Showing posts with label Guy N Smith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guy N Smith. Show all posts

Thursday, October 13, 2022

Sabat #3: Cannibal Cult


Sabat #3: Cannibal Cult
November, 1982  New English Library

This third volume of Sabat is easily my least favorite yet; Guy N. Smith seems determined to make us hate his (anti)hero Mark Sabat – but then, is it Mark Sabat for the majority of Cannibal Cult? As we’ll recall the schtick of this series is that Sabat, an ex-SAS commando turned roving occult-themed action hero, is half-possessed by the soul of his evil brother Quentin, and Quentin is always trying to completely take over Mark Sabat. This actually seems to happen in the third volume, meaning the “Sabat” who features in the narrative isn’t Mark but Quentin. 

Or is it? Smith plays some trickery by, as usual, referring to Sabat as “Sabat” in the narrative…but occasionally will even have Sabat himself wonder who he is, Mark or Quentin. It’s kind of annoying, and another indication of how Smith really wants to play up the “anti” in antihero. Because Mark Sabat himself is a creep, so it isn’t like he’s a white hat hero. Actually he’s a creep on the level of Justin Perry, with that same obsessiveness over sex and violence, particularly the mixing of the two. Forever Sabat is suffering from an “erection” at the worst of times, like even when sitting on a stakeout to kill someone who is stalking his latest female acquaintance. The dude is constantly thinking of the women he’s screwed, or just has sex in general in mind – especially sado-sex – or about the women he's screwed who have died. I mean this dude and Justin Perry could have a beer together. 

Another schtick of the series is not showing Sabat in the best light. I tag Sabat as men’s adventure, and Brad Mengel includes the series in Serial Vigilantes, but really it isn’t men’s adventure, because Sabat displays none of the qualities one would expect of a hero in this genre. He only acts when pushed, and even then it’s never in much of a heroic light. He carries around a .38 revolver (which of course just screams “ex-SAS commando”) but he seldom uses it, and the narrative is filled with asides where Sabat pep-talks himself into springing into action. Humorously, he often reminds himself of how he’s “killed before,” so I mean this guy isn’t the most action-prone of heroes. He’s even less action-prone in Cannibal Cult, getting in one fight in the middle of the book and then walking around the astral plane for the big climax. 

But back to Sabat not being shown in a good light; Sabat is introduced, in what is another schtick of the series, while masturbating in his bed. I mean seriously, this dude has jerked off in every volume. And of course he’s thinking about past lays, particularly with women who are now dead…oh, and er, there was that time when he was young and another guy took advantage of him, but let’s just pass that bit by. Oh and I forgot the real opening is about how Louis Nevillon, the “Beast of France,” has been guillotined in France, a serial killer with cannibalistic proclivities. Well anyway, Sabat’s worried that this guy might not really be dead, so of course Sabat starts jacking off…then he feels dark forces assail him…then he passes out…and he wakes up several days later in the hospital, having collapsed from a sudden and magically-transmitted bout of the flu. Does this dude know how to play with himself or what?! 

I show the original NEL covers in my reviews, but I’m actually reading the Sabat novels in the Dead Meat anthology, published in the US by Creation Books in 1996. This trade paperback is littered with so many typos, misprints, and errors that even a Leisure or Belmont-Tower copyeditor in the ‘70s would’ve been embarrassed. Cannibal Cult suffers from the worst yet, with a chunk of the story missing – not sure how much, but Sabat insists he leave the hospital, starts walking in France or something, and next thing we know he’s talking to a young lady named Madeleine who claims to recognize Sabat from the stories about him in the paper. How much of the novel is missing here I don’t know, but Madeleine’s intro is certainly missing. It’s like a missing frame in a film. 

One thing Dead Meat does have going for it is it includes two Sabat short stories by Guy N. Smith; one of them, titled “Vampire Village,” is referenced here in Cannibal Cult (and the story is placed before this volume in the anthology). Not sure if the story is also mentioned in the original NEL edition, but here in my book Madeleine has read about Sabat fighting a “village of vampires” in France and now she wants Sabat to help her, she being a super-hot beauty with “small breasts” who is “fresh out of a convent.” 

