THE LOCH NESS STORY

by Nicholas Witchell
238 pages, Corgi Books

Review by Pat Black

The Loch Ness Monster: one of the strongest creatures in the world. Able to carry an entire tourist industry on its humpfy back.

Yes, with a little bit of sunlight on the way and Britain’s hard-working politicians weighing up what to do with their enormous summer break, silly season will soon be upon us. That used to mean news stories featuring the elusive beast in the title – a large animal that breaches the surface of Scotland’s Loch Ness every now and again, startling a surprisingly large number of guest house owners. Sometimes, a picture would be involved – always grainy, out-of-focus, indistinct. Something that could be a monster.  

Nowadays, there are far fewer Nessie stories in the papers, but some tabloid reporters and editors still bite whenever a leaping fish, a rotten tree stump, a gaseous belch from the depths or even a jobbie makes for a convincing enough page 5 photo. The mystery endures.

Nicholas Witchell is a familiar face from BBC news. Incredibly ginger, he is now in the pre-retirement holding pen for many a distinguished journalist, otherwise known as “royal correspondent”. While he follows Wills, Harry, Kate, Charles and Camilla around on various junkets both at home and abroad, it’s easy to forget that he was a very big deal in the newsroom throughout the 1980s and 90s, anchoring prime-time bulletins and breaking stories. Indeed, he was one of the first reporters to confirm the news of Diana’s death in Paris. He has pissed off the Prince of Wales on occasion, so he is doing something right. At the very least he is holding true to George Orwell’s famous definition of good journalism: publishing material another person doesn’t want you to read.

Does the Loch Ness Monster believe in Nicholas Witchell? Maybe we’ll never know, but he’s probably one of the most well-known, and credible, Nessie hunters. This edition of his book, The Loch Ness Story, was printed in 1989, but it’s a revision of the book Witchell first wrote in the early 1970s when he was still in his teens. In reading through the early chapters, I was struck by the young Witchell’s romantic zeal, his desperation to turn up evidence of the legendary water horse. One summer during his undergraduate years, Witchell simply pitched up at Loch Ness, near the ruins of Castle Urquhart – a key location for Nessie-spotting – built a hut, and stayed there for the whole summer.

Now, we don’t know if that hut included proper toilet and washing facilities, and it may be wise to draw a discreet veil – or rather, a good quality acrylic curtain – over that side of the Loch Ness story. But what a brilliant endeavour! What balls! “I’m going up to Scotland to find Nessie, mum. I’ll be back in September.” Barely out of his teens, Witchell was soon taking part in subsequent scientific inquiries, as well as presenting talks on the creature, arguing in favour of there being an unknown family of animals in the peaty soup of Britain’s deepest inland body of water.

Witchell was a believer, and apart from a few good-natured jabs at Nessie photo fails of the past, the book is a sober attempt to gather facts, examine witness statements and engage in serious discussion over what the animal known as the Loch Ness Monster could be.

It’s lovely that he managed to get a book out of it and set his career up. But I do wonder what Nicholas Witchell thinks about Nessie now. In the book, he speaks of the epiphany of seeing for the first time the famous “Surgeon’s photograph” of 1934. You’ve almost certainly seen it: an uncharacteristically clear shot of a long-necked creature, moving serenely through the water. I used to feel the same as Witchell about that photo. In fact, as a boy I used it as incontrovertible proof that there was a monster in Loch Ness, flashing my copy of Usborne’s World of Unknown Monsters at scoffers and naysayers. “Look, it’s there, I tell ye! There’s a photo! How can you argue with that?”

Except of course, it seems that the photo was a hoax. Just a toy submarine, with a clay sculpture stuck on top. There is a grim, unintentional irony in reading Witchell’s rebuttals to sceptics, using this photo as a foundation stone for his conviction that Nessie exists.

Hey, for what it’s worth, Nicholas, I was gutted when I found out. There’s a part of me still in denial. “Well, the surgeon never said it was a fake when he was alive! You can’t prove it was a hoax! He may have had enemies whose offspring wanted to discredit him!”

Similarly, I find it difficult to get cynical about a number of other canonical pieces of photographic evidence – Robert Rines’ “flipper” photograph of the 1970s, or the equally famous Tim Dinsdale film footage. As part of Operation Deepscan in 1987, there were strange results taken from sonar sweeps of the loch, seeming to prove that there is something swimming around down there, “bigger than a shark, smaller than a whale”. Although Witchell comes across as no-one’s fool, and he is quick to point out and ridicule the more blatant frauds and hoaxes, we now have to wonder about the provenance of the more plausible manifestations of the creature. You can fake a photo. That’s for sure.

Although Witchell details the downright contempt of many members of the scientific community towards the search for Nessie, there were some who took up cudgels for the monster-hunters’ cause. Gerard Durrell and Sir Peter Scott provide forewords to this book, while the last word is left to zoologist Denys W. Tucker, who points out that the French naturalist Pierre Denys de Montfort was ridiculed by his 19^th century peers for publishing papers on the existence of giant squid. Tucker hypothesises that the creature is some form of plesiosaurus, alive and well in the present day – an idea that still makes its way into picture books and movies about the creature.

The coelacanth analogy is drawn, which Tucker himself professed to be a little tired of even in the 1970s. “Hey, a coelacanth was thought to be extinct – but they found one! So why not a plesiosaurus?” runs the common argument. But a coelacanth is a fish, living in the ocean, where it is more easily concealed. Admittedly it was a fantastic find, a zoological bombshell. But if you want to look at another prehistoric fish which has survived to the present day almost unchanged by evolution, look at a shark. In fact, if you want to see a living prehistoric reptile, look at a crocodile. Flies, spiders and snakes haven’t changed their design much over the millennia, either. The commonplace notion of a species surviving over the ages more or less unchanged doesn’t quite fit the extraordinary circumstances necessary to support the idea of a large, lake-dwelling dinosaur still alive and well in Scotland.

The book’s a quick, entertaining jaunt, but the anecdotes are repetitive. There’s only so many ways you can inject a bit of excitement into the Nth description that goes something like: “There was a big splash, and then a long neck appeared in the water, followed by two or three humps. Then it was gone. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

To Witchell’s credit, he does wonder whether this points to there being a creature in the water which looks exactly as described, or whether it’s a form of confirmation bias (or autosuggestion, to borrow his diagnosis). In other words, you see a splash, a wake or indeed an object in the water, and because you’re so desperate to see a monster… well, you see a monster.

I should dearly like to own the painting which this book takes for its cover. It shows two “Nessies” just beneath the surface of the loch. There are long necks and giraffe-like heads topped with little space bopper-style protuberances. The creatures are benign, bovine. You’d swear one of them has an enigmatic wee smile on its face. The Monster Lisa?

