Throwback By Guy N. Smith

Throwback
By Guy N. Smith
1985 New English Library
Paperback, 256 pages

                            

                                NEL 1985                                                                                                             Arrow 1990

                This is something a little different from the Master, an epidemic/ horror/ romance story with complete unpredictability. At 256 pages, it is a little chunkier than many of my favorite books of his, but the scope of this story is worthy of the extra ink. Think of it as GNS’s The Stand without all of the extra padding and useless characters of King’s (admittedly pretty good) book. A tidy epic.

 

                The book opens with our main character Jackie Quinn in the midst of physically and mentally reverting back to early man. Germ warfare has fallen on Britain (from who we don’t know) and it is turning everyone into throwbacks from primitive times. Thick brows, extra-hairy bodies and, of course, animal lust. A country filled with cavemen. Jackie’s plight is so well-rendered that I must admit that I was feeling a bit ill following her transformation. It felt like what happens in my own mind sometimes, without the bodily changes.

 

                A handful of people have been spared the horrible germs. Jackie’s husband Jon was in his bomb shelter with his mistress, and they remain normal. Unlike radiation, the germs eventually dissipate and there is no fallout so the normies are eventually safe to leave. But things aren’t quite so rosy out there. Animals have reverted to pre-human form as well and the farmyard is full of beasts. And what will the throwbacks do when they encounter the unscathed?

 

                There is plenty going on here, with tribes of prehistoric people trying to survive, a sadistic Nazi-esque doctor trying to find a cure but reveling in torture and annihilation, primitive “me man, you property” sex, and an army that has no clue what to do. With the narrative being told from both the sick and the unaffected point of view, the frustration level gets cranked up to ten. Did I say romance? Yes, it’s there, just a little different than what you might be used to.

 

                This isn’t my favorite GNS book, but it whizzes by and tells a story of great scope in an efficient page count. It is easy to recommend to fans of the Great Scribbler and the Terry Oakes cover on the NEL edition is pretty sweet. It should be noted that when Arrow reprinted the book, they commissioned a new, different (but still great) cover from Oakes.

The Walking Dead By Guy N. Smith

The Walking Dead
By Guy N. Smith
1986 New English Library
Paperback, 160 pages

 
                                                  

    Ten years after the Great Scribbler’s second horror novel The Sucking Pit (1975), Smith returns to the Pit along with the previous book’s hero, Chris Latimer. The Sucking Pit was filled and the land around it has been razed and flattened, the evil buried deep in the ground. A rich and greedy land developer plans on building on the flattened terrain. A bulldozer starts to slowly sink into the sand in the old Pit spot… and gets sucked in completely and releases the trapped evil spirits of The Sucking Pit.

    This one starts right up with a bang and never relinquishes its fevered pace. When that machine and its operator are below surface in the Pit, Smith raises plenty of hackles with his imagery. Once that ground has broken through, the Pit refills and unleashes its evil spirits on everyone around. A gang of cycle kids fall under its spell and do a lot of damage at a local bar in one grueling scene. The man who OK’d the building on the Pit gets under its influence and savagely murders his wife with an axe only to be murdered by Grafton, the man who bought the land.

    Damn, this one gets brutal; GNS holds nothing back in the over-the-top violence. Gore flows freely and the sacred vow of marriage gets pissed all over with blood. Only Chris and his new girlfriend Pamela seem to be safe, though as usual, the Pit makes people’s carnal desires rise to a sadistic level as well. Nobody who sees the black, still waters of The Pit can control what happens to them. The old Romany burial ground’s inhabitants are looking to fill the pit back up with bodies.

    This being a sequel, Smith makes references to the first book and annotates them thusly, but I do recommend reading The Sucking Pit first. Just don’t wait ten years between readings because you’ll want to reward yourself with this brisk, bloody tale of vengeance as soon as you can. Many of the victims of the Pit from the first book play a part in this and you’ll appreciate the story more knowing where they came from. Top shelf GNS, this is, and it is vicious and cruel, just how you want a horror story by the Master to be.

