Night of the Crabs

If you like Pertwee-era Doctor Who but feel all the “hapless British soldiers firing guns ineffectually at inhuman monstrosities” action would benefit from some awkward sex and bloody gore (as in “geysers of blood,” not “bloody good show”) then this is the book for you!

Click, click, clickety-click...The author,Guy N. Smith, wrote seven of these crab books. This is the first, published in 1976. The last, Killer Crabs: The Return, was published in 2012. Thats an impressive load of crab-oriented fiction.The book opens as a young couple go for a swim off the coast in Wales and, to their cost, encounter giant man-eating crabs. Professor Cliff Davenport, who was related to one of the youngsters, decides that the authorities are not taking the couple's disappearance seriously enough and decides he will investigate himself. It doesn't take long before he encounters the most cunning enemy the world has ever met. Nobody ever learns a thing about these crabs, except “guns don't work” and “they come out when the moon is full”. It's like a badly written B-movie in book form. It is undemanding and fun. A trashy, pulpy dumb book about big crabs. Smith knows the kind of book he is writing and keeps the pace brisk by wasting no time on minutia like plot, character development or dialogue. He does, however, leave room for healthy amounts of hokey, campy and corny and I spent much of the story with an ear to ear grin on my face. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and plan on reading at least one of the sequels to see if the magic can continue.Bottom-line, if the title, the cover and review above make you think you would like this, odds are you will!