Scorpion: Second Generation By Michael R. Linaker

Scorpion: Second Generation
By Michael R. Linaker
1982 New English Library
Paperback, 158 pages

 

                New English Library unleashed Linaker’s Scorpion in 1980 and evidently, it sold well enough to warrant this sequel. Well, I thank my lucky stars for that! This book is by-the-numbers nature-strikes-back hokum and for that, I love it. Fast, no bullshit, gore, sex, and nastiness… what more could I ask for?

 

                A few years after the initial scorpion menace, another Cornish resort town is seeing a rise in death and dismemberment, not to mention some nasty envenomation. Sounds like our old pals the scorpions weren’t completely wiped out after all. And they have evolved: this second generation are bigger and meaner than their boob-munching counterparts from the first novel. They are also dying from an infectious disease that can be passed to humans. Cornwall is, once again, fucked.

 

                This is the Guy N. Smith crab novel you never read. Linaker merely swaps in scorpions for crabs and scuffling, scratching sounds for click-click-clickety and there you have it. This is a quick, gore-splashed mutant scorpion book that does exactly what you would want it to. Linaker probably knocked it out in a couple of days and, if you have the time, you can probably enjoy it in an afternoon.

 

                Linaker was (is?) an extremely prolific author who specialized in actions thrillers, notably a slew of Mack Bolan titles, as well as a number of Westerns. I’m not sure how or why he came to NEL’s attention for a few horror novels but thank goodness he did! This book is a perfect antidote to a shitty workday. Just picture your boss getting his bones snapped and his skin split by a four-foot scorpion, his innards slipping out onto the floor. Hell to the yes!

The Mad Death By Nigel Slater

The Mad Death
By Nigel Slater
1983 Granada
Paperback, 256 pages

Rabies in Britain? Not again! Remember David Anne’s Rabid (reviewed in Midnight Magazine #4)? Remember Jack Ramsey’s The Rage? Yes, it had been done before (both aforementioned books were published in 1977) but like a moth to a flame, I keep coming back for more.

 

This one starts with a cat, then a fox, then...a possible epidemic. Our hero, Viv Tait, is a veterinarian with a bad attitude. It seems that he likes animals a lot more than humans. In the scene where we meet him, he is wearing a “Gerbils Role OK” T-shirt. He is short tempered, straight talking with no filter, and dour. He is an asshole. I immediately related to him. Against his will, he is made the head honcho in the war against rabies, entrusted to save Britain from the encroaching epidemic. His assistant is a smart and crafty woman named Penny, who he considers more worthy than her name, so he calls her Tuppence, a moniker that sticks for the rest of the novel. They have a complicated relationship that is aggravating and rewarding at the same time.

 

Despite the cover and its back cover blurbs (“When you go down to the woods, pray that the Mad Death is more than a snarl away”), this is much more of a thriller than a horror story. The gory details and the infected humans are few, but the dire circumstances and the well-formed characters keep the pages turning. After a lull in the middle, I was back at it, frenziedly reading to get to the end, which admittedly was weak. Intentionally. Because, as we have all learned from our own pandemic, nothing ever really changes in this world.

 

This was adapted for a BBC TV mini-series that aired the same year the book was released. As it started filming in 1981, one wonders if the book, its source material, was held back to coincide with the now well-remembered TV show airing. At any rate, the Granada book has lovely cover illustration by John Knights (credited on the back cover!) done in a medium I cannot readily identify.

Gwen, in Green By Hugh Zachary

 

Gwen, in Green

By Hugh Zachary
1974 Fawcett
Paperback, 191 pages

                An eco-horror book with loads of forbidden sex? Sign me up right now!

 

                Gwen and George are a prosperous young married couple that get a lovely piece of island real estate in North Carolina for a song. There is a growing nuclear power plant across the water from them, but their land was safe and secluded, an idyllic spot for them to build their forever home. Had Gwen, who’d had a lot of hang-ups, mostly sexual thanks to her promiscuous mother, finally found a place to feel safe and loved?

 

                Between her husband clearing out brush and small trees to make a better view of the pond and the nearby plant clearing for new construction, the flora in the area was taking a beating. Gwen was having a problem with that. In fact, Gwen was becoming more in tune with the plant life in the area than the humans. She put up a front for George and her shrink but things were changing rapidly in her world. Gwen could hear… and feel the thousands of trees falling, the plants being massacred, and she started thinking that it was about time for a little payback…

 

                This is a remarkable book. I felt completely in tune with Gwen right from the start. Zachary takes you inside her head with unexpected sensitivity and clarity and as she changes, you follow as her story becomes a sad, twisted dreamworld. Shockingly, to relieve the pain of the plant life massacre, she starts fucking strangers, first the meter man, then teenage boys from the nearby town. Yeah, the pedophilia is pretty gross, but Gwen needed many eager pain-relievers. Workmen are also disappearing…

 

                The book is sometimes beautiful, sometimes repulsive, but it always casts an eye towards nature, who couldn’t speak for itself until Gwen came to them. Valancourt Books has reissued the book as part of their Paperbacks from Hell series and thankfully have kept the original cover art, painted by George Ziel. The painting is a haunting masterpiece, just like the book.

