Black Hill Books are commissioning different artists to create cover art for their new Guy N. Smith reprint editions, but they're keeping each series consistent. As 'Night of the Werewolf' isn't part of his 'Werewolf Trilogy', merely occupying the same subgenre, technically that should mean that they pivot to a new cover artist. However, they've stayed with Mike McGee and that's a fantastic decision. He's done superb work with the covers for the three connected books and this one is no less effective, a suitably moody piece with the werewolf's face peering out of the darkness.

Of course, I've already reviewed 'Night of the Werewolf'; for a long time the Smith novel that was frustratingly unavailable in English. It was originally published in German in digest format in 1976, as 'Der Ruf des Werwolfs', remaining foreign language only until 1993, when it began serialisation in the fanzine that would become Guy's fan club magazine, 'Graveyard Rendezvous'. It didn't see a book publication in English until 2012, when Guy was running his own publishing imprint and put it back into print himself.

It's a decent novel but relatively traditional, the werewolf of the title a giant Scottish villager by the name of Angus Broon and his nemesis a Van Helsing-esque werewolf hunter called Odell, who had already taken down a score of such creatures over the past couple of decades. Of course, he's not dissimilar to Gordon Hall, the hero of Smith's debut, 'Werewolf by Moonlight', released only a couple of years earlier, and thus not dissimilar from Smith himself. The remaining aspects of Hall shift over to Ron Hamilton, a free-lance journalist.

I don't need to talk about the story because I've already done that, but I'll happily talk about the new foreword written for this edition by Shane Agnew, which is an absolute peach, even if he has the glorious bad taste to namecheck me in it. He talks about the time we first met, which was less than an hour before we both first met Guy at a 'Scare Care' charity event in Oldham. At that point we didn't know each other but had connected with Guy separately through mail (snail mail not e-mail; this was the eighties) and he pointed out to us that we lived ridiculously close to each other. Shane's a few years older than I am and he had a car, so he picked me up and off we went.

Fast forward to today and he's published Guy's bibliography, which is exquisitely deep, while I've published the first of three zines in my runthrough of his books with a coffee-table deep-dive into his work in the seventies largely done but not quite finished yet. Given how well the zine's selling, I'm really looking forward to wrapping that up and bringing it into print. I believe Guy dedicated books to both of us; he certainly murdered Shane in one short story and wrote another to include as a bonus in his bibliography. That was a werewolf story, making Shane's choice for this foreword highly appropriate.

What I hadn't realised until reading this foreword is that Shane may well have found Guy's work at the very same paperback stall in the Halifax Borough Market that I frequented. I believe I recall it being called Whiteley's Book Exchange. If he was trading in books that he'd read there, then some of my copies may well be ones that he read before me. It really is a small world. It still boggles my mind that the two most avid collectors of Smith's output anywhere in the world lived within four miles of each other in the Yorkshire countryside. We could have been wandering around the Piece Hall Market at the same time in opposite directions without ever realising we were passing each other.

Given that, I find it absolutely hilarious that Shane describes himself as a "little bit of a collector". Between the two of us, we have almost everything that Smith wrote. I have many manuscripts and a bunch of unpublished work that Shane doesn't. However, Shane has a vast range of his magazine output that I don't, not only the field sports but also the porn. Those things are not easy to find but Shane's a real ferret when it comes to tracking things down. We've done a lot of comparisons from manuscript to end publication as a way of confirming which anonymous work was truly Guy's.

What's more, Shane's short story in 'Hell of a Guy', the hardback book written by the fans, Shane and I included, as an otherwise unpublished gift to Guy to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of his fan club gathering, literally defines the rabbit hole that collectors like us dive into, usually to the despair of our better halves. Sorry, Dee! Sorry, Fran! It's a wonderful piece that I go back to frequently as a telling reminder of how dangerous this collecting game can get. Of course, Guy wasn't free from this sort of thing himself and Shane appropriately mentions his gun collecting, pipe smoking and other pastimes. Smith was an avid collector of hobbies, making it even more amazing that he got to the sort of word counts that he did.

It's appropriate that Shane highlight our shared experiences of Guy N. Smith fandom because we are far from alone. He namechecks other notable fans too and ends his foreword by pointing out that we all met Guy as fans but left as friends. That was Shane. That was me. And that was a slew of other people. It still doesn't quite seem real that Guy is no longer with us but his fandom lives on both online on Facebook and in person at our annual get-togethers. His legacy is also living on through these Black Hill Books reprints which are finding new fans all the time.

I love that anyone picking up 'Night of the Werewolf' for the first time in this reprint edition will also discover that fandom through Shane's foreword. We are legion. Come join us! ~~ Hal C F Astell

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