While he started out writing in all sorts of genres, Guy N. Smith had found himself gradually forced into being a horror author and he'd embraced that fully in 1978, rapidly turning out a succession of horror novels. There were five between 1978 and 1979, four more in 1980, five in 1981 and six in his most prolific pure horror year of 1982. This was his third in 1983, with fourth still to come, and so it probably shouldn't surprise too much that it feels like we've read it all before. That's not to say he merely recycled the plot of another book to make this one, because he didn't. What he did was to take elements from a whole slew of his novels and combine them into this new one, not unlike the approach he took in 'The Pluto Pact'.

Talking of 'The Pluto Pact', we start out with Bemerra, a historical monster like Balzur in that book, who is similarly caught and killed to put an end to his murderous activities, but who similarly ends his life by cursing the locale, a curse that abides down the years until we show back up to see how it affects the modern day story that comprises the bulk of the book. Smith does vary his prologue, because we initially view Bemerra through the eyes of an innocent young girl, Isobel Mainwaring, who has befriended him, but his motives become clear when he gets to the pool in a quarry, which brings not only the titular location in 'The Sucking Pit' to mind but the deep pools in 'Entombed' as well.

Fast-forward to the modern day and there are modern-day city folk moving to the country, as they tend to do in most Smith books. This time, it's Ron and Marie Halestrom, who have bought a place with history, just like Martyn Hamilton in 'Deathbell'; but they're more reminiscent of the Foggs in 'The Lurkers', because, like Peter Fogg, Ron Halestrom is a new author, who wrote a book that had unexpected success as a bestseller and so is being asked by his publisher to write another. Also, like Janie Fogg, Marie Halestrom is a mouse who can't deal with the bad things that happen around them and so wants to leave as soon as is humanly possible.

They have a daughter, Amanda, who's deaf, more so than Rowena Catlin in 'Manitou Doll' who had been modelled on Smith's own daughter, Rowan. When she arrives, a little later than her parents because she's been away at a special boarding school', she befriends a local deaf-mute, reminding of Donald Hughes in 'Deathbell' but clearly patterned on Bemerra as an overt avatar in the eyes of superstitious locals. Initially, Amanda, is just as a daughter, but she grows as a character as the book runs on. She has quite the showdown with Beguildy in chapter seven, establishing dominance over him. She later picks up vibrations, goes on a quest to destroy the evil and, by the third act, is very possibly able to converse with the dead. She's an interesting character.

Of course, the Halestroms have bought a place, Gabor Hall, which includes Gabor Wood, home to the Gabor Pool, the blackwater-filled quarry in which Bemerra drowned his victims, so his ancient evil has tainted it. That's why people die there, like Eddie Reece, son of gameekeper John Reece, who works for the Major, a neighbour of the Halestroms who lives for dogs and shooting, just like the Foggs' neighbour in 'The Lurkers'. Eddie unwisely sneaks over to the Gabor Pool to fish and he is drawn into it by its ancient evil. The evocative front cover by Steven Crisp depicts the pool, with the skeletons that lurk within it enticing others to join them.

There are other characters here, too, to render the plot a little more complex and to help feed that ancient evil. There's a group of travellers who have arrived on neighbouring land, though Smith is keen to point out that these are modern day lowlifes rather than true Romanies, for whom he has much respect. There's also a holiday home for problem youth, Longlea Cottage, at which a social worker, Phil Barron, attempts to keep some sort of control.

He fails pretty miserably because they stone Beguildy's cottage, so he sets fire to their front door in response, at which point they blame the travellers and head over there with massive violence in mind, sparking a scene that firmly reminds of the biker brawl in 'Manitou Doll'. No unborn babies die this time, but there is a kid hit with a nailed board that sticks in his skull and Sean O'Brien dies before they burn the place. It isn't pretty and it sets a number of characters onto deadly paths the book needs to feed the story.

So, yeah, this is relatively derivative for Smith, who treated it somewhat like a scrapbook, taking parts from a slew of his other novels to combine in a new order here. It plays well enough and I'm happy to say that I enjoyed my revisit of this novel after a few decades, but it doesn't do anything special in the way that most of those source books did. 'Deathbell' especially was wildly original, a completely new vision in the vibrant British horror scene of the day and 'Entombed' benefitted in large part from a thoroughly original location. 'Manitou Doll' did much that stands out from the crowd too. Even 'The Lurkers', which wasn't really horror at all but more of a thriller, found a new angle for Smith within his larger body of work. This doesn't and it suffers a little for that.

To be fair, if anyone found this one first and it served as their introduction to Smith's work, then it does its job fine. There's nothing wrong with it and it has some fascinating aspects, not least the deaf daughter who may be compensating for the loss of one of her senses through the addition of another that we don't have. The Gabor Pool is an evocative location for continued death and the attack on the travellers' campsite is brutal, especially when we consider that none of the Longlea Cottage  who are doing such awful things are far younger than they should be. In isolation, there's quite a lot here to impress a new Guy N. Smith reader. It's only if you're a confirmed fan and you've worked through his earlier books already that it's going to seem derivative.

That may be one reason why it was never reprinted in the UK, while Smith's next book, which I will happily tackle next month, did get a second opportunity for sales when Arrow started to reprint a chunk of Smith's work, starting in the late eighties. That's 'Accursed' and it's another novel from Smith that sprang from a fascinating item of local history that he wrote about in articles. See you then! ~~ Hal C F Astell

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