I reviewed the sixth in Guy N. Smith's infamous 'Crabs' series, 'Crabs: The Human Sacrifice', merely ten months ago so it's relatively fresh in mind when I tackle it as the latest in the ongoing reissue series by Black Hill Books. It's legendary more because of its ridiculous original cover with its wild and inaccurate suggestion that it's a crab performing the titular human sacrifice than for its text, but there's some agreeably nasty stuff going on. I really ought to transcribe Smith's first draught, from handwritten manuscript, because I believe it was a lot nastier still, but New English Library was keen on him toning it down a little.

For those with short memories or who are new to the Nameless Zine, our battle with the mutated giant crabs appears to be coming to a close, as they spent book four, 'Crabs on the Rampage' in an advanced state of cancerous decay. However, against that backdrop we meet Pete Merrick;,an ex-SAS man turned extreme animal rights activist, who's killed for the cause. In his madness, he sees these giant crabs as yet another example of man's cruelty to the natural world, even starting to worship them, forcing his bondage-loving girlfriend Christine along for the ride. Before long, he's staking out a rich daughter naked on the Wash as a human sacrifice and it escalates from there.

It's a decent Guy N. Smith horror novel, if a little derivative of his earlier work, but it's not really a great entry in the 'Crabs' series, because the cancerous crabs themselves play second fiddle to the shenanigans Merrick conjures up. However, arguably the worst aspect was that misleading cover, because it's very much a human being performing the human sacrifices here. Therefore, the cover artist for the reissue series, Neale Smith, doesn't have a high bar to beat. I've not been much of a fan of his crabs, who often look more like ticks to me, but this one's neatly stylistic and set against an agreeably bright inferno. It's not particularly representative either, but it may be better than the original for the first time in the series.

As always, the other aspect worthy of note in the reissues is the foreword, this time by the horror novelist Graham Holden, who as G. P. Nedloh, wrote the novella 'The Woodlice' which featured an important note: "thanks to Guy N. Smith for inspiration". His origin story is a monthly book fair in the Assembly Rooms in Chichester, where he stumbled onto a copy of Smith's 'Throwback', then, a month later, 'Crabs' books, and, thirty years on, book six in the wild, at a charity shop. While Guy's books tend to be crazy expensive on the secondhand market, that proves that there are copies in the wild still to be found for ridiculously low prices.

I remember book fairs, albeit not in Chichester, but the ones I went to were rarely good treasure grounds for pulp horror, even in the eighties and nineties. I did better at markets, charity shops and bookstalls, but we all grabbed what we could whenever we saw it. I'm happy Chichester gave Graham a road into the wonderful world of Guy N. Smith. Fast forward to the internet era and he guested on the 'Breakfast in the Ruins' podcast to talk about 'Night of the Crabs'. We Smith fans are distinguished by simply wanting to talk about the man and his works at every opportunity.

Holden also has a couple of other, more unusual, claims to expertise when writing about this book in particular. Apparently, back in his twenties, he shared a flat in Brighton with a prominent hunt saboteur, at least until CID took him away. There are organisations everywhere that look out for animals but the more extreme activists and saboteurs are a peculiarly British phenomenon, thus explaining why they show up far more often in Guy N. Smith novels than those of his counterparts across the pond. Pete Merrick may seem unbelievable to American readers, but he's only a touch extrapolated from real Brits of the era, perhaps like the one Graham shared a flat with.

His other interesting note is one I'll have to follow up on, but, in praising Smith's ability to write a huge amount about the British countryside in so many novels, he calls out another writer by the name of Richard Jefferies. I know him primarily because he wrote an 1885 post-apocalyptic novel called 'After London', but Holden explains that he was primarily a nature writer whose collection 'The Amateur Poacher' from 1879 sounds exactly like the sort of thing that Guy devoured. Now I'll have to check Smith's non-fiction to see if he referenced him anywhere.

Certainly, he wrote about real wildfowlers and poachers, not just in non-fiction articles and books but in novels like this one. My previous review talked about a few of them, because Shep White's real house on the Wash is a landmark in this book just as it was in 'The Slime Beast'. I must wonder if Guy wrote Jefferies into any of his novels, but then, if he knew his work, he wouldn't have known the man himself, as he lived and died in the nineteenth century. Either way, he serves as another rabbit hole sparked by a reissue foreword. Thanks, Graham! ~~ Hal C F Astell

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