They don’t look as if they’d eat you. Apart from Ferocious-Ness in The Family Ness, Nessie is often depicted as an unusually mild monster – and it’s usually referred to as a “she”. Terms of endearment. And maternal, too – a baby Nessie is often shown alongside a mummy Nessie. The Nessie myth must be among the most beloved in the world.

It’s curious that the story is only really 80 years old. We know of Saint Columba’s brush with the monster in Loch Ness in 565AD, but he’s not the first saint to have been mythologised as having defeated some kind of serpent. There is bugger all else about Nessie until 1933, when a road was constructed along the shores of the loch. Soon, reports about some strange animal in the water began to flood in. Then came the game-changer; the Surgeon’s photograph. From there, the national press got involved, and the rest is history.

How ironic, then, that just as the explosion of photography in the popular press made the myth, the ubiquity of mobile phones has almost killed it. Ditto ghosts, Bigfoot and UFOs. Surely if these things appeared in real life, then they’d be documented all the time? If I saw Nessie tomorrow I could have crystal clear video footage and photography at the instant – and my phone ain’t all that. Thanks to technological advances, it’s actually harder to take one of those classic grainy page 5 tabloid photos than a nice clean, clear picture - unless you’ve got an App which dirties it up for you. In fact, there’s probably a “Nessiefier” which inserts the beast into any body of water you like.  

Our stories and myths are a necessary sacrifice before the altar of truth, rationality and progress, but… You know, there’s a wee bit of me that enjoys tall tales, irrationality and mythology. Witchell hits the nail on the head early on in the book when he points out that we need a little bit of mystery, intrigue or plain amusement to make our simple, unspectacular and sometimes boring lives that bit more bearable. I’m not sure if Witchell’s hut is still there on the shores of Loch Ness, or whether he – like a number of other people – still spends a lot of his spare time poised by the water, camera at the ready, hoping to find conclusive proof of Nessie’s existence. I’m hoping to go to Loch Ness soon. And you can bet I’ll be on the lookout. Even if the most cynical person in the world saw something breaching in Loch Ness, their camera would be clickin’.

The waters are still murky enough to support the legend. We don’t know exactly how deep the loch goes, or what’s in there. It’s hard to survey and study adequately. The water is impenetrably dark with peat, so visibility is practically nil. Some research has pointed towards the existence of vast caves, and there’s a suggestion that the loch was connected to the sea until very recently in geological terms. There is no proper explanation for those sonar results and scans which do point to some unidentified, large creature patrolling the depths. Perhaps the explosion in tourism in the region in the past 80 years with its boatloads of monster hunters has scared the beastie back into the depths? There’s still much that we don’t know. And hey – the Highlands is a wonderful place to visit, monster or no monster. The scenery is so beautiful that you might take your eye off the surface of the water, for that one crucial moment…

I was a passionate believer in the Loch Ness Monster when I was a wee boy. Well, time hardens our hearts, and tightens the cogs of our minds. But even now, the closest you’ll get to outright scepticism from me on the question of whether or not there’s a monster in Loch Ness is a shrug of the shoulders and a “who knows?”

But I know, and you know, there probably isn’t a Nessie.

Unless it’s a type of giant eel. Or a sturgeon. Or an oarfish. Because unknown species of fish have been found in Loch Ness before.

And while the Surgeon’s photograph may be discredited, I’d point you towards a less well-known image, taken by a man called PA Macnab in the summer of 1955. It shows Castle Urquhart near Drumnadrochit, and the composition is suspiciously discrete, but…

Well. If the image is undoctored, then I don’t know what the hell that thing in the water is. 

Who knows? 

TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO

by Philip José Farmer
448 pages, Tor Books

Review by Hereward L.M. Proops

There are some books that are so utterly unique, so totally unlike anything else, that you can't help but be bowled over by the sheer imaginative scope of the author. Tolkien's “The Lord of the Rings” and Frank Herbert's “Dune” are two works that instantly spring to mind as great examples of fantastic world-building and epic storytelling. Such books have grown so popular that they have outgrown their cult status and moved into the mainstream.

Philip José Farmer might not be a household name but his series of “Riverworld” novels are, for me, the epitome of cult science fiction. Conceptually, the setting of Riverworld is utterly bonkers. Every single person that has ever lived on Earth, all 37 billion of them, are simultaneously reincarnated on the banks of an enormous river. The River is an estimated 26 million miles long and is bordered on both sides of the river-valley by an impassable mountain range. The reincarnated humans wake up, naked and hairless and without the slightest idea of what is going on. Each person has a “grail”, a metallic container that, when placed on one of the massive mushroom-shaped “grailstones” that are found along the riverbank at intervals of a mile, provide the resurrectee with food, alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and the hallucinogenic dreamgum. Regardless of how old the adult was when they died, all are resurrected aged twenty-five in perfect physical health. Those who died as children are resurrected as such, then age as normal until they reach twenty-five when the aging process halts. Women can no longer bear children, thus reducing sexual intercourse to a purely pleasurable, social activity. Death on Riverworld is not permanent. Those who die find themselves resurrected at a random location somewhere along the enormous river the next day.

With all of humanity at large on the banks of the River, Farmer is able to play with an eclectic cast of characters. There's Alice Liddell Hargreaves, a Victorian lady who was Lewis Carroll's inspiration for “Alice in Wonderland”; Kazz, a surprisingly amiable neanderthal; Monat Grrautut, an alien being who died on Earth in the early twenty-first century and was inadvertently responsible for the death of all living creatures on the planet; and Peter Jairus Frigate, a twentieth-century man who serves as an avatar for the author himself (just look at his initials!). The main protagonist is Victorian explorer and translator of “Arabian Nights”, Richard Francis Burton. His thirst for adventure has not diminished in his new life and Burton single-mindedly seeks the source of the River in the hope that it will lead him to the mysterious beings responsible for the vast sociological experiment that is Riverworld. Burton, you see, knows something that the other resurrectees don't... He woke up in the pre-resurrection phase and caught a glimpse of the vast otherworldly technology behind-the-scenes. This sneaky glimpse behind-the-curtain is not enough for a man like Burton. He demands to know who or what is behind Riverworld and why they have created it. The Ethicals, as the mysterious beings become known, are an elusive bunch and whilst Burton is occasionally aided by a secretive hooded figure, we learn very little of them in the course of the novel.

“To Your Scattered Bodies Go” is an audacious work of fiction. It is a great introduction to the strange new world but many will feel frustrated by the lack of resolution at the end of the novel. Far more questions are raised than are answered and whilst Burton makes a start on his journey to the source of the River, he doesn't get anywhere close to his destination. Being the first part in a series of books, it is clear that Farmer has something planned for later on in the series, but as a stand-alone novel, the book feels a little incomplete. Of course, Farmer's devotees will say that telling a complete story is not the author's intention. Rather, “To Your Scattered Bodies Go” seeks to plunge the reader headlong into a strange, fantastic setting of seemingly limitless possibilities. The setting of Riverworld gives Farmer free reign to indulge his imagination. The main antagonist of the novel is dastardly Nazi war-criminal Hermann Göring and Farmer seems to take great pleasure in repeatedly killing and reincarnating the hapless villain. Similarly, Farmer uses the open-ended setting as a means to explore a huge number of different themes. Philosophy, primitivism, sex, politics, religion, race – it's hard to think of a theme that Farmer doesn't at least touch upon. Ultimately, “To Your Scattered Bodies Go” is about humanity's desire to answer the big question - “Why am I here?” Farmer might not provide his characters or the reader with an answer, but he will take them on a journey like no other in the process.