Polish Edition, Phantom Press, 1991

Thirst II: The Plague By Guy N. Smith

Thirst II: The Plague
By Guy N. Smith
1987 New English Library
Paperback, 160 pages

 
                                              

    Five years after the events that occurred in Thirst (NEL, 1980), the small town of Bryn Gawr is experiencing a bit of déjà vu. I mean, their reservoir that was the site of a toxic weedkiller spill has been cleaned up and declared safe. That horror is but a distant memory. But with a few of the town’s inhabitants going crazy and breaking out with weeping pustules on their skin, it sure looks like the Thirst is back. But how?

    This sequel takes place over just a couple of days, during a massive snow storm that cripples the town. This is where GNS sets up the book’s greatest terrors: people are in total isolation with no way of getting help when the infected maniacs pay a visit. Worst of all is the schoolmaster Sonia, a pretty young woman who is accosted by three former students who strip and bind her. Luckily, they forget to actually rape her, but she is bound and naked in the cold, empty, dark schoolhouse. Chilling in many ways.

    This thin tome is a hoot, and it moves at a break-neck speed, setting ‘em up and knocking ‘em down. You have a crazy cat lady, infected cats and dogs, a bar filled with thirsty, infected maniacs, a busybody who brings horror upon herself and people actually coughing up lungs. For real. The snowstorm and isolation is very effectively written, so much so that as I read it (on a warm Halloween), I actually thought it was snowing out when I looked up from the book. The Master really pulled me in to this one.

    There are rough parts (Sonia’s horrific piece, for sure) and some animal violence but it is all in good pulpy fun, if not good taste, and it disturbs the reader just the right amount. As usual, we get an unlikely romance blooming out of nowhere amidst the violence, but Smith at least reveals that Sonia and Deputy Tony Crane have had undeclared crushes on each other for a while.

    What can I say? This is yet another completely enjoyable, highly recommended bit of horror fiction from my favorite author. Disgusting, full of various bodily fluids, violent and hopeless: a good way to spend a few nights of reading happiness.

The Undead By Guy N. Smith

The Undead
By Guy N. Smith
1983 New English Library
Paperback, 176 pages

 

                I felt some trepidation at the start of this; the set-up was exactly the same as his previous book The Lurkers. A man who strikes gold with his first novel moves his family to a remote area with xenophobic locals to write follow-up books, despite his wife hating the idea. It’s almost as if the Great Scribbler decided he had a better idea and wanted to reconstruct the same story. Luckily, my worries were unfounded. Yes, the initial set-up is the same but there is so much more going on that by the end, I’d forgotten about any similarities.

 

                This one has a wonderful back story about Bemorra, a recluse that was killing children in the town of Gabor (back in the olden days) and dumping their bodies into a quarry pool deep in Gabor Woods. He is caught and hung, and Gabor is forever cursed. In present time, Ron Halestrom moves to Gabor with his reluctant wife Marie to write more books. His first hit was based on the Bemorra legend so he figures the actual location would provide more inspiration. Soon, Marie’s deaf daughter Amanda was to join them.

 

                Throw in a caravan of gypsies, a group of city kids in a program to get them some fresh air, fights, pool ghosts and the hermit Beguildy, who seems an awful lot like Bemorra, and you’ve got quite the stew of confrontation, violence and horror. Deaf Amanda figures prominently in the action as well, with her psychic ties to the evil in the area. The fast-paced narrative keeps the multiple storylines moving at a good clip and the excitement never lets up.

 

                So, yes, there is a bit of The Lurkers in here, but I’d have to say it has much more in common with 1975’s The Sucking Pit. He would revisit some of the pool scenes from this book in the following year’s The Walking Dead, an official Sucking Pit sequel. Steven Crisp’s cover art really sets the tone for this one, with the floating partial-skeleton pool victims and our main villain-ghoul Bemorra. This one comes highly recommended.

 

                Originally published in GNS2: A Guy N. Smith Fanzine by Chris Elphick

Editions Fleuve Noir 1987

The Undead in French!

