While I haven't read 'Cannibals' in decades, I remember it being a strong entry in his bibliography. Reading it afresh, I'd underline that because it's a particularly strong survival horror novel, with a distinct lack of sex but some agreeably gruesome scenes when it all gets moving. Chapter thirteen is particularly brutal, up there with the goriest in Smith's bibliography, but what shocked me most is how patiently it all builds. As accurate as Les Edwards's iconic art on the reissue happens to be, I firmly prefer the original more minimalist artwork because it literally keeps us more in the dark.

And that's an appropriate phrase to use here because whatever is hiding in the caves at Blair Long and wandering down to the rural Scottish village of Invercurie only comes out at night. Smith aims to keep us in the dark about them too. Sure, they're the cannibals of the title, but he doesn't give us a visual until page 94, with almost half the book done. When unwary holidaymakers arrive for a quiet time in Douglas Geddis's new chalets, they're merely given hints to stay inside at night. The locals are all sharing a deep and dark secret but they don't want to let anyone else in on it.

If it wasn't for Geddis, maybe that secret would be kept still and it's because of that that he has to be my favourite character, even though he isn't a likely candidate. He's a fisherman, born and bred in Invercurie, which is on Scotland's west coast, a stone's throw from Oban at the other end of the Caledonian Canal from Inverness, so he's well aware of the secret of Blair Long. However, he's also a widower and he's tired. He's in his fifties, he's been on his own since his wife died a decade back and nothing ever changes in Invercurie.

So, when he quietly builds six chalets on the Beck, it's probably fair to say that he's aware that the story he's putting into motion isn't going to end well: not for him, not for the villagers and not for  any holidaymakers who answer his ads. Maybe to him, it's the only way he can see to do what must be done. And who's to say that he's wrong? Maybe you can judge him once you finish up this couple of hundred pages and see if there's anyone that you find sympathetic.

Smith is rightly known for setting most of his novels in the countryside, but this doesn't follow his usual approach. Typically, the country folk in a Smith novel are the good guys, because they know how things are supposed to be and generations of them have maintained a balance. The bad guys are the outsiders who move in from the city, not understanding that balance and often prompting disaster through either arrogance or ineptitude. That's all reversed here, with the locals the bad guys and their traditional ways the problem. The outsiders aren't moving here for good, just for a holiday, and they're not good guys so much as innocents. However, the roles are clearly reversed.

Also, Smith usually plays up the community aspects of country life, but everything here is about an abiding sense of isolation. We can feel abundant space between everything. It's there physically, of course, as Invercurie is a highland village twenty miles from its nearest neighbour, peering up at a bleak mountain in between, and Geddis's chalets are on the outskirts. It's in the sparse local population; locals bitch and moan at Geddis one at a time, nobody ever finds anyone else in Mary Brown's shop except her and even the local priest travels in from elsewhere. It's exactly the place where someone might go to hide or escape. Smith is happy to keep such someones to a minimum too, because a place this quiet should remain that way, at least until the screaming starts.

First up are Eddie Drake and Sarah Bryant. He's a thirty-five-year-old lecturer; she's nineteen and one of his students. They're escaping the obvious scandal for a month. Sarah's a worrier and Eddie is a stubborn ass, appropriately given their ages and natures, so they remind of the Foggs in 'The Lurkers'. Then it's the Halseys, Frank and Cynthia, with their kids Vicky and Jamie. Frank's a bank manager—well, kinda sorta—and Cynthia's a snob, so they remind of the Brownlows in 'Accursed'. We're halfway before young couple Mike Sallis and Jayne Tomlins show up, eighteen-year-olds on their first trip away from family. By that point, some of these folk are already dead or missing and Phil Drake, the real lead character, is already there in search of his idiot brother.

I'd suggest that I've set enough of the stage here, but Smith does keep us on the hop. He follows a very old school monster movie approach to the cannibals of the title, offering us mere hints, never leaving us in their company for long and having other characters explain their background. Surely Smith based them on the legend of Sawney Bean, even if he shifts the action further north, but he adds some truly gruesome layers of background on top of that fundamentally simple story. And he shifts approach from mysterious folk horror, once the mystery is revealed, to survival horror, which builds magnificently.

At the end of the day, the bedrock here is pretty flimsy but Smith builds so well on it and in such a deceptively effortless way that it ends up being far more substantial than we'd ever have believed going in. It wouldn't be difficult to conjure up a comparison to Jack Ketchum's 'Off Season', but it's Smith who provides all the subtleties there, while still getting just as brutal when he wants to. Ah yes, chapter thirteen, but other moments too, sometimes brutal through revelation as much as in spectacle.

The final surprise is that Smith never wrote a sequel and, to the best of my knowledge, never even considered it. While this works perfectly well as a standalone novel, he clearly left the door open for a sequel and simply never walked through it. I wonder why, especially as he was about to write sequels to a few earlier novels. He started 1987 with two originals, 'Alligators' and Bloodshow, but then contributed sequels to 'Thirst' and 'Deathbell', each previously a standalone, then added the legendary sixth 'Crabs' book, 'Crabs: The Human Sacrifice'. 'Cannibals', however, still stands alone. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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