I will be returning to “Riverworld” very soon...

Hereward L.M. Proops

ORWELL: THE LIFE

by DJ Taylor
470 pages, Vintage

Review by Pat Black

George Orwell would have hated this book.

Let’s imagine for a moment that you were famous. And let’s imagine that at some stage, someone would be sufficiently interested in you to write a biography. Could you handle the fact that investigators would uncover absolutely every single detail about you? Every love letter you wrote, every romantic entanglement you ever enjoyed, every feud you ever had at work, every bitchy email you ever sent, every falling out you experienced with a family member, every painful break-up? 

I feel sure that George Orwell would have loathed this forensic examination. To say he was a private person is putting it mildly. Orwell was a closed book even to some of his closest friends. DJ Taylor’s Orwell: The Life has its work cut out.

George Orwell gave very little away, and Taylor notes that he was always paranoid about being followed or spied upon, that his business was being poked into. In the many book reviews he left us, he repeatedly insists that the artist and their art should be seen as separate things. That being the case, this biography of him would have been anathema, although he might have smiled at the irony of the man who conjured the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four having his life dissected in such a brutal manner.

The book looks at Orwell’s family background as landed gentry on the way down in the modern world. It also examines those intriguing paradoxes about the great author which informed his sense of injustice later in life. He wasn’t quite the full English breakfast. Part of the establishment, and yet always against the grain. As English as they come, and yet born abroad as part of Britain’s colonial past, with the sun still to set on the empire. Posh, with a plummy accent that demanded a response from peer, prince and pauper alike, and yet from a family of relatively modest means and ever-reducing circumstances. He was a product of private schools, including the most famous of them all – Eton – and yet he had an inveterate contempt for that world and its perpetuation of that most basic fraud in society: that we are not all born equal. And later, despite his enthusiasm for examining poverty and squalor, there’s the fact that he hated dirt, sweat and grime, and couldn’t let go of his horror of it.

George Orwell was a tricky character to sketch. The main characteristic that comes through from the testimony of friends, family and colleagues is that he was aloof and reserved – hardly promising material.

Orwell’s schooldays, particularly his short-trousered years at St Cyprian’s (so brutally described in the classic essay “Such, Such Were The Joys”), pinpoint a few new things with a view towards his life and development as a writer. Was Orwell’s preparatory school as bad as he makes out? There are many who disagreed with that vision of hell staffed by obsequious, snobby sociopaths. Some alumni thought the dragon wife of the headmaster was a lovely lady and kept in touch with her until she died. But that’s the British class system for you – there are people in the upper tier who have a thing for matron, and still more who have a thing for being caned. Witness that ghastly clique who found Margaret Thatcher attractive.      

As for later schooldays, we have the surprising revelation that Orwell had crushes on his fellow boys – or at least, that’s the deduction we are forced to make when we hear about Orwell confessing himself to be “quite gone” on one of the younger lads in a note to a friend. Again, we can perhaps find an explanation for this in the fact that boys and girls were educated separately in these bastions of British high society. It’s a bit like prison – herd a load of horny lads in the one place and deprive them of female company for long enough, then they are at least going to consider having sex with each other. Taylor is quick to point out that we “shouldn’t be quick to make assumptions” about Orwell’s sexuality. It’s maybe just the old hormones going mad. Teenage kicks, so hard to beat.

Mostly, though, Orwell’s schooldays leave us with an impression of an able, but easily bored scholar with one eye out of the window. Orwell did well in his younger days, winning recognition for his poetry and hitting the top of the class for many subjects, before going into reverse at Eton. In this I can see the seeds of dissent, of ennui with education and the system he was operating in. You wonder at the mind that was racing away behind that inscrutable face, the worlds going on outside the schoolroom window while Orwell’s tutors (and these might have included MR James at the time) waffled on about Latin.

Liked school? You’ll love work. Orwell picked up whatever certificates he had to upon leaving that breeding ground for Britain’s champions and buggered off to Burma to work in the colonial police service, following in his father’s footsteps. Here’s where things get murky; although Orwell produced some of his most compelling early work as a result of his time unleashed in the east, there’s little record of what he was doing or who he was doing it with between the ages of 19 and 24. Interesting years for anyone.

We might wonder at the percolation involved in his writing, particularly the inspiration behind Burmese Days, but there is little in the way of facts. Taylor hints that certain sections of that novel point towards the possibility of Orwell having taken far eastern mistresses. But there’s no record of what he got up to in his salad days; Taylor is forced to admit it is supposition. One interesting episode recounted by a student at the time involves Orwell being heckled by a crowd after he whacked a Burmese boy with a stick. This harried white man’s act of violent suppression and summary punishment is a manifestation of the very worst police states in the world. This interesting idea that Orwell had a violent streak, being fond of, literally, wielding a big stick, is one Taylor returns to.

Food for thought, too, in the gestation of two of Orwell’s finest essays – “A Hanging” and “Shooting An Elephant”. Like the Loch Ness Monster, people badly want to believe that Orwell attended that poor bugger’s last drop, and that he actually Swiss-cheesed the elephant. But there is some doubt. 

Out of the two, it’s more likely Orwell witnessed “A Hanging”. Although Orwell was not required to attend executions in his capacity as a policeman, it is entirely possible he would have done, although there is little reference to it anywhere else in his work. As for the more “Hollywood” piece, newspapers of the time recount an incident in Burma in which a British policeman shot a rampaging elephant which had killed someone, but the man with the gun was not identified as Orwell.

It could be that he did something billions of storytellers have done throughout history: he took an incident he heard about, and put his own spin on it.

Orwell, who suffered from TB as a child and never quite had his health in order from that day forward, soon found the stifling atmosphere of the tropics too much and returned to England aged 24. A vague notion of “being a writer” emerged, much to his parents’ disappointment. Now we see the slow metamorphosis of Eric Blair into George Orwell. 

For a seemingly dull character few people took a shine to, Orwell was not risk averse. He happily lived as a tramp to collect material for the book which would become Down and Out in Paris and London, even going so far as to attempt to get arrested. Many would point out that Orwell could end his experiment on the grubbier side of the street any time he chose. But he certainly enjoyed the devil-may-care sensation of leaping into assignments, that headlong plunge into the unknown. Indeed, my favourite parts of this book were the ones where Orwell submits to mad urges and compulsions. It seems to get to the heart of English eccentricity, as we understand it from comic novels of the Edwardian era. A very sudden shedding of dignity and sobriety; the carefree abandon of the streaker on the sports field, taking a lap of honour. 

