With their reprints of Guy N. Smith's 'Werewolf Trilogy' complete—and the unrelated but similar 'Night of the Werewolf' reaching print as I write—Black Hill Books continue the 'Crabs' series, the most famous literary offspring of Guy N. Smith. This is book four, the one boasting the outrageous title of our dreams and perhaps its contents too, if you're in an undemanding mood. Taking a fresh look at my 2023 review of the original edition, I clearly felt a bit more demanding, perhaps after a flurry of far more original novels from Smith's pen.

The foreword to this new edition is by Robin Ince and it's a vibrant one, as befits a comedian. He's happy to remind us what matters most about a 'Crabs' novel through one of a pair of quotes he'll trawl out at a moments notice. The other is from a Laurel & Hardy short film but "Crabs the size of beach donkeys!" could only come from Guy N. Smith and it's from this one. And, admittedly, there are a heck of a lot of crabs on the rampage in, well, 'Crabs on the Rampage'. In fact, unlike each of their prior escapades, they seem to be everywhere, attacking the United Kingdom from all sides.

They're also relatively unstoppable as they move steadily inland, even though they're all dying of cancer at this point, as if Smith just wanted to be done with them. We collectively throw all we can at them and they mostly just keep calm and carry on, pulping a few landmarks and plenty of us in the process. Neale Thomas reflects on that with relatively simple cover art with good perspective. We're presumably on land, maybe on a boat, but the giant crab isn't and it's rearing up above us so that it takes up a serious chunk of the sky. It's a good reminder of how big, how fast and simply how manoeuverable these creatures are.

I still feel that it's a lesser novel to its predecessors, because it's just more of the same instead of a fresh twist, each of the three books before it telling a very different story. However, Ince sees it more as an event than a novel, I think, starting with that over the top title but continuing through the prose which does not make a lie out of it. Nobody would ever report 'Crabs on the Rampage' to the advertising standards authority for misleading us about its contents. To Ince, it delivered and it also sparked creativity in him.

He tells about how he connected with musician Robyn Hitchcock over giant crabs, rather surreally given that the latter was travelling down a Norwegian fjord at the time—and there's a novel that Smith never wrote that I'd love to see! Giant mutated snow crabs descending from the glaciers to mangle the rural population of Norway, with Prof. Klippe Davenhavn seeking the assistance of an equally giant population of native trolls to counter them. But I digress.

If that wasn't surreal enough already, Ince tells of the time when he and Hitchcock and versatile collaborators—opera singer, mimes, pranksters—created an impromptu giant crab musical in the wee hours at Suffolk's Latitude festival. It must have been quite the experience, an improvisation built on readings from Guy's 'Crabs' books, this one included, and a heady mix of poetry, free jazz and associated shenanigans. Clearly it was one of those memorable nights when you just had to be there and, if you weren't, you'll never come close to understanding what an experience it was.

And that seems rather appropriate when talking about 'Crabs on the Rampage'. However varied Smith's earlier (and later) 'Crabs' novels are, they generally revolve around conflict. The crabs do their worst and we do our best to stop them. 'Night of the Crabs' hosted the Battle of Barmouth. 'Killer Crabs' involved penning the spawning creatures on an island and setting fire to it. 'Crabs' Moon' would see the crabs attacking a holiday camp. Here, there's both a lot of that and none of it, because there are little battles everywhere, most of which we lose, and yet there's never one to define the experience.

After it's over, you can imagine survivors coming together to detail the fight where they were so someone else can assemble a big picture. It was something shared by many who all got something thoroughly different out of it. And surely that's precisely what that night of poetry, free jazz and readings from 'Crabs' novels must have felt like the day after Ince and Hitchcock and friends took to the stage at the Latitude festival. Guy N. Smith's 'Crabs' novels: the gift that keeps on giving. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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