Werewolf by Moonlight By Guy N. Smith

Werewolf by Moonlight
By Guy N. Smith
1974 New English Library
Paperback, 110 pages

                     

                  NEL 1974, artwork by Lucinda Cowell                             BHB 2024 artwork by Mike McGee

    This landmark novel is a short, quick read that isn’t perfect but satisfies on so many levels. The very first published horror novel by The Master, Guy N. Smith, this book was originally written when a friend told the author that NEL was looking for a werewolf novel to publish. Guy sent them an outline; it was accepted, and the rest is history. He wrote this in three weeks, and he didn’t stop going until his death 56 years later.

    A neighbor’s new dog (of a mysterious breed) bites Philip Owen on the leg. They then develop an odd kinship and Philip starts getting strong sexual urges for the women in town. So does journalist Gordon Hall, who is bonking a village wife. Philip’s urges become more than sexual; he starts to feel outright bloodlust, so he eats a few sheep. Then a girl. The town and Scotland Yard blame the dog and put it down but when the next full moon arises, they still have the problem. Just what is responsible for the savage killings?

    OK, most of these characters are thin, but the narrative is strengthened by having the setting a very familiar one to Smith. He utilizes the small town and its surrounding hills to great effect. Hall seems to be GNS himself, with a few extra eccentricities (like adultery!). He’s a writer, a hunter, smokes a pipe and is a hero. There is never any question to the reader that Philip is the werewolf. We are with him during his changes and his kills. We live through his confusion and torment, together with him. No other characters in the book make a huge impression, save maybe Peter Pike, a leather-jacketed interloper that becomes a red-herring to the police for the murder of a girl he was seeing. Nope, we know the werewolf did it!

    Being Guy’s maiden voyage in novel writing, there are a few problems, but nothing that deter the reader from having a grand old time. The wad of bloody clothes that Philip hides under his bed seem to live in a timeline of their own, and a gratuitous decapitation by electric saw is only there for us gorehounds, but there’s certainly nothing wrong with that!

    Fast moving and loads of fun, this is a wonderful introduction to the horror world of Guy N. Smith, one of the most important voices in the genre over the last 100 years. This is the first book in his werewolf trilogy, followed by Return of the Werewolf and Son of the Werewolf. All three books have been collected into Werewolf Omnibus (Sinister House, 2019), along with a short story. It’s also on Kindle for you freaks that like that sort of thing. Best of all, Black Hill Books have recently reprinted this title so you can forget about all of those expensive originals. The Mike McGee cover captures the spirit of the novel perfectly!

Thirst By Guy N. Smith

 

Thirst

By Guy N. Smith
1980 New English Library
Paperback, 219 pages

                        

                                   1980 David McAllister art                                             1988 reprint

    El maestro GNS starts this one off with a bang that keeps going for the first two-thirds of the book. While it does fizzle a little bit after that, the story as a whole is so good that it’s forgivable. This one is visceral, claustrophobic and let me warn you… you will get thirsty reading it. I suggest having a glass of your favorite beverage within reach while you read.

    A tanker truck full of “Weedkiller”, a highly toxic herbicide, careens off of the road and into a reservoir. Did it spill open? You bet it did and this brand of herbicide has had a few mishaps in the past and it is lethal. A team from the company, including one of its inventors, Ron Blythe, our “hero”, is called in to try to figure out how to clean the spill or at least shut down the flow from the reservoir to Birmingham. They can’t and all hell breaks loose.

    Just getting it on your skin is bad enough but ingesting the chemical/ water mixture is a sure way to become infected. First, there is thirst. Then, you break out in clusters of pus-filled ulcers and ruddy sores. Then, if you’re lucky, you die quickly. The contaminated water isn’t the only problem in Birmingham. Between an infected driver and train engineer, crashes and giant building fires occur. Better pump some water on those flames! Fuck! The chemical is highly flammable. Much of Birmingham is in flames. People are hurriedly trying to get out any way they can. Looks like it’s time for Martial Law.

    Yeah, the shit really hits the fan in ol’ Birmingham. There’s even a prison break, releasing an axe murderer who forces Blythe help him. Y’see, Blythe, a longtime lothario (like all chemists… ahem…huh?) has fallen in love with a woman he met during the crisis. This makes it easier for the killer. This is where I feel the book falters a bit. It’s action-packed, suspenseful and filled with gory bits until these three are forced to team up. They even haul along a brat at one point. The romance blooms too quickly and Blythe is already (unhappily) married. A bit too convenient, I should think.