This is almost literally the case when Orwell, overcome by the beauty of a body of water on one fine day, gets his kit off and goes for a swim. This unfortunately draws a large crowd of people, perhaps believing that the swimmer had meant to do himself in. And so Orwell is forced to “act natural”, and keeps swimming back and forth until they go away. Taylor carefully notes that letters from this period indicate that Orwell was very unhappy, although the episode would seem to be comic in flavour, rather than tragic.

In fact there are many scenes where Orwell is ridiculous, particularly in his dealings with women. The younger Orwell seems to have been the classic hopeless romantic – the ladies’ man who couldn’t get too many ladies. There are a couple of rejected marriage suits, but also some interesting affairs. Curiously, for such a staid, unsmiling fellow, Orwell was something of a cuckoo in the nest. Taylor uncovers a letter from Mabel Fierz, a literary champion of Orwell’s and a married woman, in which she refers to him as her lover. Orwell also has a longstanding affair with Eleanor Jacques, even when she is betrothed to her future husband. These episodes have the elements of tragedy, especially in the case of Jacques, who chose another man over Orwell, and they must have caused him some pain. But comedy ensues when our hero is caught having a sniff around another engaged woman by her fiancé. The bold George has to take to his heels through the fields when this man tries to run him down on a motorbike. Orwell spoke up in defence of low humour, particularly Donald McGill’s saucy seaside postcards, so it’s not a total incongruence to have his life suddenly take on the tones of The Benny Hill Show.

Lakes, meadows and fields – whether run through in fear of his life or not - always feature heavily in Orwell’s writing, and there is plenty of evidence to back up the idea of Orwell being keen on al fresco lovin’. Part of this is a question of access, I suppose – it wasn’t an easy or socially acceptable thing to bring girls back to lodging houses in those days. So the most obvious alternative would have been to take your lady out for some “fresh air”. Orwell was bucolic by nature and a love of animals and things that grow always features in his essays and novels. Many surviving letters indicate that this pastoral pleasure extended to outdoor frolics with his lovers. It sounds like it was his kinda trash. There’s a corner of some foreign field that will be forever England, with George Orwell’s skinny arse bobbling around on top of it.

See what I mean? His long bones are picked clean. In the abstract, Orwell has gravitas. But when we sharpen the focus, he is a clown. This is true for us all.

Orwell’s early struggles in print are well documented. There’s the familiar misery of the author yet to establish himself – desperate to write; forced into desultory, and sometimes menial work to make ends meet; and tortured by the lack of time to dedicate to his craft. Same as it ever was.

Although Orwell thought most of his literary endeavours to be a failure, Taylor points out that he did make it to print before he was 30, and continued to publish throughout his life before writing novels that “literally changed the way people think”. All told, it wasn’t a bad literary innings, just not a spectacular one, until the end of his life. One curiosity which Taylor points out is that, in the lead-up to the Second World War, Orwell was active during a very fortunate point in British literary history. The population was literate at a level never before attained, and television was at a zygotic stage, with the wireless the only thing running interference on the printed word’s supremacy. While Orwell knew the odd rejection, it seems to have been a much simpler matter to reach print back then compared to now. Publishing was flourishing, in high places and low; books, magazines, periodicals, penny dreadfuls and pamphlets were sold everywhere. If you had some ability, all you had to do was bait your hook – and you didn’t need to wait long for a bite.

The construction of his often-overlooked early novels and their implications are also delved into by Taylor, who is never short of an intriguing theory or two. In Flory, Comstock and the Clergyman’s Daughter we get a much sharper picture of Orwell’s actual life at the time of writing - as opposed to his ideas, illustrated in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Time and again we see the idea of a lost England, and of pathetic individuals struggling with the business of real life in the face of hopeless artistic endeavours. George was damned hard on himself at times.

Orwell finally met a longed-for other half in Eileen O’Shaughnessy, a girl from the north-east of England with a university degree. She caught his eye during a party thrown by his landlady in 1935, during the time he was working in a Hampstead bookshop. Orwell’s keen eyes kindled. “That’s the kind of girl I’d like to marry,” he confessed to a friend.

After a typically clumsy Orwellian suit, the pair were wed in 1936. Eileen, to me, is the most intriguing figure in the whole book. A good looking lass, she was evidently more than Orwell’s match intellectually and was his great champion until the end of her life. But her story is a sad one. She suffered the loss of a beloved brother in the early days of the Second World War, which plunged her into a morass of despair. Then came the ultimate tragedy of her own death, at just 39, on the operating table during a hysterectomy. Until they adopted their son Richard, just prior to this, the pair were childless – Orwell feared he was sterile, but it appears that she had health issues of her own which may have stopped the couple from conceiving. She is an intriguing figure and a major part of Orwell’s development as a writer.

Their marriage was dedicated, though not quite conventional. Orwell, who got much better at womanising as he got older, certainly enjoyed several affairs. Eileen knew about one of the other women for sure, and suspected several more. Letters survive between Orwell and girls he either bedded or tried to, and in one of them he implores: “Be clever and burn this, would you?” Lord, I can almost hear his skeleton grinding its teeth at his secrets being uncovered.

During a sabbatical in Morocco, paid for by an anonymous literary benefactor, it seems Orwell was obsessed by the young prostitutes he encountered there - so much so that Eileen apparently “agreed to let him have one”. The evidence for this is merely anecdotal, but it points to the pair having a very open, and I am tempted to say modern, attitude towards sex within and without marriage. Or, that George had his cake and ate it.

Eileen gave as good as she got. Her story features a fascinating “enigma”, as Taylor puts it, in the shape of Georges Kopp, a member of the Republican army and the Marxist POUM, who took Orwell under his wing when he signed up to fight the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Eileen volunteered to help the Republicans alongside her husband, and certainly spent some time alongside Kopp while Orwell was on the front lines. Kopp, who comes across as a character right out of the pages of the Boys’ Own papers the young Orwell adored, clearly dazzled her. Letters uncovered subsequent to the publication of this book seem to confirm that they were more than just friendly. Orwell must have suspected something, but the two men were close. When Kopp was arrested, Orwell risked his life to try to get him released.

It’s fair to say everything Orwell subsequently wrote and stood for emerged as a result of his experiences fighting Franco. Taylor notes Orwell’s occasional belligerence and his enjoyment of military discipline and authority, seeded no doubt in Eton and flowering in the Burmese military police. His enthusiasm for the training ground, drills and good order was quickly spotted, and he was promoted to the head of a small unit on the Aragon front. There, he saw some of the action he longed for, poking some poor bastard in the backside with a bayonet and then blowing a sniper to bits with a grenade. His courage is unquestioned; there are independent accounts of Orwell strolling casually through heavy fire, and at one point he risks his life to take cover alongside a group of other men, forsaking better cover in order to stand with his comrades.