Of course this doesn’t prevent Madeleine from throwing herself at Sabat in the hotel; she makes a big deal out of his being circumcised, but surely that couldn’t have been such a big deal in Europe in the early 1980s. But hell who knows. The important thing is that, once again, Guy N. Smith delivers a sex scene that focuses more on Sabat than it does the girl, again (perhaps intentionally) lending the series a homoerotic tenor, what with the frequent jack-offery and the dwelling on death which leads to “erections.” Pretty much like Justin Perry: The Assassin. I mean Sabat and Justin Perry were pretty much made for each other. Anyway, again the sex scene isn’t too explicit, with stuff like, “suddenly [Sabat] was exploding violently.” Damn, sounds like he might end up in the hospital again! 

Here's where Sabat makes his sole kill; Madeleine claims that a bad man is following her, and Sabat sits out in the cold night waiting for this dude. Thinking about his recent tussles with Madeleine and getting “erections,” of course. Then when the stalker shows up in the shadowy forest, Sabat strikes and kills the guy…only thinking later that he might’ve been hoodwinked. Then Madeleine takes him to a place in the French countryside that’s filled, to Sabat’s dismay, with “hippies.” 

Only, as Sabat will soon learns – these aren’t just hippies, they’re hippie cannibals, man. Smith really piles on the lurid bullshit here with the cult basically insisting that Sabat join the fold…by serving him a special “meat” his first night here, and Sabat trying his damnest to place the unusual flavor of it. Of course, it turns out to be the flesh of a child, recently killed in a car crash, and now that Sabat has eaten human flesh he is “one” of the cult…and will do absolutely nothing but serve them for the remainder of the novel. For the cannibal stuff has unleashed Quentin, or something, and now “Sabat” is really Quentin Sabat. 

But like I mentioned this isn’t a men’s adventure series, not really. For yet another child is soon cooked up and eaten by the cult, this one a “mongol” who is abucted in the countryside. Sabat, seeing the frightened boy, consoles himself that “nothing can be done” to help, given that the kid is mentally retarded and doesn’t even realize the danger he’s in…indeed, killing him off and eating him will be “for the best!” That’s our hero, folks! But this time not only does Sabat again have to eat the cooked flesh, he’s also given the honors of slicing up the victim and serving the cult! 

But Smith isn’t done debasing his protagonist. Madeleine, who is revealed to be the consort of the Beast of France, now relishes Sabat’s lust, forcing him to “dine at the Y” until she’s satiated…and only giving herself to him once he’s at the bursting point. It’s all just so weird and unseemly, especially given the clinical “British” pulp style Guy N. Smith employs. Throughout Sabat does nothing heroic, and is sent around France like an errand boy for the cannibal cult, even at one point guarding the corpse of Nevillon, the Beast of France. The cult you see hopes to bring Nevillon back to life – by eating his flesh, so that his spirit will be reborn in all of them. 

Sabat’s so lame, it isn’t even him who stops the cult. First a French cop shows up, one who has been hunting the cult, but Sabat – whom the cult members believe now to be Quentin – has been ordered to kill him. Our hero struggles with whether he should help or harm this French cop, who happens to be an old acquaintance. And then in the finale, Sabat is possessed – for the second friggin’ time in the novel – by the spirit of an ancient “Witchfinder,” one who took down this cannibal cult in ancient times. Smith further amps up the supernatural horror element with Nevillon’s severed head magically rejoining the body, so the Beast of France truly walks the earth again. 

Really though, Cannibal Cult wasn’t much fun. The cannibal stuff was a bit too much, as was Smith’s insistence on making Sabat seem a fool. I mean this guy isn’t good for anything except playing with himself. Fortunately there was only one more volume. Actually I should’ve also read that “Vampire Village” story and reviewed it here, but I was so annoyed with Cannibal Cult that I couldn’t even be bothered with it, even though the story was only about 5 pages long.

Thursday, November 12, 2020

Sabat #2: The Blood Merchants


Sabat #2: The Blood Merchants, by Guy N. Smith 
May, 1982  New English Library 

So I pretty much forgot all about the Sabat series; it was over a decade ago that I read the first volume. Literally all I could remember about it was the part where the titular “hero” ran over some random pedestrian and chalked it up to the whims of fate. Oh, and I also seemed to recall a lot of self-pleasuring courtesy said hero. And pipe smoking. Other than that the first one was a blur, so I had to refer to my review to familiarize myself with this series, which ran for four volumes and attempted to meld men’s adventure with horror. 

