After his neverending 'Crabs' series begun by his biggest seller, 'Night of the Crabs', Guy N. Smith's name is probably remembered most for the character he introduced in 'The Graveyard Vultures', a particularly worthy character called Mark Sabat. Ex-priest, ex-SAS man and exorcist, he fought the time-honoured battle against evil in four New English Library novels in just over a year, returned a few times over the decades for odd short stories and eventually showed back up towards the end of Smith's career, leading two further novels no fewer than thirty-five years on. He was missed, as his appearance on the cover of 'Pulp Horror' #8 in late 2018 highlighted.

And it's easy to see why. This is a short novel, only a hundred and sixty pages in mass market size, a lean and mean NEL paperback, yet it packs an incredible amount into such a short space. I've loved this book and this series for decades, the fourth Mark Sabat novel, 'The Druid Connection' serving as my introduction to his work back in the mid-eighties, and I re-read it recently in preparation for an article I wrote for a Polish compilation, but taking detailed notes afresh reminded me how much actually happens. It's a rare chapter that doesn't feature a new outrageous scene.

That all begins in the prologue, in which Mark Sabat hunts his brother Quentin. Mark is no paragon of virtue, as we'll soon discover, but his brother is far worse, one of the most powerful forces for evil in recent memory. Mark has sought him for years and finally tracked him down by venturing out on the astral plane in the form of a kestrel, impossibly aged in a remote hut. Now he goes there in our physical world to defeat him once and for all, but arrives as he's perpetrating necromantic rites on a trio of corpses he's just dug up. He's practicing voodoo to rejuvenate himself.

They fight; Quentin far stronger than his feeble frame might suggest, and Mark comes off worse, a memorable and highly visual shot of him falling into one of the graves, looking up at his brother, an axe in his hand swinging down at him. He shoots him repeatedly with his .38 and, one final struggle later, shoots him once more, through the skull at point blank range. Quentin's head explodes and it should be all over. But Mark runs and, when he gets back to his hotel room, he realises that he now hosts the soul of his brother, trapped inside his own flesh alongside his own.

That's just the prologue that sets the stage not only for this first novel but the entire series, with a constant running battle going on between the two opposing souls in Sabat's body. Mark can never let down his guards or Quentin will take over and his evil will once again be unleashed upon a very unsuspecting world. Do you think Smith slows down after that? Not in the slightest.

Chapter two is relatively tame, Sabat doing research on recent desecrations at a rural church that the bishop has called him into address. Chapter eleven is short and action free, Sabat returning to his body from a journey to see the Rada gods of voodoo and Maître Carrefour visiting him there to remind him of a vow he's just made to commit murder. Really, though, those are the only two quiet chapters, from the standpoint of outrage. The other eleven chapters have no intention of skimping.

For instance, chapter one explains what Sabat's about to find himself up against. Interlopers to St. Adrian's church dig up a grave, retrieving the recently deceased corpse of Sylvia Adams, eighteen-years-old when she passed of a stomach cancer that she'd been fighting for five years. This coven is in need of her virgin flesh and they drape her across a tomb as makeshift altar with a naked hooker from London alongside her, plan to take Sylvia's virginity after her demise, summoning the Master to finish the job and pound the pair of them with His hooves. After all that, the chapter ends with a crazed masturbation fantasy back at Sabat's house. It doesn't let up.

While Bishop Wentnor explains the situation to Sabat, it's clear that he doesn't understand what's really going on and the ramifications of it, but our former exorcist sees the signs. Not only did this coven desecrate a church and its cemetery, along with the occupant of one of its graves; they dug up a hundred-year old corpse at the same time and took it with them. Sabat researches the history of the village and discovers that William Gardiner, the body in question, was tried for heresy back in 1871. He was freed on Walpurgisnacht and died on Hallowe'en, so his bones are powerful magic in the wrong hands, which, of course, they're now in.

So he constructs a large pentagram on the floor of his room at the Dun Cow and, safely sleeping in its protective lines, ventures out onto the astral plain to track down Miranda, the young lady whose eye he caught downstairs earlier. She's having sex with a married man named Royston and he stays to watch and learn from their subsequent conversation. Royston is the leader of the coven, not the man Horace, who's now locked up in an asylum after the graveyard incident; he's secured a temple to replace it as the home for their dark rites; and he knows that Sabat has come to town, who he is and what he's planning to do, so he's already planned for his demise. Sabat rushes back to his body to find the Dun Cow on fire. He escapes and wakes up three days later in a Birmingham hospital.

There are chapters here that contain more action and blasphemy than some entire horror novels. Smith seriously wasn't holding back and he keeps up the pace throughout. This is a quick read, sure, but it's also a very focused one, with fewer characters than normal drawn a little deeper. The death count isn't particularly high, if we only count bodies we see killed, but destruction is rampant and a good part of that is collateral human damage. One scene, in which Sabat exorcises St. Adrian's and its cemetery, involves him invoking the power of Baron Cimiterre and wreaking bloody havoc on an army of spirits set against him, finishing up by raping one of them and then bludgeoning it to bits. Technically, nobody dies, because they're all already dead, but it's delightfully gruesome anyway.

It's hard to pick a favourite scene amidst so much choice. Maybe it's Sabat saving a priest by sawing off the head of his corpse. Maybe it's the triple whammy of Sabat being seduced by a succubus in a psychically hypnotic state, said succubus attempting his murder during coitus and then him raping her back to her senses. Of course, it could be a naked young lady being draped over the skeleton of William Gardiner in lewd fashion and having her wrists and throat slit to help magically restore the skin to his bones. I have more choices if you want them. As I mentioned, Smith doesn't hold back.

Amidst all this, we learn a lot about Mark Sabat, who's a notably conflicted individual, even before Quentin's soul was thrust into his body. It's hard to tell if he's a good man or bad, but he does fight for the forces of good, whether it's to oppose Quentin's unrivaled evil or to back the Rada gods led by Lord Damballah in their age old battle against the darker Petro gods of voodoo, one of which he has already tricked. Some characteristics are typical of Smith's more wish fulfilment characters: he smokes a pipe, drinks whiskey and is particularly insatiable in the sack. However, they're deepened here, that attraction to women a serious weakness that almost leads to his death here.

I remember vividly being fascinated by the background texture of this series, the details of warfare with occult weapons. I was probably fourteen when I found 'The Druid Connection' and I quickly put a Smith collection together, absorbed by the concept of astral travel, something I never figured out how to do, and the use of faith, pentagrams and cleanliness as offensive and defensive weapons. It was a perfect storm for me, layered on top of the imagery I was discovering in heavy metal through the proto-extreme bands like Venom, Possessed and especially Celtic Frost. This was a guidebook, a training manual and a sudden immersion into a whole new world, without much time to breathe.

Re-reading all these old Smiths as a monthly runthrough has brought back so many memories and so much pleasure in revisiting old friends. Many of my favourites of his books aren't the series but standalone novels, such as 'The Sucking Pit' (which did eventually prompt a sequel) 'Deathbell' and, I fully expect when I get that far, 'Abomination' and 'Fiend'. However, Mark Sabat remains a special exception and this fresh return to his first outing underlines why. I'm only one book in and already cursing New English Library for cancelling the series after four. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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