This nostril-flaring, get-right-in-about-them mad bastard of war isn’t quite the George Orwell we think we know. There is no doubt that while the author deplored warfare, he did love to fight. Perhaps Orwell’s issue was not fighting itself, but having something to fight for.

It was this cavalier attitude that would place him in harm’s way. Back on duty on the Aragon front in 1937, he risked a cigarette, his six-foot-plus frame poking out above a barrier built for much smaller Spanish men. It was too tempting a target for one sharpshooter, and Orwell came within millimetres of death after a bullet went through his throat.

Orwell finally had his war stories, but it’s arguable that the mental scarring he suffered in Barcelona had the greater effect on his writing. One thing that left me bored to tears when I read Homage To Catalonia as a younger man was Orwell’s forensic examination of the various political factions fighting for supremacy within the Republican cause. The sides and sects become a blur of acronyms, a string of letters arranged by a child. If you’re confused reading about it, then you can bet it was baffling for a soldier who had signed up to fight as part of this chaotic jumble of left-wing ideology and internecine squabbling.

It was here that Orwell’s paranoia was given full, terrifying rein. Although Orwell had a few close calls from sniper fire during tense street-fighting in Barcelona (he failed to take on some very basic lessons), these are not as scary as the moment when Eileen joins him in a hotel lobby, smiles, and whispers in his ear, “Get out.” This may have saved Orwell’s life, with anti-Trotskyite agitators prowling the corridors on the lookout for his uniform as they spoke. The POUM, who Orwell fought for, soon found itself denounced as being in league with the Fascists, a bare-faced lie born of political expediency. Their members were imprisoned (including the dashing Kopp) or summarily executed, and the Orwells only just got out in time.

Small wonder the Republicans failed; but Orwell, who read in newspapers some absolute fictions about which side he was on, gained a long-lasting impression about how easily a lie can be promulgated through propaganda and malevolent, mischievous misinformation.

Another conflict was already brewing by the time Orwell returned to England, of course. His poor lungs saw him declared unfit for active duty when Hitler came a-knocking on Britain’s door, but he did see service in the Home Guard and at the BBC – the radio days leaving us with some of the few surviving photographs of Orwell, though no recordings of his voice exist. After Homage To Catalonia came out, his literary output was restricted during wartime to essays and journalism. Having the misfortune to move to London for work just as the Blitz began, Orwell saw at first hand the devastation modern warfare could wreak on great cities, getting close enough to a dropped bomb to blacken his face with soot, while another wrecked his and Eileen’s flat.

He also experienced the camaraderie that can survive among the people even in the most testing of times. Although large chunks of London were turned to rubble by the Luftwaffe, Orwell was struck by the survival of a communal spirit, even among people huddled together in the Tube at night, their homes bombed out. It’s not too much of a leap to imagine these scenes transposed onto Winston Smith, as he wanders through the shattered city among the proles.

After the war, fame did at last arrive for Orwell with the publication of Animal Farm, but Eileen was not destined to see it. She wrote one half-finished letter to George, who was away in Germany for The Observer, then underwent surgery for tumours in her ovaries. She did not come out of the anaesthetic. 

George was shattered, but after the initial shockwave, he reacted with customary stoicism and threw himself back into work. And doors were, finally, beginning to open for him. One ancillary tragedy was that Animal Farm was just around the corner; Orwell struggled to find a publisher at first, but when it finally appeared it was a literary sensation. Orwell, in his forties, had made it. All the years of struggle and penury were finally paying off, and he could take up the life of a full-time writer without money worries, and with a child to raise, too. Eileen not being there to see it is the most hideous irony.

Once the money came in, Orwell pursued a long-cherished dream to move to Jura in order to write. A certain sense of disliking Scotland (he uses that detestable, Johnsonian epithet, “the Scotch” in his writing) is detectable in his earlier pieces, but Orwell did later admit that this was due to his well-heeled school colleagues boasting about summering in primeval estates up in the Highlands. Odd, then, that he should seek to do the same thing as soon as he came by some money. But Barnhill offered no pleasure cruises or fairytale castles; although his summers were pleasant, he was isolated, and far removed from literary life in London. You get the sense that Orwell needed that bit of austerity, that sense of adversity around him, to produce his best work. And he did: Nineteen Eighty-Four resulted, and Orwell’s fame was set.

Not that he had long to enjoy it. There’s time for one more farcical Orwell story, when he misreads tidal charts and shipwrecks himself, his son, niece and nephew near the Corryvreckan whirlpool, then a quickfire wedding to Sonia Brownell after a series of disastrous, pathetic pleas for marriage with other women – then he’s out. Orwell’s treacherous lungs finally did for him, aged just 46, in January 1950, with his literary stock at its absolute zenith.

Lovers of his work can only dream of what an ageing Orwell might have made of the Cold War, or the global supremacy of the United States, or the social changes of the 1960s – George was up for a bit of free love, there’s not the slightest doubt of that. The clash between his intrinsically conservative English sense of dignity and fair play and his more freewheeling, impulsive side would have become more acute as he reached old age with social certainties crumbling all around him.

Queen Elizabeth II was known to have a copy of Animal Farm, and I do see a knighthood for George; I also see him accepting it, bowing gracefully before the sword, still rake thin, hair still full and thick, but snow white. Alas, it’s just a dream. 

DJ Taylor’s command of his material is absolute, and I have to take my hat off to the sheer amount of work turning this book out must have entailed. On top of the deep-core mining of Orwell’s life, professional output, personal papers and all the interlocking reminiscences, writings and letters about him, Taylor also furnishes us with a series of fascinating vignettes giving us more of a flavour of his character and appearance – taking in Orwell’s face; Orwell’s voice; Orwell’s failure.

Taylor even gamely takes “the opposite view”, and writes a mini-essay excoriating the writer’s life, work and political outlook, a prime piece of devil’s advocacy. Orwell: The Life is no hagiography, always in perfect critical equilibrium.

It’s to Taylor’s credit, and Orwell’s, that my opinion of George did not change between opening this book and closing it. Along with Claire Tomalin’s biography of Pepys, which appeared the year before, this is one of the key works of the noughties, with no nits to pick. Awesome.

THE FAT CHEF

by Fredrik Nath
314 pages, Fingerpress

Guest Review by Greta van der Rol

"The Fat Chef" is, at its heart, a love story, set amid the turbulence of war. It's a not uncommon theme but the author has chosen as his protagonist a most unlikely hero. Raoul Verney is the head chef at the Metro hotel in occupied Paris in WW2. And (as the name of the book suggests) he is fat to the point of being obese. He also has many of the insecurities of a man who has been overweight from boyhood. He was bullied, laughed at. But he could cook – very, very well. Cuisine is his anchor, the rock on which he secures his identity.