There’s no indication how long after the first volume this one occurs, but Sabat does make passing mention to its events. Also, unless I’m mistaken, we have no indication where exactly this series occurs. Just somewhere in England is all I know. We do have a recurring character in Sgt. Clive McKay, a cop who was also in SAS with Sabat back in the day and who comes to him with any sort of “supernatural” situation the police have encountered. Such is the case this time; the book opens in true horror novel fashion with a sequence of one-off characters meeting their gory fates at the hands of skinhead punks – skinhead punks who seem to be vampires! But we do get a lot of stuff from the perspectives of these characters, most of them poor young women who are attacked out of the darkness by “sallow-faced punks” with “corpse-like appearances.” 

Meanwhile Sabat’s busy playing with himself. No joke, this is exactly what he’s doing when he gets the call from Sgt. McKay. Smith injects a bunch of “subtle” foreshadowing here, with Sabat thinking about the hot babe who got him kicked out of the SAS three years ago – Catronia, wife of Sabat’s commanding officer at the time. Catronia was into whips and chains and the like, and Sabat we’re reminded really gets off on that, and when his affair with the blonde torture artist was uncovered he was drummed right out of the SAS. All this backstory was relayed in the first volume, but here it’s really brought to the fore, to the point that even a first-time novel reader can see where it’s going. 

Sabat grudgingly postpones his self-pleasuring and ventures with McKay to the morgue, where he checks out a few apparent vampire victims. They’ve got drained blood, two dots on their throats, and everything. Sabat does what any other gung-ho men’s adventure hero would do: he calls up an old acquaintance, a “brothel keeper” in her early 50s named Ilona, and asks her to pose as pseudo-vampire bait. Ilona we are told is still pretty hot, and plus she too is into whips and chains and the like (indeed she even reminds Sabat of Catronia), and she and Sabat were an item at one time – not that anything comes of it in this particular installment. Instead Ilona waltzes around in the darkness of whatever the hell city this series takes place in, and Sabat scores on his first night out – one of the pseudo vampires swoops out of the darkness for Ilona, and Sabat just barely fights him off in time. 

Here we see that these aren’t real vampires; the punks all wield “syringe-guns.” They jam the sharp end into a victim’s throat and depress a plunger and the thing sucks out a few liters of blood. Sabat takes the captured punk back to Ilona’s S&M basement and proceeds to beat the shit out of him. Sabat we’ll recall has a definite dark side and gets off on the thought of killing his enemies. He at least gets the info that the punk and his brothers are all worshippers of Lilith, which freaks Sabat right out – Lilith being one of the darker entities, one with a fondness for human sacrifice. But this is pretty much all the punk will say, so Sabat gleefully kills him, using the bastard’s own syringe-gun on him. But this will be the extent of “action” in the novel, save for a part later where three more punks attack Sabat in his home, and he uses his fancy SAS combat training to wipe them out; he particularly likes this “uppercut from a crouched position” move. 

We soon learn that Sabat wasn’t exagerrating: the Disciples of Lilith are pretty evil. This is demonstrated in a horrific sequence in which a young woman finds her newborn baby is missing – and the Disciples of Lilith, assembled around Lilith herself, drink its blood! In addition the Disciples have taken over a fascist movement, and further they are led by a “New Fuhrer” who is in league with Lilith, the demoness here on Earth. Sabat gets the scoop on all this during an astral voyage (he makes several voyages to the astral plane this time), where he’s informed by various spirits that Lilith has possessed a human woman – perhaps a woman Sabat might even know. But our self-pleasuring hero isn’t very sharp, for despite being told this he doesn’t put two and two together…not even after he’s astrally transported to a house somewhere and looks inside and sees a hot blonde in stockings in there, and it’s none other than Catronia! 

But no, Sabat wakes up and, “for some reason” feels the urge to call Catronia up for the first time in three years. He does so, and she’s eager to see him, and it’s all Sabat can do to contain himself for the rest of the day. But at no point does he think back to that message he was conveyed in the astral realm and think to himself, “hmmm, maybe those spirits were trying to tell me something about Catronia!” Instead, he heads over to her place in blissful ignorance and engages her in one of those sex scenes where something seems to be happening but the prose isn’t very clear about what. And of course Sabat ends up in one of Catronia’s torture devices, where he is “shocked” to discover that – brace yourselves for this – Catronia is really Lilith! I mean who could’ve guessed it?? 

