By Richard Lewis
1981 Hamlyn
Paperback, 204 pages
When Alan Radnor turns into
Richard Lewis, he writes books for me! As Lewis, he wrote a half dozen
creepy-crawlies-versus-humans novels and all of them are loads of fun. This one
is a sequel to his successful debut critter novel Spiders (1978). Many
of his books don’t stick in your head for a long time, but they deliver the
goods and are a hoot while you’re digging in.
Of course, James Herbert’s The
Rats (1974) started the whole Britain-under-attack genre, but we must also
credit the same author’s The Fog (1975) for the
folks-going-murderously-insane storyline that also frequently turns up in these
books. The spiders that return in Lewis’s sequel are a little different. Sure,
some of them devour their victims down to the bone, leaving just a husk, but a
mutated form of spider can envenomate their victim and that, my dear, will
cause violent insanity. They also enjoy wrapping up humans in tight webs to be
devoured later. Evolution, that’s what it is.
Much
of the book is just a bunch of brief vignettes, characters set up only to be
slaughtered. One fun passage is with the spinster schoolteacher whose routine
is broken up after being bitten by one of the new spiders. She goes bonkers on
her class of cheeky, young students and starts killing and beating them, as
well as anyone who tries to stop her. I love it when bratty kids aren’t spared!
Another fun set piece is a prison attack where the trapped convicts are sitting
ducks for the arachnid army.
It
doesn’t matter if you haven’t read Lewis’s first spider novel; when the action
from the first book is referenced, it is notated for your convenience. Since we
have new mutations here, consider it an all-new story and enjoy the onslaught.
Derivative? Yes. Any new ideas? Nope. Do I recommend it? Hell yes! Fun, gory,
stupid, 80s pulp… just the way I like it.
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