When the Germans occupy Paris, Raoul’s fairly comfortable life becomes rocky. Natalie, a demi-sous chef in his kitchen and the the secret object of his affection, is Jewish. She and others of the staff are targeted by the SS. Indeed, the Metro hotel itself is under the direct scrutiny of HauptSturmFuhrer Schiller. When his staff begin to disappear, Raoul decides to hide those under threat in the hotel, and in the vast cellars underneath. It's a dangerous game and when Schiller discovers Natalie in the kitchens, Raoul kills the German with a frying pan.

I confess it took me a few chapters to become engrossed in this novel. It's not filled with action-packed excitement. The introduction of a flashback halfway through chapter one to explain Raoul's bullied background didn't help the flow of the narrative. However, I persevered and I'm glad I did as Raoul goes through a gradual metamorphosis. He discovers that Natalie, the love of his life, loves him, too. She becomes the focus of all his actions from then on. He will risk anything for her, even murder.

What's lovely about this book is the way Nath maps the changing relationships between people, all driven by the twisted reality of trying to survive in an occupied city. Raoul is very close to becoming friends with German General Mueller, who appreciates food almost as much as Raoul does. Then there's chef Marek, who doesn't appreciate Raoul's approach to the Germans, seeing the head chef as a collaborator. Marcel is an out-and-out partisan, who just wants to kill Germans. Raoul's neighbour, Lebeuf, is a school teacher – but when he's sacked from his job he finds a new talent.

As does Raoul himself. He sustains fugitives in the hotel with skill, and protects his staff from the Germans, while his love affair with Natalie grows. Raoul often finds himself in a quandary, trying to decide what is right against what is possible. Those choices ramp up, starting as almost civil disobedience toward the Germans, then gradually becoming more and more dangerous for Raoul himself. When he kills Schiller, Raoul's life becomes much more precarious as he tries to hide his deadly secret. For him, his murder of Schiller is a shameful sin, even though he can argue that he had no choice. There are a number of unexpected twists in the narrative which took me by surprise.

Through all of this there is food. Nath describes the cuisine and how it is cooked. I'm not a chef, but I was convinced. Then there’s the wines, wonderful vintages piled high in the Metro's cellars. Every chapter starts with a foodee definition from the Larousse Gastronomique, underlining what it is that gives meaning to Raoul's existence, and giving the story a solid basis of authenticity. Taste, touch, smells and weather all have their place to make this a sensory journey, as well.

As mentioned earlier, I could have done without the flashbacks. One later in the novel, in particular, seemed to me out of place, throwing me out of the story to work out why this part was here. And I confess to wondering about some of Raoul's actions late in the story, on the lines of would he not have learned by now?

All in all, it's a great read. I studied Nazi Germany at university and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a novel that portrays life in Paris under the Nazis quite so vividly.

 

HERO IN THE SHADOWS

by David Gemmell
407 pages, Del Rey

Review by Hereward L.M. Proops

When a book has a character called Eldicar Manushan, it's a safe bet that it isn't going to be a work of literary fiction. Say it again... Eldicar Manushan. It rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? It is an undeniably silly name and one that is perfectly suited to an undeniably silly fantasy novel. “Hero in the Shadows” is the third and final instalment in the series of novels about the dour assassin Waylander. Like all good fantasy sequels, this novel is ludicrously overblown and spectacularly silly. Barely pronounceable names abound, demons from other dimensions cause bloody havoc and moody anti-heroes face terrible odds. It's all pretty generic stuff that doesn't stretch the boundaries of the genre. This isn't to say that “Hero in the Shadows” isn't a highly enjoyable read. David Gemmell's works of heroic fantasy might not be original but they are readable, fast-paced and, most importantly, very good fun.

Whilst David Gemmell ended “Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf” with the possibility of Waylander's death, “Hero in the Shadows” finds him very much alive and kicking. Thanks to some canny investments, Waylander is now fantastically wealthy and living as a successful merchant in the lands of Kydor. Known to the locals as The Grey Man, Waylander's reclusive life is comfortable and dull. Of course, this sedate existence would make a pretty tedious novel so it's a good job that Gemmell decides to introduce some dimension-hopping demons to spice up proceedings. Naturally, Waylander can't sit back and watch his lands being ravaged by the demon-horde so he slips back into his black-leather breeches and dusts off his throwing knives and trusty double-crossbow.

He's not alone on this adventure. Waylander is accompanied by Keeva Taliana, a beautiful serving-girl who, like Waylander, has a talent for killing. Other than looking good in leather leggings and being able to put up a good fight, Keeva isn't a terribly well-rounded character and one gets the impression that a lot of her story found itself excised during the editing process. A stronger female character comes in the form of Ustarte, a psychic tiger-human hybrid warrior-priestess who hops across dimensions to aid Waylander in his fight against the demons. Then there's Kysumu and Yu Yu Liang. Kysumu is a Rajnee swordsman, a samurai-esque figure who is as deadly with a blade as he is boring. Yu Yu is an arrogant ditch-digger who acquires a Rajnee sword and insists on tagging along with Kysumu in search of fame and glory. Yu Yu's hedonistic ways and boundless enthusiasm provide welcome comic-relief in a story that, despite its inter-dimensional demons and psychic tiger-human hybrids, does seem to take itself a bit too seriously at times.

 “Hero in the Shadows” is enjoyable enough and fans of David Gemmell or heroic fantasy will find a lot to like here. However, by setting the novel outside the well-established lands of the Drenai, the story lacks the epic touch of the other books in the sprawling Drenai saga. The novel deals with the standard Gemmell themes of redemption and heroism against unbelievable odds but an over-reliance on whizz-bang magic means that it does lack the human element that helps the readers feel connected to the characters. That said, if you're looking for totally plausible characterisation, you'd be better off moving out of the fantasy section in your local bookstore.

Hereward L.M. Proops

MEG:

A Novel of Deep Terror
by Steve Alten
421 pages, Apelles

Review by Hereward L.M. Proops

I saw a movie last year called “Ninja Assassin”. It was full of flashy special effects, gratuitous violence and, of course, ninjas. In the opening sequence a man has his face sliced in half and the ending has SWAT police armed with assault rifles raiding a ninja temple in the mountains. It was utter crap but if I was ten years old, I'd probably think it was the greatest movie ever made.

I feel the same way about Steve Alten's “Meg”. Alten's bonkers best-seller caused quite a stir when it was first released in 1997. The movie rights were quickly snapped up and a number of sequels have enjoyed similar success. Interestingly, the movie has been stranded in development hell and the rights to the adaptation have changed hands numerous times. From the moment I picked up the tattered paperback copy of “Meg” I knew that if nothing else, I was going to be entertained. Any book that opens with a T-Rex fighting a giant shark is going to get my inner-geek ludicrously excited.