    Even with those minor quibbles, in the maestro’s hands, the story is always compelling. Nobody serves up the destruction of Britain like GNS and this book is pure pleasure. The copy I read was a 1988 reprint with an OK cover, but you should look for any of the first five printings with a screaming, pustule covered woman in the foreground and the reservoir in the background. It’s a striking cover by David McAllister and is much more eye-catching than the ‘88 edition.

Snowman By Norman Bogner

Snowman

By Norman Bogner

1979 New English Library
Paperback, 160 pages

                Who doesn’t like a good Yeti book, anyway? Especially when the Yeti is an invincible super monster who can travel from continent to continent and live for thousands of years! Well, that’s the Yeti you get in this book.

                Snowman starts out as a ripping horror tale, with the Yeti settling into the California Mountains above a new, exclusive ski resort. Gory killings happen. It seems like the whole thing was going to be a satisfying “set ‘em up, knock ‘em down” slaughterfest, but the resort’s money men think pretty quickly, and the middle of the book is more about putting a group of Yeti hunters together than about bloodshed. Daniel Bradford, the leader, who faced the Yeti in the Himalayas and (barely) survived, builds his dream team and since money is not an issue, equips them with some ass-kicking hardware.

                So, yeah, the book went from horror to high adventure half way through, but with well rounded, if familiar characters (Bradford’s love-interest/ liaison to the resort, the tenacious reporter, etc.) and an interesting monster, it’s all good. I suggest saving this book for the warmer weather because when the crew is up in the icy, thin air on the mountain, freezing their asses off, you feel it!

                This book was first published in 1978 by Dell Books but, like me, you should hold out until you find the New English Library edition with the nifty cover monster cribbed from Terror in the Midnight Sun (Sweden, 1959) by David McCallister. Snowman is New York Times best-selling author Bogner’s only novel that could be considered horror and it’s pretty durn good.

    Snowman was reprinted in 2025 by Fathom Press with a beautiful new cover by Stephen Andrade.     

                                   

           Dull Books... err Dell Books, 1978                             Fathom Press, 2025. Cover art by
                                                                                                          Stephen Andrade

The Son of the Werewolf by Guy N. Smith

The Son of the Werewolf

by Guy N. Smith
1978 New English Library
Paperback, 124 pages

                The end of The Return of the Werewolf lets you know that this one was forthcoming, and it does not disappoint. At 124 pages, there is no time to be anything but a fast-paced page turner to be devoured in an afternoon.

 

                Margaret Gunn, pregnant after an assault from the baddie from the previous book, gives birth to Hugh, an ugly baby whose third finger on each hand was longer than the rest. A sure sign of a werewolf. He is an outcast, hated in school and in the town and he likes it that way. And then he committed a murder and was jailed. It was while incarcerated that he discovered his own secret, his lycanthropy.

 

                After his release, the book follows ugly Hugh as he leaves his home and goes out on a blood-drenched road trip. GNS gives us what we all love in his books; blood, guts and some “oh no he wouldn’t” sexual situations. Gordon Hall returns from the previous books and tells us some legends that come in handy for the denouement of the book. He also gives us some words to live by… “You can never be sure of anything where werewolves are concerned”. Indeed not. Cover art by Bill Francis Phillips.

 

                This book ends the trilogy that started with Werewolf by Moonlight. All three books have been collected into Werewolf Omnibus (Sinister House, 2019), along with a short story. As the original New English Library books have become pretty expensive, the Omnibus seems like a pretty good way to go if you want to read these. And you should read these.

Update: Black Hill Books have recently reprinted this title with a killer Mike McGee cover, so you can forget about all of those expensive originals. 

Black Hill Books, 2025

Cover art by Mike McGee.

Return of the Werewolf By Guy N. Smith

 

Return of the Werewolf
By Guy N. Smith
1977 New English Library
Paperback, 112 pages

 

                This slim tome is the sequel to the Master’s (also slim) debut horror novel Werewolf by Moonlight, which was originally published by NEL in 1974. In between the two books, he wrote some classics like The Sucking Pit and the first Crabs novel. He’d also penned a couple of Walt Disney movie novelizations. Go figure!