It gets worse, though, as Catronia is able to hypnotize Sabat, same as she has all her punk followers, and now he too is a Disciple of Lilith. It makes for a strange read when the hero of a “horror-action” novel is possessed…Sabat just sort of walks through the next few chapters in a daze, fully part of the left-hand path but otherwise still normal (comparitavely speaking). It makes for a weird narrative vibe as Sabat himself doesn’t see anything wrong…he still goes home, talks to McKay, and etc, but his soul belongs to Lilith. Even here he visits the astral realm in his sleep, and there’s a creepy part where he encounters the spirit of a murdered friend. Instead of offering solace Sabat spurns this person, pretty much saying this is what you get for fighting Lilith. Speaking of which, the goddess herself appears in this sequence, saving Sabat from some spirits that attack him for being a spawn of Lilith. 

After this Sabat is doubly indebted to Lilith, and reports willfully to Catronia and the New Fuhrer (who of course turns out to be Catronia’s husband, aka Sabat’s former SAS officer). Even as the Disciples begin to raise bloody hell around the globe, our hero does nothing. True to form, he only becomes heroic when his own ass is on the line. This happens in an otherwise goofy bit where some punk tries to assassinate Sabat – a punk who was sent out earlier in the book to kill Sabat, and hasn’t gotten the memo that Sabat’s now one of Lilith’s followers. It all just seems like a Monty Python skit as this punk tries to kill Sabat, screaming that Lilith has ordered him to do so, and Sabat keeps screaming that those orders have been countermanded. Of course Sabat finally manages to save his hide, in the process coming free of Lilith’s mind control. Now finally Sabat as we know him is back. 

But really the series is more horror than’s men’s adventure; the final battle takes place almost entirely on the astral realm, or at least outside the physical realm, with Sabat launching off a series of spells that bind Catronia and her husband. Further, he summons a trio of angels who are dedicated to hunting down Lilith and disposing of her, and these three show up as police officers to round up Catronia at novel’s end. Sabat at least doles out a little physical punishment to Catronia’s husband, who we learn will ultimately spend the rest of his days in an insane asylum – crazy now that Lilith has left him. The punk Disciples all return to their former punk selves, save for the fact that they have no idea what these syringe guns are they’re holding. As for Catronia, we see her comeuppance in yet another trip to the astral realm, where Sabat sees that Lilith aka Catronia is to be chained and whipped for eternity. Indeed Sabat is asked to whip her himself as the novel concludes. 

Overall The Blood Merchants is a fairly fast-moving novel, filled with a lot of italicized narrative and one-off characters meeting their grisly fates. It also has that clinical tone you know and love from British pulp. I can’t say I enjoyed it more than the previous volume, mostly because I can’t remember the previous volume. But I’ll try to get to the next one a whole bunch sooner.

Monday, October 17, 2016

The Slime Beast


The Slime Beast, by Guy N. Smith
July, 1979  New English Library
(Original edition April, 1976)

Guy N. Smith delivers just the sort of creature feature horror novel I like – a breezy, fun, gore and sex-filled tale that doesn’t overstay its welcome. At 110 pages, The Slime Beast gets right to the good stuff, introducing its titular creature within the first few pages and jumping straight to the gore – that is, after Smith has treated us to a little sleaze. Indeed the novel disproves my blanket (mis)judgment of British pulp as being prudish in the sex department, as it’s actually a bit more explicit than many of its American counterparts. 

Smith seems to have taken The Creature From The Black Lagoon for inspiration, only ramping up the sex and sadism. Indeed the “Slime Beast” is basically described exactly like the Gill-Man, only with the added element of slime, which drips from the creature’s armor-like scales. Unlike the Gill-Man, this creature isn’t shy about killing, and doesn’t pine for any human women – though we do gradually learn the tidbit that it develops a taste for women’s breasts! At any rate it enjoys ripping its human prey apart, sucking out the guts, and then cracking open the skulls for a brain chaser. Smith isn’t shy with the gory details during the Slime Beast’s kills, though in true creature feature fashion the thing isn’t constantly on-screen (as it were).

Rather the focus goes to our human characters: Professor Lowson, a complete bastard of an archeologist who seeks the mythical hidden treasure of King John; Liz Beck, his sexy 22 year-old virginal niece; and Gavin Royle, a long-haired junior archeologist who serves here as Lowson’s sort-of apprentice. They’ve come to “The Wash,” aka the boggy “wilds of the East coast marshes,” to dig for King John’s treasure. This immediately affronts the locals, redneck yokels the lot of them; Lowson proves he isn’t your typical bookworm creature feature-type scientist when he flat-out punches one of the locals who comes to complain.

