As I've continued my Guy N. Smith runthrough, I've kept this one very much in mind. For all that it was 'The Sucking Pit' that got that effusive Stephen King quote—"the all-time pulp horror classic title"—there were a lot of other reasons to remember that book. This one, with an arguably even more over the top title, tends to be remembered primarily, if not entirely, because of it. It was the fourth in Smith's signature series, but it was a new decade and his writing was evolving, as he took new approaches in books like 'Satan's Snowdrop', 'Doomflight' and 'Wolfcurse'. I had to find out if this one was another departure or whether it was just, well, crabs on the rampage.

Initially, it's very much just crabs on the rampage. The first chapter contains a mild attempt to give Ike Ballinger and Lorna Watson character before they're eaten by giant crabs, the former hunting bird eggs on the Wash and the latter taking her three year old to the beach at Wells-next-the-Sea. The second doesn't even give us names, merely impressions, as the giant crabs collapse the Sutton Bridge onto an incoming ship. It's quite the setpiece, but it's over in two pages.

And, with that, we know that there are two to three hundred giant crabs on one side, returning to our shores after their spawning trip to Australia in 'Killer Crabs'. On the other side, yes, there's an old friend, Prof. Cliff Davenport, who's been waiting for the phone call ever since he got back from Hayman Island three years earlier. While he hoped it would never come, it's almost a relief now it has. Back to work he goes, but Smith hobbles him immediately. No paraquat this time, as it would destroy the fishing industry. However, he does get a dead crab to inspect, because the suspension bridge crushed it when it came down.

And here's where the questions begin. This crab is riddled with boils, a huge malignant cancer that would have killed a less tough creature sooner. And, as more die from the disease, heading inland up river beds, where they would eventually die from the lack of salt water even if the cancer didn't take them first, Davenport has to ask why. He hasn't read 'The Origin of the Crabs', of course, so it only counts as speculation to him that they spawned in British waters, but are they returning only to die or are they out for revenge?

That question only intensifies when more arrive on the Welsh coast, in Barmouth and Shell Island, the original locations in 'Night of the Crabs', and the Severn estuary and other places. In fact, the book turns rather into a travelogue of locations that the crabs reach and wreak mayhem in. Some are famous landmarks, like Westminster Bridge, cunningly toppled by crabs to crush and trap, the people even easier to dismember in that state. Some, treats for loyal fans, are returns to haunts we recognise, like the Cranlarich Estate on Loch Merse, from 'The Origin of the Crabs', where the new laird has finally arrived, only to be eaten by a new batch of crabs.

Many are memorable because of the circumstances under which havoc erupts, like a birthday orgy in an ox-bow lake on the grounds of privileged Rex Astley-Middleton or a clash between rival triad gangs in London, fighting over a heroin shipment. All are eaten by giant crabs. For a while, it's like they're everywhere, taking over the country, eating everyone. Smith introduces us to a whole slew of new characters, from security guards to members of parliament, only to kill them off quickly as further fodder for the ravenous giant crabs. Given the cult success of 'Cocaine Bear' right now, it's clear that Smith missed out on his opportunity to give us 'Heroin Crab'.

I wonder what Smith was trying to do here. 'Night of the Crabs' was an original novel. a British-set monster movie from the fifties with a new giant enemy. 'Killer Crabs' was a thriller, a way to take a success and twist it into a different form, one that Smith had more interest to write. 'The Origin of the Crabs' didn't live up to its title but it was a fun return to his most successful series, without the need to bring anyone back because it was a prequel. This fourth book is the most obviously horror and the most obviously a sequel. It doesn't do anything new and it disappoints because of that.

A cynic would suggest that he was simply knocking out yet another book in a successful series for a straightforward cheque, but Smith had never done that before and, with more Crabs books still to come, still churned out original novel after original novel for much of his long career, finding a way into new genres and new takes on old ones. He never ran out of ideas. But this one does feel much like a filler title, with such an endless stream of characters who don't live long enough to get deep insight into what makes them tick, just pulp introductions before they're, well, pulped.

Maybe there's a note of sympathy for the villain in this one. That was an overt feature of 'Caracal', in which human beings were the real bad guys and the Indian big cat of the title was only living up to its nature in alien surroundings. Cliff Davenport points out something similar here to a corporal in Barmouth, that the crabs never asked to be mutated into giant form by radiation spilled by the illicit underwater nuclear testing of human beings. He still plans to take them all down and we are just not buying that suggestion of sympathy. Smith had painted them as evil and knowing too long.

As the book ran on, I wondered if Smith had just tired of writing about the crabs and saw this as an easy way to kill them off. That's backed up by a set of frequent cameos, not only Cliff Davenport, a relatively useless presence this time out, and his wife Pat, who he guiltily acknowledges he met in direct consequence of the crabs attacking the Welsh coast in 'Night of the Crabs', a positive result of a negative situation. But there's Blacklaw, the landlord of the Royal Stag in Cranlarich, who we saw lose his daughter in 'The Origin of the Crabs'. There's Col. Matthews, once more in Barmouth, as he was in 'Night of the Crabs' but believing this time. There's even Klin, the fisherman in 'Killer Crabs', who gets the epilogue, back on the island where they'd trapped the creatures.

Most crucially, there's a hint that's dropped twice by Prof. Davenport, that maybe the crabs aren't heading inland because they have somewhere to be—after all, he also drops the theory that there might a sort of Elephant's Graveyard thinking going on—but because they no longer want to be in the depths of the ocean. Could there be something else out there in the sea, that's been mutated by the very same nuclear testing, that's even more monstrous, that we haven't seen yet but must be a new level of threat to us if it even scares the almost unstoppable giant crab? On occasion, it's almost a set-up for a sequel that ups the ante by ditching the monster we know for a bigger one.

So this one is just there. During a period where Smith was notably experimenting, this was a firm step back into the same old same old with a half-hearted sequel that didn't have much reason for existing, if not to kill off the series once and for all. If that was the goal, of course, it succeeded as well as most attempts to kill off the unkillable. Smith was a Sherlock Holmes aficionado. He knew exactly how well that tends to work out. And a book with a title this memorable deserved more, I think. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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