For those who don't know, “Meg” is about a Megalodon, a breed of enormous prehistoric shark that has evaded extinction by hiding out deep in the Mariana trench. When one of the monster sharks makes its way out of the deep waters into the Pacific Ocean, it's up to disgraced Navy submarine-pilot Jonas Taylor to track it down. Taylor's own career hit the skids years previously when a dive into the trench went disastrously wrong and led to the death of two colleagues. His account of the giant shark he spotted deep in the trench was dismissed by his superiors as a hallucination. Jonas spent the subsequent years researching the giant sharks at the expense of both his credibility and his marriage. This knowledge comes in pretty handy when the sixty-foot fishy emerges from the depths.

Anyone with the slightest grasp of storytelling can guess where the story goes from here. Of course, readers don't pick up a book about a rampaging giant shark looking for a complex narrative. There's plenty of bloodshed and nautical mayhem to keep ten year old readers entertained. Whales are ripped apart, yachts are snacked upon and there is a particularly silly sequence involving a surfer riding a wave whilst the Megalodon snaps at his heels. It's clear to see why the studios were keen to buy the movie rights before the book even hit the shelves. However, as one moves from predictable set-piece to predictable set-piece it becomes apparent why production of the movie kept getting stalled. There's very little in this novel that we haven't seen before both on page and on the silver screen. Naturally, comparisons are going to be made with Peter Benchley's “Jaws” and the cinematic incarnations of the legendary Great White shark. Alten's functional storytelling lacks the undercurrent of tension and horror that made Benchley's novel so memorable and the one-dimensional characterisation means that we never really care for Alten's protagonists in the same way we do for the bickering crew of the Orca in Spielberg's classic movie.

I did enjoy “Meg” whilst it lasted and I saw the story through to the end. Sadly, not even the fantastically silly climax inside the shark's digestive tract was able to salvage the novel from being anything other than an amusing distraction. When all is said and done, “Meg” might well aim to be a high-concept blockbuster but it is sadly lacking in bite.

Hereward L.M. Proops

VIRULENT BLURB: FRACTURES

by Kneel Downe
275 pages, Lulu

Review by Marc Nash

Kneel Downe is a wor(l)d builder. A fractured, fleeting world like viewing through a spectroscope. But a rich one all the same. It put me in mind of Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities", as if refracted through a Jeff Noonian sphere. Indeed Downe acknowledges Noon's influence on the "Blurb" world.

'Virulent', a multi-faceted word that contains notions of virus, of infection, of poison, of spite and malignancy. But this book is all about the transmission of words, like a virus, the spread of an infectious creativity and imagination that gladly smears the willing reader and conducts us into the Blurb world. But it is a fractured one. For the book is made up of different sections, loosely and thematically linked through Detective Kurt Lobo and the nature of the sentient life in this futurescape.

After the single lined prologue that appears to conduct us into the dreams and visions of Joshua Knight, we enter the introduction to a future/alternative world in which Joshua's technology "births a new age" through the drug ReGen. The next part of the book takes us through the various physiological and psychological "Phazes" of the transformation brought about by use of the drug. This is where Downe's skill with language comes to the fore. Compact 140 character what- passages, bulletins, blurbs? populate this section of the book. (Yes, this section evolved via Twitter). Evocative, rhythmic pulses of language, echoing song titles and lyrics and probably fragments of literature too. The language is both skintight and sumptuous to the mind's eye, a world conjured through words, but not the sentence running on after sentence of conventional description you might be familiar with. The compact rhythm drives the pace, yields the tension of each passage, the word choices, the imagery and the assonances fuel the pleasure of luxuriating in language itself.

The next section is "History", equally fractured and fragmented, but giving tantalising glimpses into some of the spaces in between the world of the Phazes. But then comes my favourite section, three narratives involving Detective Lobo written in the style of film scripts. Lobo moves through the ReGen world in suitably noir fashion, encountering his fellow citizens who are all gene spliced with the animal of their choice as they determine their own external appearance according to their self-image. Everyone in this world is pursuing their hedonistic pleasure, while desperately clinging on to life itself. Downe ramps up the threat and menace as new foes are on the trail of Lobo and the third script ends with Lobo surrounded on all sides by enemies terrestrial and supernatural in the Police Station, much like an "Assault on Precinct 13" scenario. And this was my only disappointment with the book, that Downe leaves me hanging not knowing the outcome, which is instead to be resolved in the next instalment of the Blurb. Downe certainly knows how to create an instant devotee, these scripts are just supremely well written and draw you fully into their world.

The final section, the "Fractures Three" is a hilarious psychological interrogation of various super-heroes and villains under the auspices of the Police. None are terribly co-operative, and Downe is playing with the idea of just how conscious of their powers and super-being these folk are, together with that split between the ordinary mortal self and that of the almost demi-god enabled by their powers. More of this as well to come in the future I hope.

 

So surrender yourself to the world built by Kneel Downe, Virulent Blurb: Fractures. A fractured world to be sure, but one erected on weighty linguistic and ideational foundations. Kneel down at the creative forge of Kneel Downe.

NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF

by Guy N Smith
178 pages, Black Hill Books

Review by Pat Black

The lights are out, the candles are lit… and out comes the cheese board. What a moment. Whether guest or host, no matter how full up you feel from your meal, you can’t stay away from that cheese. And why should you? A little bit of what you fancy, and all that. Go on, just a little corner. That’s it.

I shouldn’t say we’re fans of Guy N Smith on Booksquawk, exactly, but we’ve given him a fair crack of the whip. Mr Proops has very kindly gone through the British pulp horror stalwart’s Crabs series for you lucky people. That’s right – actual giant crabs, which can click you in half with their claws before sucking up your guts like chow mein.

Night of the Werewolf is my intro to the world of Smith’s novels, and to be fair, I had been warned. Although my esteemed colleague can’t seem to stay away from Smith’s work, he is entirely up-front that it’s crap. I was expecting a bit of fun, a bloody romp – no harm in a bit of cheese, is there? And it is that. But there’s an added bit of interest owing to the fact that this book is a “lost” novel of Smith’s. Originally published in Germany in 1976, it’s only now coming to light, as Smith’s titles are given a new lease of death on Kindle.

The first couple of pages are one in the eye for “show, not tell” bores. We meet Odell, a Van Helsing-esque monster hunter keeping a lookout for our titular lycanthrope in the middle of a forest, on the first night of the full moon. We are told that this guy has 20 years’ experience in the monster-hunting business, and is in south-west Scotland to take out a werewolf who has killed a few sheep before tomatoing a luckless shepherd.

You could see how other writers might have weaved this info into a more gently-unfolding plot, like good little novelists are supposed to. But I admire Smith’s braggadocio. Here’s the story, here’s what Odell’s up to, this is where he is and what he’s after - and stuff your subtlety. No time is wasted: this is the essence of economy.

