Guy N. Smith had alternated an adult novel with a children's novel for four iterations, but that's about to change and, if memory serves, this novel was the reason why. Smith held a launch party for the book, as is relatively commonplace, and sold out all of his stock copies. So he contacted his publisher, Julia MacRae Books, to order more. They told him that they'd sold out, which is a great thing for an author to hear at any point, let alone so early so he naturally asked when they would reprint the book. And they said that they weren't planning to do that.

That's a heck of a slap in the face. To sell out an entire print run by a launch party is huge, but for that to be it is awful. What this told Smith was that Julia MacRae saw him as a midlist author, one who's reliable enough to keep asking for new titles but not one who's bestselling enough to risk a second edition. Clearly he was a line item in the publisher's catalogue and that was that. Well, OK, four line items, but still. To have that realisation slapped in your face at a major high moment like that is the sort of event that makes an author reevaluate where he's at.

So he starting looking into self-publishing, in 1996, when that wasn't easy like it is today. That was before we could just login to Amazon and press a button. But I'm getting ahead of myself and I'll pick this back up in two months, after next month's anomalous western, 'The Pony Riders', for the three books Guy published himself through Black Hill Books (Publishers). I read those many times because I laid them out but I don't believe I've gone back to them since then. It's going to be good to dive back into that world.

In the meantime, here's Guy's final book for Julia MacRae, which is set in the same location as the prior three, but extending further forward to a point where one character can finally get at least a little comeuppance. However, we start out in a forest in Russia, where Garn and Ka, a matched pair of goshawks, are taken from their nest by someone who's climbed their pine tree at night. In no time flat, they're surrounded by hawks in cages, part of an international trade, but a legal one because they've been acquired through British government forestry policy.

Before long, they're released on the Black Hill, but in a way that's tied specifically to conservation and ecological balance, unlike Rak and Tika a couple of books earlier, who were released out of an act of kindness that was backed by absolutely no comprehension of what it would mean. The local forestry ranger is called Swift and his assistant is Jackson and they presumably know what they're doing. They weren't happy when the previous pair of goshawks was shot the previous year and so they've placed an exclusion zone around the nest of fifty acres. The only person who's likely to be upset at that is the local shooting tenant, which would be a certain Guy N. Smith.

Ka finds the old nest and everything looks good, especially when she lays three eggs. The rangers are royally pissed when egg thieves take all three of those eggs. We learn whodunit later, but it's not Ian and Ben, who Reuben the gamekeeper finds with air rifles; they're after the hawks to sell stuffed. Smith covered plenty of country life in the prior three books but from the perspective of the animals of that countryside. He does that here too, using another species, but he also adds a lot more from the perspective of Man.

Maybe there's an inevitability to that, given that goshawks soar over the landscape and thus see much more than a badger, a fox or a polecat, whose worlds are far smaller by comparison. Swift is around quite a bit, but he's not alone. Reuben gets a number of crucial scenes, one of which is full of delicious karma. There's a section during which S.A.S. trainees embark on wargames within the wood. And, of course, there are other characters to interact with the goshawks. Most of them do so at a distance, like the birdwatchers who hear about their presence through circulated leaflets, but one climbs their tree and breaks their nest apart for souvenirs.

However, we're still going to focus on the animals, some of whom we recognise, like a hint at Rak and another at Pyne. Shaf the badger shows up and Sacko the stoat, too. However, we meet lots of new ones as well, like Were and Oboz, who are weasels. I should point out that 'Obóz' was the title of a Polish translation of one of Smith's books, 'The Camp'. And Garn and Ka have baby goshawks, which are called eyases. Fal is male and Jek and Li are female, though there's a local goshawk too called Tass, who belongs to Walter the falconer. Add to that Spi and Sa, who are sparrowhawks.

In the prior three children's novels, each focused species had its own place in the local ecosystem and stories unfolded in their spaces. However, those spaces are ground-based so they overlap all the time and so those stories interconnect. That's really not the case here, because goshawks are way up there in the trees, soaring over everything, and only occasionally swooping down to grab food. Their space is their own and so their story interacts far more with Man than it does with the other species in the area.

I'm avoiding story here, because it works on a different scale to the previous three books. That's not to say that it isn't as deep as they are, because it is, but it starts sooner and sprawls later, so can't focus on individual moments as much. It also unfolds over a much broader swathe of land, so we spend less time in the woods we've got to know and more soaring over them. There's a map at the beginning to show us just how much land we're looking at, which includes locations for a host of Guy N. Smith and Jonathan Guy novels.

At the far left is the city, meaning Lichfield, with its cathedral and minster pool. That was a home for 'The Unseen', 'The Black Fedora' and parts of 'Bats Out of Hell' and it would later be home to 'The Minster Geese', the final Jonathan Guy novel. Then there's the Black Hill, where Smith lived and wrote so many of his books and where he had already set a bunch, starting with 'Werewolf by Moonlight', with Pen-y-Cwm next to it, which was a key location in that book and in others.

Then it's Badger Wood, Hopwas Wood and Soldiers' Wood, all in a row, the key locations for these Jonathan Guy books, with the Devil's Dressing Room over on the other side of Hopwas Village, an eminently recognisable name. Above them all is moorland, where this book ends, the right half of which is caleld Cornharrow, the title of the next Jonathan Guy novel. It's practically impossible to look at a map of this countryside and not place a few dozen books into their places. So here's one more. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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