While 1980's 'Thirst' was a notably depressing horror novel, what I described in my review of it as "proto-grimdark", its sequel eight years on is a textbook example of the streamlined Guy N. Smith novels of the mid to late eighties. Gone are the political touches of eco-horror, corporations hiding test results to foist deadly commercial products on the public, which could all go horribly wrong in a believable combination of unusual factors like truck driver Mel Timberley being thrown out onto the road at two in the morning, angry and frustrated, a perfect state to accidentally drive his full truck of deadly weedkiller into the water supply of the second largest city in the country.

In their place is pure country horror, the village of Bryn Gawr all cleaned up in the five years that have elapsed since the events of 'Thirst' but now isolated by weather just when the Thirst returns to rear its ugly pustulating head. It's winter in the Welsh hills and it's snowing heavily. We start as the villagers start to prepare for the worst, which at this point means an imminent power outage and the phones going down. They get that, of course, but they also get the Thirst, brought in by a trio of teenage poachers selling contaminated fish to Bert Evans at the Winking Trout.

For a while, each chapter revolves around a new lead, who brings a new perspective and deepens the broader story. In that, it's like 'Thirst', but these aren't introduced only to be killed off, so it's more like Smith's approach in 'Snakes'. However, this is emphatically a horror novel rather than a thriller, so some of them absolutely are killed off and the death toll quickly mounts. What's more, this unfolds a lot tighter than 'Snakes', these chapters gradually introducing further characters in the background who often take the spotlight later on.

So, chapter two follows PC Tony Crane on his rounds, the young policeman in charge in Bryn Gawr, who's written a letter of resignation but won't submit it until he's sure about his feelings for the new headmistress, Sonia Hughes. She's just a name for now, but she gets her own chapters soon enough. Chapter three is about Evan Allport, yet another Smith transplant from the city but one who actually makes that change successfully, his traditional leatherworking business making him accepted. However, his story introduces Dr. John Colebatch, who gains importance later and also enhances landlord Bert Evans, introduced in chapter one. And so on.

The deaths begin with Evan Allport, who isn't well when we first meet him. He's suffering from a rash and he's getting thirsty, a thirst that grows into anger and then murder. He kills his own son without ever realising who he is, shoving an awl through his eye into his brain. He also attacks his daughter Teresa, but she escapes to find PC Crane, who survives the madman when he slips on the ice and crushes his skull on the rock that wrecked Crane's police car. Clearly the Thirst is back, but it takes Harold McBannon to vomit up his own lungs and Dr. Colebatch's autopsy to be sure.

By this point, Bryn Gawr is firmly cut off from the outside world, with no power, no communication and no way out. That makes for a controlled location, in which the locals have to figure out what's causing the Thirst—which takes them longer than it arguably should—and try to survive everyone who's already succumbed. Given that the Winking Trout is the only pub in town and Evans is selling fish cheap, the number who succumb adds up quickly.

There's a lot here in a book that only just makes it past the hundred and fifty page mark, all of it unfolding with a very comfortable flow. This is textbook Smith from the era, arguably comparable to 'Abomination' in how effortlessly he can rain horror onto a single village. The setup is solid, the careful weaving of characters is strong and the gore is impressive. The setting is spot on with the backdrop of village community life highly accurate. I grew up in rural Yorkshire not the Welsh hills, but I recognise a lot of this: the characters, the reliance and the assholes, not to forget the people who run it all and the folk who merely think they do. It's a little more extreme here, but still true.

What's new is a notable overlay of kink, which is surprising given that there's not a heck of a lot of sex in this one. We learn that the village Karen and crazy cat lady, Edna Lupoff, was partly shaped by an encounter with a flasher at seventeen and a lesbian seduction ("it was not seduction, it was rape") by an authority figure, her building society boss, Ellen. Evans has been copping feels from his barmaid, Annie Stokes, for years, and the occasional kiss at Christmas, but he tries to rape her under the influence of the Thirst and she bludgeons him to death with a rolling pin, although this glorious moment of female empowerment is spoiled when she promptly attempts suicide in guilt of becoming a murderer.

The kinkiest moment arrives when the three poachers, already manifesting effects of the Thirst themselves, pop by the village school to take it out on McBannon, the old headmaster, forgetting that he's retired and not realising that he's already dead, one of their earliest victims. They find Sonia Hughes instead, twenty-eight and single, a perfect partner for PC Crane, who's also twenty-eight and recently divorced, but they think she'd be a perfect partner for them too. So they make her strip naked and cane them the way McBannon used to do. Not that he was naked, I must add. Then they tie her up but decide to find their real nemesis before coming back to gangrape her, not that they remember that after leaving. The Thirst is destroying their brains.

If that's my favourite sexual moment, given that there isn't any real sex in the book, my favourite gore moment has to be the Jack Russell massacre in the kitchen of the Winking Trout. Fido isn't a particularly peaceful dog at the best of times but animals can get the Thirst too and he goes wild for a while, which is glorious to read. Talking of animals and Thirst, Edna Lupoff is attacked by her own cats, who she foolishly fed trout from the pub.  And then there's... nah, you should dive into this to experience the madness for yourself.

I know that 'Thirst' is a common favourite from Smith's substantial output for fans, full as it is of unlikeable characters finding suitably horrible ends. However, I much prefer this sequel. Sure, it's shorter but it's also tighter and it really doesn't skimp on the death scenes. There's even time for a romantic angle, in and amongst the mayhem. Within the framework it sets, of a brutal disease of madness descending on an isolated village already suffering from the weather, it's pristine. It all works. I'd love to see a movie adaptation, but it would get compared to '30 Days of Night' and that's just not fair. This came out in 1987.

It makes me look forward to 'Demons' next month, because that's another sequel written seven years after its 1980 original, this time 'Deathbell'. However, I like 'Deathbell' notably more than 'Thirst' and I don't remember 'Demons' as being particularly strong. Maybe my memory is faulty. Let's find out in March! ~~ Hal C F Astell

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