It isn't that 'Snakes' is a bad novel, it's that it doesn't seem to fit.

From one angle, it's another of Guy's animals on the rampage novels, this one featuring snakes, if you hadn't guessed from the over-simplistic title, but it pales in comparison to its predecessor on that front.  'Abomination' was full of rampaging creatures of many kinds, effectively taking over a village and taking down everyone they can, while this one, well, isn't. Only snakes are able to play this time out and only eight of them are at large, albeit of six different species.

From another, that's because it's not really a horror novel at all, more of a thriller that features a horrific premise. A zoo has closed and all its animals are being rehoused. The snakes in the reptile house are being sent north in a truck, but there's a pile-up on the motorway during a storm and so out they go into the countryside. As always, there's a heatwave and the moorlands and woodlands make for good habitat. How much carnage can they wreak before a cold snap finishes them off?

From a third, the answer to that is not a heck of a lot, as the death count is frustratingly low. The motorway pile-up that sets the snakes loose is responsible for fifteen deaths in chapter two alone, but we're always aware from moment one that the snakes are going to have a hard time matching it. Sure enough, they don't, so the thrills come less from the snakes killing people and more from the snakes being a panic inducer, especially in carefully constructed scenes that trap people who are too scared to do anything about it.

From a fourth, there isn't really a solution (although, in the end, there kind of is). Usually, in this sort of novel, some character or other is tasked with figuring out a solution to the problem, like Cliff Davenport in Guy's 'Crabs' series. Here, everyone already knows what the solution is from the outset, but it's not theirs to control. Nature will take care of the job at some point, but the locals in Stainforth have to survive until it gets round to it in its own sweet time. That means little book scale suspense of the sort that built in Guy's identified thrillers, the 'Truckers' novels and 'Blood Circuit', but the potential for chapter scale suspense, which Guy does fortunately deliver.

From a fifth, taking the thriller approach inherently means toning down the gratuity that was so prevalent in 'Abomination'. That book was, quite frankly, absolutely jam packed full with glorious but utterly gratuitous death scenes. This time out, there are only two gratuitous scenes and they both pale in comparison with any random choice from that prior book. I'll highlight both, because they're here and they have a wider place in Guy's horror output, but also because you'll see how they don't really fit in a thriller.

The first of them involves one of two deaths during the aftermath of the motorway pile-up. One is PC Mark Bazeley, a brand new cop who's crushed to death by an African rock python, which is fair enough, but the other is the naked young model-beautiful twenty-year-old girl who stumbles into his arms before that happens. Like they do. Everything around them is death and destruction and she's convulsing in agony because she's been bitten by a western diamondback rattlesnake, but he takes a moment to see her in a very different way:

"For a split second his mind shut off and he saw her as a young man sees a beautiful naked girl. The shapely thighs parted, legs wide and kicking frantically as though she had just hit a climax. Moans that he wished were orgasmic cries of delight and the two of them anywhere else but here. Her hands came off her stomach, her fists clenched and she pummelled at him crazily, those groans escalating into screams. Back to reality, she was in unbelievable pain, probably dying."

It's only one paragraph of gratuity but it's there nonetheless and it would have fit better in one of Guy's truer horror novels. At least we know that this jackass gets his very shortly thereafter.

The other instance is longer, taking up four pages to happen and a couple more in aftermath. It's a randy forty-four year old woman, Joan Doyle, who settles back on her bed to enjoy a good lengthy masturbation session, only to be interrupted by the python at the bottom of the bed. Of course, it serves as a perfectly good phallic symbol but then it embraces her so tightly that her body bursts all over her bedroom, bits of intestine splashing against the walls. Now that's the sort of territory 'Abomination' covered, but it's out of place here.

Instead, we focus on individual character studies. Guy tells this from multiple point of views, each chapter for quite a while following a different character, but the important ones gradually racking up a few here and there in alternation. Guy is also careful to avoid these chapters existing entirely in isolation, so links them in simple ways, through personal connections or even just mentions. It's a good way to chop an overarching story up into individual segments each with their own focus, as a sort of jigsaw puzzle of a book, each chapter fleshing out the eventual picture a piece at a time until the whole thing's in view and taken care of.

For instance, chapter one is about Veronica Jones and her son in the reptile house at the zoo that is about to close. She's a single mum, as Ian's dad left when he was born. Chapter two is about the driver tasked with taking the snakes north, even though he's afraid of them. He's Ken Wilson, also known as Ian's Dad Who Left. Chapter three is about Mark Bazeley, that new cop who gets crushed to death after ogling a dying woman. Chapter four is about Chief Superintendent Burlington, who gets to lead the taskforce in Stainforth looking into the new snake problem. Chapter five is about John Price, his expert, a civilian with a degree in zoology who specialises in "poisonous snakes".

And so on. The main characters are Price, whose aunt lives in Stainforth and gets chapter seven as her death story, scared to death by a red herring, and Keith Doyle, a young gardener who's built a viable business for himself after leaving school. However, this never becomes Price and Doyle as a snake hunting team. Smith is content to keep them as individual characters in a book that's full of individual characters, some of whom come to a sticky end because of the snakes, if not specifically through their doing.

I've may have been a little cynical here, but this isn't a bad book. It's just not what it seems to be and so ends up a little disappointing. New English Library certainly marketed it as horror, which it arguably isn't. Had they labelled it a thriller and changed the cover design, ditching the blood red back cover blurb, maybe it would feel more effective. However, snakes simply don't work as well as the other animals that Guy sent rampaging around in his novels. Notwithstanding the symbolism in that masturbation scene, these snakes tend to bite and vanish. There's not much for a novelist to work with there, especially when compared to a raging werewolf, a malevolent giant mutated crab or a colony of meningitis-riddled bats.

When 'Snakes' works, it often works well, because Smith could conjure up a good suspense scene when he wanted to and he knew how to generate a showcase moment. The real value in this book comes from Keith Doyle being trapped in a garage by a rattlesnake; Keith again and his pregnant girlfriend Kirsten stuck overnight in an isolated sandpit inside a car that won't start with a coral snake waiting for them on the bonnet; and even PC Ken Aylott trying to prove himself on a snake hunt but tumbling into an old crypt where the snakes happen to be hiding. It's in moments within the book, rather than in the book itself, which was perhaps ill-advised and certainly mismarketed. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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