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

The Sucking Pit By Guy N. Smith

 

The Sucking Pit
By Guy N. Smith
1989 Grafton
Paperback, 158 pages

                Another brisk, non-deadly-animal adventure from the master. When Guy N. Smith said he’d written more books than he read, you’ve just got to believe him. This one, first published in 1975 by New English Library, must have been written after thinking up a suitably exploitable title. And true to form, it’s a pretty satisfying read.

                On a visit to his secluded cabin in the woods, sweet Jenny find her uncle dying. Before his passing, she gets his gypsy black book into her hands and curiously peruses its contents. She tries a potion. Thus ends Jenny’s sweetness, replacing it with an animalistic sexual appetite and murderous intentions. She and the gypsies that live in the woods make life a living hell for the landowner and for the area in general. The sucking pit? It is a quagmire in the woods, an ancient gypsy burial site and a convenient place to dispose of bodies.

                The book is too short to be anything but an exciting page turner. Smith, as always, leaves out any fluff and gets right to the good stuff. To the detriment of the book’s brevity, there is a romance between two people trying to figure out what is going on at the cabin in the woods that blossoms into true love in just a couple of pages, but that can be forgiven. Who has time for building a budding romance in a book called The Sucking Pit?

                This title, Smith’s second horror novel, has had many different releases over the years with a few different covers. The 1989 edition by Grafton, reviewed here, sports a nice Luis Rey cover painting.

                This book sucks. In a good way. Guy N. Smith is a treasure.

                                            

    Hard Gore Press, 2011 Cover by Rick Melton        Polish Edition, Phantom Press 1991

                                                                                     cover art by Les Edwards, originally

                                                                                     used for Peter Tremayne's Swamp!  

                                                                                                  Sphere, 1985

 Midnight Magazine