Smith as mentioned doesn’t waste time; the trio find the Slime Beast on their first night out, uncovering some strange metal buried in fresh mud and gradually digging up the slime-covered form of the creature. The smell is so bad that it causes them to puke (the two men even barf directly onto the Slime Beast, which I thought was funny). They figure the thing is dead and leave it there, Lowson sure that he can become rich and famous from this bizarre discovery. Liz by the way is the one who coins the name “Slime Beast,” which is my one problem with the novel; I think it should be the “Slime Creature.” I guess “beast” is more of a British thing. But as a red-blooded American, I think “creature” is a more accurate term for a reptillian monster…to me, “beast” denotes a shaggier, hairier sort of thing.

Despite being unettled by the discovery of the creature, Liz and Gavin still take the opportunity to zip their sleeping bags together and engage in some casual sex when Professor Lowson retires to his own room in the blockhouse they’re camping in. Here Smith shows that British pulp isn’t as prudish as I long assumed, with Gavin admiring Liz’s “small firm breasts” before getting on with the show: “Gently, very gently, he eased himself into her.” (“You’re not a virgin anymore,” he helpfully informs her.) Meanwhile during all the naughtiness the Slime Beast has awakened and is stalking around the Wash, initially trying to break into the blockhouse but turned back at the sight of fire thanks to a quick-thinking Gavin.

The monster’s first victim is a redneck bird-watcher who, the cops inform our heroes the next morning, was found “mutilated and dismembered.” The man’s guts and brains are gone, and there was a slime trail in the corpse’s wake, though strangely the slime disappeared in the sunlight. There’s no time-wasting with disbelieving cops and whatnot; posthaste we have angry locals storming the blockhouse, only to be scared off by a hunter named Mallard, who himself has seen the Slime Beast. 

One of the novel’s most memorable sequences has a topless Liz being chased by a horny, depraved Mallard, with the Slime Beast chasing after both of them. The sequence ends exactly as expected, with the Beast feasting on Mallard’s guts and brains in humorously graphic detail, a sickened Liz watching from behind the safety of some shrubs. Not that this trauma prevents more sex with Gavin that night! This time Liz insists that Gavin fully consumate the act and not just, uh, make a deposit on her thighs. (“Give it to me properly, Gavin, like every woman wants her man!”)

Smith doesn’t limit his horror sequences to a human perspective. We also have goofy, brief scenes from the perspectives of dogs and even geese, as the animals find themselves running afoul of the Slime Beast. The killing of the dog is seen by most of the townspeople, who watch from their windows as the Slime Beast stalks down the main street and rips the animal apart, feasting on its guts. They all open up on it with their hunting rifles, but the Slime Beast can’t be killed, it seems. Even when the Army is called in, the machine guns of the soldiers have little effect on the creature. 

Meanwhile Professor Lowson is determined to capture the Slime Beast. While Liz and Gavin head off to buy a “flame-gun,” Lowson gets himself some heavy netting from a fisherman and wades through the marshes each night, hoping to catch himself the Beast, which he figures to be from outer space. Throughout it all Smith delivers several effective horror fiction moments, from the traditional “going down into a darkened basement” bit to the Slime Beast ripping apart a man and a woman while they’re having a little outdoors sex (where the Slime Beast develops his taste for breasts, by the way).

Rather than a slam-bang finish with the Army coordinating an assault on the monster, Smith instead goes back to his three protagonists. Lowson succeeds in his goal of capturing the Beast, which is wounded, but this doesn’t work out so well for the professor. It’s up to Gavin and Liz to save the day with their flame-gun, and Smith doesn’t even waste any time with a lame wrap-up, ending the tale there. The book is for the most part just a streamlined bit of horror-pulp, and makes the reader realize how overwritten the vast majority of horror novels are.

Smith recently published a sequel, Spawn of the Slime Beast, which again features Gavin and Liz – and we learn that Liz really did get pregnant that night, as now the two of them, with their adult child, encounter a new Slime Beast in the present day. I think I’ll be seeking that book out for sure.

Here’s the first edition, which gives the Slime Beast more of a demonic appearance:


Thursday, October 14, 2010

Sabat #1: The Graveyard Vultures


Sabat #1: The Graveyard Vultures, by Guy N. Smith
May, 1982 New English Library

Here begin the adventures of Dr. Strange -- er, Mark Sabat, that is -- an astral-voyaging magician/former SAS ass-kicker who now works as a professional exorcist, fighting the legions of hell wherever he may. Oh, and he's possessed by the demonic soul of his brother Quentin!