The Spirit By Thomas Page

 

The Spirit
By Thomas Page
1979 Hamlyn
Paperback, 252 pages

                We’ve got a Bigfoot novel here, ladies and gentlemen, and it’s a pretty good one. While it is far from perfect, it is satisfying, a quick read and it delivers the goods. I mean, it pretty much opens with a beheading!

                Two men are tracking Bigfoot across the country. One is John Moon, a Native American Vietnam vet in search of inner peace and to "learn his name", his place in life. Bigfoot is The Spirit that will show him the way. John Moon is pretty much bonkers, by the way. The other man is Raymond Jason, a moneybags adventurer whose prior expedition was marred by a lethal Bigfoot encounter. He seeks not only revenge, but to show the world that the monster exists. Raymond Jason is pretty much an asshole.

 

                Our two main characters travel state to state, even into British Columbia, tracking the beast. They finally get up close and personal with their quarry at a mountain in Washington state. Luckily for the reader there is a ski resort that has recently opened on Bigfoot’s home base.

 

                OK, I mean John Moon’s character isn’t exactly enlightened by today’s standards, but I wouldn’t call it completely un-PC. The fact that there is only one female character stands out more for me. Hey, it was the 70s; a grain of salt is often needed. But the story revolving around the two men and their searches is a tight thriller, full of action and I blew through it quickly after deciding (about 50 pages in) that it was pretty good. Some neat ideas about the origin of the Bigfoot species are offered up, as well.

 

                Page is no stranger to fantastic fiction, having written The Hephaestus Plague in 1973. You know, the one the movie Bug was based on with incendiary beetles? Based on that book and this one, he is OK by me. The Spirit has been re-released by Valancourt under Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell banner, so it’s easy enough to find now. And as Hendrix says about The Spirit, it’s a rare Bigfoot novel with absolutely no Bigfoot rape scenes. Yay!

Parasite By Richard Lewis

 

Parasite
By Richard Lewis
1980 Hamlyn
Paperback, 187 pages

 

Richard Lewis knows how to handle a nature-strikes-back premise and he proves himself capable once again with another new pandemic horror out to threaten Britain. The parasite in question is a tiny freshwater worm that spreads bilharzia, also known as schistosomiasis. It’s real. Look it up. It is unpleasant. Of course, Lewis’s parasite has mutated a bit to make the disease even more unpleasant. This parasite can cause madness, gooey death and 80s pulp-horror mayhem.

 

The reader knows what is going on before the characters in the book do and it’s enjoyable to follow them as they uncover the unimaginable. That said, there tends to be a few too many meetings among the doctors, scientists, and politicians for my taste. It doesn’t ruin the book, like it does in Edward Jarvis’s Maggots, but it does slow down the narrative at times. Still, Lewis keeps things moving along and throws us some gruesome parasite action just when we need it.

 

There is a well written romance between our main character George Carson and his associate Jill Turner. Plus, George’s kid, born of his late wife, catches the parasite which brings a new level of pathos to the story. Of course, in true Lewis fashion (SPOILER), he throws in a late-story rape to show that humans are always the true horror in the world. (END SPOILER). It just seems like overkill, but hey… it fucks with you, and I guess that is the point.

 

So, while this isn’t the perfect Richard Lewis book (that would be Devil’s Coach-Horse aka The Black Horde), it is still prime 80s Hamlyn Horror and is well worth adding to one’s nature-strikes-back collection. I just wish there had been less meetings in it.

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

Clickers By J.F. Gonzalez and Mark Williams

Clickers
By J.F. Gonzalez and Mark Williams
2011 Deadite Press
Paperback, 271 pages

 

                Originally published as an eBook in 1999, this novel has gone through a few incarnations before Deadite Press released this author-approved edition. It still looks like it could still use a little editing and it is a bit overlong, but the book definitely satisfies anyone looking for a gory Creature Feature. I’m not a big fan of Dave Kendall’s cover art, though.

 

                A horror author heads to a coastal town in Maine to work on his next book. He meets a slew of underdeveloped characters (and, really… who cares? We’re here for the mayhem) and before too long, the beaches erupt with large crabs who also happen to have venomous scorpion tails. What transpires is pure a Guy N. Smith and H.P. Lovecraft mash-up. The gore gets ladled on heavy, and nobody is safe.

 

                Mercifully, Guy N. Smith does get name dropped in the text. It’s only fair because Smith’s trademark “click-click-clickety-click” is lifted for these crabby imitations. I mean… the main character (a fairly unlikeable writer named Rick) dubs them Clickers. It’s the title of the damn book! Original or not, the book delivers what it promised; a gore-filled B-movie of a story. My favorite passage, after an old woman is stung by the crab-scorpion; “Her body expanded and blew up like a hot water balloon, inflating to almost double her size before the skin split and reddish, meaty goo splashed all over the crabs, drenching them in Old Woman Sauce.” The fact that “Old Woman Sauce” is capitalized makes me very happy.

 

                No, it’s not a really well written book but it tells the story admirably and despite going on a bit long, it’s just what the doctor ordered when you need mindless, gory sludge. Gonzalez wrote three more entries in the Clickers canon, all of them with fellow horror author Brian Keene. Gonzalez passed away in 2014. Mark Williams died in 1998, a year before Clickers saw print.

 

                I never even mentioned the Lovecrafty stuff! Dig in! There’s more than just stinging crabs on the menu!