Counting novels only, this arrived sixty books into Guy N. Smith's output and at the end of a run of twenty-five in a row that were pure horror. After this, he'd diversify into a variety of thrillers and animal stories for children, interspersed with horror, and with a western and a historical mystery on the horizon. Given all that, it feels like a summation of a slew of themes that he'd nurtured for almost all of his career. There's an ancient curse, bloodsports, animal rights protestors, poachers and, of course, animals on the rampage. We've encountered all these before across many novels, but they're thrown together in the blender that is 'Carnivore'.

The prologue looks at Jemmy Black and the Earls of Corby two hundred years ago. The elder Earl was a hunter and sportsman who led the pack against stags. He's gone now and his mad son takes the title. He's a vegetarian and an animal lover who believes that it's a sin to kill any of them for any reason. So he bans the killing of animals anywhere on his lands. If Jemmy Black was a starving serf under the elder Earl, everybody's that way under his younger successor. No culls weakens the herds and rats spread disease. Jemmy brings down a stag with his crossbow but he's caught. He's stripped and bound to a tree in icy December. He'll be dead by morning. And the Earl hurls out his curse, that anyone who kills animals on Corby land will also die.

Jumping forward to the present, Sir Thomas Corby is the last of his line and he's not doing well. A divorce and a stock market crash have cost him a million pounds and his investment in tourism has not paid off. Now he has to urgently sell the estate and when the market's down. The only offer is contingent on him lifting the two-hundred-year-old clause forbidding the killing of animals. That's because the buyer is John Broughton of the Broughton Safaris sporting agency. Sir Thomas has to agree because he has no choice and, if we're on board with the curse, it strikes him first for lifting it, even if skeptics will say he merely crashes after driving too fast in the rain.

As I'm sure you're expecting, he won't be the last victim of the Corby Curse, because Broughton's planning to turn the estate into a shoot. He brings in a gamekeeper called Gordon Shank and they plan everything that needs to be done to make the place viable for sport after two centuries with nothing. They know their stuff and Smith certainly did too, so it's all utterly believable. Really the only detail they neglected to factor in is the Corby Curse, because of course it's nonsense, right?

Well, the locals don't think so and, the longer that Broughton has plans for the Corby estate and the longer this book runs on, the more goes horribly wrong and the larger the death toll gets. It's familiar ground for Smith, but he usually focuses on a single species at a time, with 'Abomination' the only real exception. However, that had a chemical trigger that deliberately grew insects to a biologically unsustainable size, merely failing to kill them off at the end of that. Here, it's a curse and it applies to all animal life, not just the insects.

The first to die is Peach, the poodle Broughton's wife Pamela buys and brings to the estate. That gets caught in a snare but it's killed by a badger and Smith reminds us that badgers never attack unless cornered. Lucy Titler, an animal lover in her seventies, is bitten by a donkey and an adder, the former her friend Major. Shank's son Gary, who's all about being a gamekeeper like his dad, is attacked by the pheasants that he's feeding. Part time keeper John Simpson is attacked by bees, a whole swarm of them. Adrian Roberts, his wife and three-month-old son, are eaten by a buzzard.

Pamela Broughton may get the worst of it because she keeps surviving. Everything attacks her in a few different incidents. One features spiders, bats, moths, a variety of insects, a badger, even a stag that charges her car. And they keep on coming, apparently remembering her. Both the stag and the badger return for another attempt later. It shouldn't count as a spoiler that she's taken down in the end, but it's ironically while she's leaving. She's had enough and she drives out of the estate to never return. And she doesn't, but not for the reason she intends.

Of course, the Curse, just in case we're in any doubt what's causing this, continues to escalate all the way through the book. Some of it could be minimised by suggesting that Smith brings in a list of new characters in new situations only to promptly kill them off before they get established. In one instance, I felt there was precedent, Brian Barker's attempt to fish on the estate stopped in its tracks by mink. That prompts Broughton to call in the dogs but the mink attacks them too, in a strong echo of the otter hounds brought in to track the titular creatures in 'Alligators' only three years earlier. The rest all feel new but firmly within Smith's traditional approach.

And, really, how you feel about that is going to seriously flavour how you respond to 'Carnivore'. If you see this as Smith just trawling over the same old ground one more time, then it's not going to be a great choice for you, especially if you've read a lot of his earlier novels. If you're new to what he does, then this is going to play much better, because this is comfortable ground for Smith that he's explored many times. He's the man when it comes to this sort of thing. And, even if you're an old school fan, there's still enjoyment to found because he opens the floodgates. His other novels about animals on the rampage, 'Abomination' excluded, are all about one species at a time. This is about all of them, meaning that there isn't a dull moment and every turn brings a new threat.

I'm firmly in the latter camp. I had a blast with 'Carnivore', however predictable it becomes once we've realised what the template is. To me, the only real negative side is the way it all wraps up. In a way, it's entirely appropriate because we get to certain points that were inevitable from the moment the prologue was over. However, it's an oddly calm ending given what's gone before and it's an oddly prosaic one given that everything, we assume, has been supernatural. Smith cheats us out of the karma we expect to find.

The only other note I'd throw out is that the very basis for the book seems rather surprising, if we know anything about Smith beyond his horror novels. He was a countryman and a sportsman and a gamekeeper and he wrote many non-fiction books on those topics. In another book, we might see him as being firmly on Broughton's side. Certainly, he has a healthy respect for the game that he's establishing on his estate. Sure, it's all there to be shot for money, but it also has to be conserved so that it's there to be shot. He doesn't mistreat animals. He wants them to thrive on his land so his business can thrive too. However, the curse sees him as the bad guy because of what he does. I was a little surprised at the moral purity in play.

Anyway, that's it for 'Carnivore' and for 1990. Next up, only two novels in 1991, a horror novel with copious amounts of dubious sex that I remember as edgier than anything he'd written before, and the first of the two 'John Mayo' thrillers I must have read when it came out but remember nothing at all about. That's 'The Black Fedora' and it's what I'll dive into next month. See you there. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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