Sabat even looks like Dr. Strange on the cover, but otherwise he bears no (prosecutionary) resemblance to the Marvel character. For one, he's a hell of a lot meaner -- Sabat comes close to being the most unheroic "hero" I've yet encountered in a men's adventure novel.

The "possessed by his evil brother" is one thing, but beyond that Sabat has his own issues: he was kicked out of the SAS for engaging in s&m sex with a superior officer's wife; due to speeding he runs over and kills an innocent pedestrian and brushes it off as "fate;" he suffers from such an overactive libido that he walks around with an erection after merely meeting a woman (and indeed he "pleasures himself" a handful of times during the course of the novel. Handful -- aren't I clever?).

The "Graveyard Vultures" in question are a coven of English-countryside devil worshippers who are digging up corpses for their black magic rites. In the process they've exhumed the corpse of a recently-dead girl, the bones of a century-dead black magician, and in general have sown much satanic mayhem, offering sacrifices of virgins and prostitutes. Sabat's called in by the Church to get to the bottom of it...and he'll take the job for the money, thank you very much.

But I'm jumping ahead; the novel itself opens with Sabat engaging in final battle with his corrupt brother Quentin, a black magician so consumed by evil that his body has gone skeletal. Quentin raises some corpses and Sabat fights them, but his lack of faith undermines him and Quentin basically wins; Sabat is only able to despatch him with his trusty service revolver, a leftover from his SAS days. But as a result Quentin is not vanquished and is able to reincarnate himself -- this time within the mind of Sabat.

The novel itself picks up an interminable length after that opening act of fratricide. Sabat, suffering from Quentin's countless taunts in his brain, arrives in the English countryside and researches the activities of these left hand-pathers. He avoids the cops, who themselves are investigating the exhumations and murders, and instead speaks with the local parishoner, an old man given to sucking noisly on his pipe. Actually, there's a whole lot of sucking going on in The Graveyard Vultures -- but not the trashy kind. No, I'm talking straight-up pipestem-sucking, which Guy N. Smith mentions in great detail several times, going on about the "gooey sucking" and other disgusting details, all of which caused my "Freudian Sense" to tingle into overdrive.

After checking out the local riffraff, nearly dying in a hotel fire caused by the coven, and masturbating a few times (umm...yeah), Sabat performs an exorcism on the chapel's graveyard. A psychic battle follows in which he defends himself against the coven's zombie demons, "raping" the woman in charge of them -- who it appears is a zombie herself in the psychic realm, meaning that our boy Sabat can chalk "necrophilia" off of his to-do list. But it's all an illusion, and Sabat comes to weathered but victorious. And now he knows for sure that said woman is involved with the coven: Miranda, a redheaded prostitute whom Sabat has seen about the village.

So what does Sabat do? Why, he pays her a housecall! But Miranda is happy to see him, and indeed comes on to Sabat with such vigor that soon enough he's stripped down, and, per her request, masturbating for her viewing pleasure. Sabat just can't get enough of himself, it appears. But it turns out Miranda's played him; she tries to kill Sabat with a knife. He stops her the only way he knows how -- impaling her with his own special little knife, which I guess is standard SAS training. After a good bit of lovin' Miranda is deprogrammed and reveals to Sabat that she's been forced into the coven; she'll be happy to help him defeat the bastards.

What follows is more sacrifice, demonic summonings, walk-ons from various voodoo gods, and our hero suffering from innumerable hard-ons (in between running over pedestrians, that is). And all the while his brother Quentin is there in his mind, taunting and berating him, which sort of reminded me of that old Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin movie All Of Me.

I've been familiar with his work for years but this is the first actual novel I've read of prolific UK pulpster Guy N. Smith. His writing is good, if a bit too pristine at times. I get a feeling of detachment from the narrative -- but then, this is something I've often noticed in UK trash fiction. This sort of spatial dissonance, as if the author wants to get down in the trash while at the same time ensuring he doesn't get dirty. I mean, for all of its many problems, you can't say that lurid trash like The Sharpshooter is afraid to go all the way into sordidness.

Sabat returned for three more adventures, plus two short stories, all of which were compiled in the 1996 omnibus Dead Meat.