admit that I got a bit confused near the end when the action is told from a few different perspectives. Still, I will keep an eye out for this young writer. He has a good sense of humor on display and seems to have his teeth in the right place.