 

                This one picks up a year after Werewolf by Moonlight ends, with the body of the wolfman being stolen from its grave. (I’ll try to not spoil either book.) And, of course, it’s not too long before the grisly murders start up again on Black Hill. Some eyewitnesses swear they saw a werewolf, too. The story plays out as a Whodunit, with possible suspects and red herrings on every page.

 

                The cast from the first book is back (or dead and disinterred) and if you haven’t read the first book yet, Smith makes it easy to know who’s who and what they were up to in the previous novel. Of course, you will spoil the mystery of the first book by reading this one first, but who cares? This sequel is a lot less gory and has less sexual situations than its predecessor, but it is still a satisfying page turner. It’s too short to be any other way! Cover art by Bill Francis Phillips.

 

                The fur was flying again a year later when Smith unleashed Son of the Werewolf (1978), completing the trilogy. All three books have been collected into Werewolf Omnibus (Sinister House, 2019), along with a short story. It’s also on Kindle for you freaks. Best of all, Black Hill Books have recently reprinted this title with a Mike McGee cover, so you can forget about all of those expensive originals. 

Black Hill Books, 2025

Cover art by Mike McGee

Wolfcurse By Guy N. Smith

 

Wolfcurse
By Guy N. Smith
New English Library, 1981
Paperback, 176 pages

 

                This is one of my favorite non-Crab books by Guy N. Smith. Everything works. It’s a fresh idea and Smith barrels into it and doesn’t let up until the last sentence. The entire book follows the main character’s actions as his life falls into chaos.

 

                Ray Tyler is a milquetoast; a henpecked banker who is suddenly going through some changes. After beating up a trio of young thugs, he starts standing up to his wife, his neighbors, and his boss. In fact, he starts turning into a really violent asshole. A murderous asshole. He thinks he might be turning into a werewolf, thanks to a book on Folklore that he had recently purchased. Surely that would explain his sudden, violent bloodlust and overcharged sex-drive.

 

                GNS never really tips his hand as to whether Tyler really is a werewolf or if it is all in his head and that is part of what makes this book so readable. Stone cold crazy or bloodthirsty werewolf? He doesn’t skimp on the gore or sexual violence. In fact, the rape scenes are very vivid and made me squirm quite a lot. Not pleasant in the least. That is to say, very real and scary.

 

                This is GNS at his very best. The cover painting of the New English Library paperback is of a werewolf who is a dead ringer for Paul Naschy’s Waldemar Daninsky, too! This book gets my highest recommendation.

The Wood by Guy N. Smith

The Wood
by Guy N. Smith
1985 New English Library
Paperback, 171 pages

A little something different from the master. While he is untouchable with nature-strikes-back novels, it is always interesting to read Smith step outside his comfort zone and stretch his imagination. The Wood isn’t perfect, but GNS always spins a powerful tale and this book goes by very quickly.

Beware Droy Wood when the mist comes in from the sea…

Droy Wood stood between the town and the sea and everybody avoided it. Lots of shit went down there through the years and the past never really went away. The Wood is technically a ghost story… characters from the past who met their demise in the woods hanging around to terrorize and kill the living who are unlucky enough to venture into the woods on a misty night.

Sure, some of this sounds pretty familiar (can you say The Fog?) and despite Smith’s descriptions of the horrors within the woods, the specters really take a back seat to the modern day horror that sets the story into motion, i.e. a rapist/ murderer’s abduction of a woman on a dark, lonely road. It’s hard to take the Nazi ghost and old-timey apparitions in pantaloons too seriously after that grueling scene.

But with the victims, the rapist, ghosts, mind control, dank bogs, befuddled police and small-town fears, there is a lot to keep you going in this book. It’s not as satisfying as a giant cancerous crab, but The Wood  has a lot to offer when you’re in the mood for something different. Be sure to grab the New English Library edition with the nice Les Edwards cover!

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #7 (Jan. 2021)

Midnight Magazine 

Books of Horror