Recently, after another batch of reviews had gone live, my editor at the Nameless Zine asked me, "So how many books did Guy Smith write?" After all, I'd been turning in a review a month for what was now four years and I was still going. I'd reviewed 'The Casebook of Raymond Odell' in January 2021 as an obituary, because we'd lost Guy the month before to COVID. A month later, I dived into 'Werewolf by Moonlight', his first novel from 1974, and I'm still going, a book a month. Anyway, my response was to laugh and tell her that I was about halfway. I have another four years to go.

Over the last three months, I've added a second Guy N. Smith review, because Black Hill Books has started to bring these old horror novels back into print. Of course, with all the work that goes into publishing books, Tara can't get through a book a month. I merely have to read them and write a thousand words and change. She has to digitise, proof and lay out. She has to commission original cover art and new original forewords. She has to make sure everything is perfect before pressing the right buttons to publish. And then she has to market.

As I write, she's just brought the third and last of Guy's 'Werewolf Trilogy' back into print, plus the first five in his 'Crabs' series and counting. This makes four out of those seven, so maybe I'll be up to date with the new editions by Christmas. After that, I'll review them as they see print. For now, I'll celebrate the completion of the 'Werewolf Trilogy' by taking a look through the new edition of its middle volume, 'Return of the Werewolf'. Again, I've reviewed the novel before, so won't recap too far here.

The first thing anyone will see on any of the 'Werewolf' books is the cover art and design by Mike McGee. While the new covers to the 'Crabs' books by Neale Thomas haven't been welcomed fondly by many fans, these seem to be far more successful. I certainly like them a lot more, because they sit together very consistently, which the original editions never did. The first, painted by Lucinda Cowell, featured a frustratingly calm werewolf, while the unknown artist for the second went full on animalistic horror and the third was a disappointing rehash of the second hanging over a small village scene like a nightmare. These three are consistent but distinct and all angry.

While most will focus on the artwork, I'll happily also praise the graphic design too, because I love the choice of font too and the way that the titles flood-fill from red to yellow, as if they're on fire. Everything about these covers is clean design and that's highly appropriate, because everything within them is clean design too. Regular readers here at the Nameless Zine have seen me rage at poor interior design in a host of novels, usually self-published, with missing indents, inappropriate margins, poor paragraph spacing, even a lack of justified text. Here, I get to do the opposite. I'm not going to rage at this design, I'm going to praise how effortlessly right all these elements feel and add that, whatever's going down on the Black Hill, these new editions are comfort zones.

While it might initially seem like this is a rehash of 'Werewolf by Moonlight', it actually goes in a very different direction, enough so that I can't really talk about it without spoilers. Let's just say that it feels very much like a rerun as it begins, with Gordon Hall returning to the Black Hill after being away for a year to find that werewolves are back in conversation. The werewolf in the first book was Philip Owen and he was buried in an unmarked grave in Llanadevy. However, it isn't in it any more. The grave has been dug up and the coffin inside it ripped open, apparently with claws. The body is gone. Talk suggests that maybe there are two werewolves in the hills now.

In his new foreword, J. R. Park, who collaborated with Smith on his final novel, 'Beheaded', raises where this fits into the Great Scribbler's career. New writers are often advised to write what they know and that's absolutely what Smith did with his early novels. Gordon Hall is Guy N. Smith, to an eerie level of detail. It isn't just that they look the same and often act the same; they share much of the same life. Hall is an outsider on the Black Hill, having rented the shooting rights there. He's a journalist back in the West Midlands who has to travel quite a distance to get to them. Every one of those details held true for Guy in his first few years as a published novelist.

I can't remember precisely when he moved to the Black Hill, but it was in the wake of the success of 'Night of the Crabs', published in 1976, his eighth novel, if you count four Disney novelisations but ignore the porn digests. This was his thirteenth, arriving a year later, and if he hadn't moved already, then that wasn't too far away. Park talks about that journey, both physically for Hall and Smith, the shooters, and within the latter's career arc. He also describes Margaret Gunn, Hall's bit on the side in the first book (and again here, when they're both cheating on their spouses) as the personification of the countryside.

While Smith set most of his books in the British countryside, often exploring the clashes between country folk who have been there for generations and know all the traditions and the newcomers who move in and don't; it's the first two of these 'Werewolf' books that could be seen most in wish fulfilment terms. Just as Hall was a wish-fulfilment version of Smith himself, the Black Hill is a wish-fulfilment version of where he wanted to be. It seems entirely appropriate to see that yearning in human form, too, as the character of Margaret Gunn.

Of course, before long, he made that move and he wrote most of his books on the Black Hill, from which he could venture outwards and explore the countryside in England, Wales and Scotland in a series of later books, most of them horror novels. So, for that yearning, we have to go back to this early and—hey, why not?—jump into bed with Margaret Gunn while her farmer husband Vic is out taking care of business. He won't be back for a while. There's plenty of time for personification!

And, when you're safely back home in the big city, login to your favourite online bookseller to pick up a copy of this new edition of 'Return of the Werewolf'. The more copies Black Hill Books sell, the more likely Tara will be able to continue to bring these novels back into print. With 'The Son of the Werewolf', she's finished up the 'Werewolf Trilogy' and she's five into the nine books in the 'Crabs' series, but there are many more to go and some of them haven't seen print since the seventies. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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