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.