Now that I’ve placed that feather in Smith’s cap, I have the unpleasant duty of telling you that Night of the Werewolf is astoundingly crap. It doesn’t fail because it’s cheese, or because its subject matter is low and its thrills come cheap – there’s nothing wrong with any of these things now and again (especially the cheese). But when you seek to unlace all frilliness and complexity, leaving the story completely bare, and that story defies logic and common sense, then your book is in big trouble and may in fact be crap.

First of all, the tale robs us of suspense, because Odell knows exactly who the town werewolf is. Everyone knows who the town werewolf is, in fact. There’s not even a hunt involved, or any detective work. The wolfman is an obnoxious, Bluto-esque town bully called Angus Broon. No-one thinks to phone the police or even the local dog-catcher about the fact that a blood-crazed beast lives on their doorstep, because they are all frightened of this mouth-breathing lummox. So everyone – including our monster-hunter - knows where this guy lives. Odell should knock the guy’s door and stick a silver bullet or two into his hirsute ass – but he doesn’t, because there would be no protection under law. Only when Broon’s in beast form can Odell carry out his work without any interference or comeback from the police.

Which is fair enough, but… Why not stake the house out? Maybe trail him until the moon rises, then wait for Mr Wolf to leave? While the creature double-checks he’s locked the door with his hairy, clawed hands, BOOM. “What time is it now, Mr Wolf? It’s banishment-from-whence-you-came time.” Job done, off to the pub, curtains, applause, roses.

But no, Odell packs up and goes to his room, puts his feet up, has a cup of tea. He puts himself at great risk by waiting in a forest in the middle of the night for the beast to show, keeping his gleaming, custom-made firearms to hand. I began to wonder if Odell is not very good, or just plain crap. His shooters may be custom but his aim is strictly jumble sale. He misses his shot on the first night and lets the wolf get away, after which it will presumably return to Angus Broon’s house to detransmogrify. Remember, Odell knows where he lives. Bad luck, eh? Try again tomorrow, maybe?

Odell further demonstrates his crapnicity when the other major characters enter the scene – freelance journalist Ron Hamilton and his German fiancée, Ingrid. They’re enjoying a short break back in the town where Ingrid grew up. The werewolf in the title remembers Ingrid full well, as she spurned his advances when they were younger. And so, in a strange colloid of King Kong and Grosse Point Blank, Angus the werewolf decides he is going to have the lovely Ingrid, whether she wants him or not. Odell and Hamilton seek to protect this damsel in distress from… What? Rape? Ingestion? A pleasing blend of both? You get the idea.

Odell gets his crap on several more times, missing his shot at the hotel where the couple are staying after Broon gets in a fist-fight with Ron. Later, in a supposed safe house, he literally falls asleep on the job, allowing Ingrid to get up and wander out to the shops, alone – as you would, when a gore-guzzling supernatural lustmonster is after you - whereupon she is captured. The two men search the woods for Broon, but the canny shape-shifter doubles back to the house they’re staying in before stealing and sabotaging the weapons Odell has left behind.

It struck me that the entire situation could have been avoided had Odell not been involved. Broon might have carried on molesting sheep. On nights of the full moon, people could have stayed in, locked their doors, shut the curtains, listened to Foster and Allen. Or, you know, called the cops. But the situation could be manageable. As any reporter who has worked that patch will tell you, sheep rustling is big business in the Scottish Borders – so what’s one or two wee lambie-lambs per month as a bit of run-off?

And as for the tourist couple sucked into the plot… There’s always the option of leaving. Even though the bold Broon wrecks their car, and presumably every mechanic in the area has a Krypton factor of fuck all, they could always book a taxi. Or catch a bus. “Hunting a werewolf are you, Mr Odell? A ferocious man-eating beast? Well, why don’t we leave you to it?”

I think this sense of plausibility – quite separate from verisimilitude – is the key test for any piece of fiction or drama. If the story makes sense on its own terms and follows its own rules (unless you are wilfully breaking them for aesthetic reasons, you old rogue), then you’ve nothing to worry about. We’ll buy it. But break that covenant between plausibility, structure and technique, and the result is almost always crap.

The thing which bothers me here is that you can see how a far better novel would have resulted with a quick redraft. Do away with the character of Broon altogether; maybe Odell is the only one who knows a werewolf is on the prowl, being a hunter of these creatures. Make him track the wolfman or woman down. And instead of making Odell crap, you could make him cool. Sort of like Quint in Jaws, but less bonkers, or like Stephen Sommers’ movie version of Van Helsing, but without the whole enterprise seeming like an ADHD teenager’s acid nightmare.

But Smith somehow makes a balls of it. It’s sloppy plotting. Wrong from the start, like that last Batman movie. You wonder if this was a first draft, written in a week, rattled off to the printers and pinged out to hit a deadline.

There is blood and death, surprisingly horrible stuff. It’s curious to note the first few killings aren’t at the claws of a wolfman, but are carried out at knifepoint by Broon in his nine-five guise. Two killings in particular are extremely nasty. Night of the Werewolf is a daft affair with histrionic Hammer horror film dialogue, but when the death comes down, it’s grim. You have to credit Smith for that.

Another tip of the hat for setting. His fictional town of Glencaple is supposed to be in south-west Scotland, and although the wild places around there are less hilly than you might expect, they are heavily forested. And it's one of the best spots in Britain to enjoy a night sky free from light pollution. Werewolves I don't know about, but you can see sparrows flocking there in their hypnotic patterns, especially around this time of year. Add a big bright moon to those diamond-speckled skies over the head of the soughing pines, and that's a wonderful setting.

Although his villagers are thicker than wolfshit, Smith also avoids taking us a wee trip down Brigadoon with bonnie Morag and the misty blue hills. There are no caricature Scots speaking Jocklish – a stumbling block for many far superior writers who try to write in the Scots vernacular without the slightest idea or experience of what they’re talking about.

Looking forward to the dirty bits? Bad luck. No sex please, we're wolfish. There's no naughtiness in this one, but I understand Smith's novels are usually quite racy. This was par for the course for such tomes back in the 1970s and 1980s. There was certainly an appetite for blood, sex and death, given sales figures for horror writing. This fertile period for authors of dark fiction is called the "horror boom". There are theories that the genre's popularity in these times owed something to economic strife, political upheavals and the ever-present threat of nuclear warfare. The thinking goes that there was some societal need for horror, perhaps to blind us to the more banal evils stalking the corridors of Westminster and Washington.
There's a bit of truth in that - but if so, where are the great horror novels of the 2010s? We're in an absolute mess in the west, domestically, economically and geopolitically. Going by the "horror boom" theory, there should be an avalanche of scary books on the bestseller lists. But I can't think of any groundbreaking novels or breakout writers in recent years - certainly no-one to compare to King or Herbert (RIP). Sure, Twilight is a monster, but I consider those to be primarily romance novels.

A more prosaic explanation is that people's thirst for horror, the macabre and the plain disgusting is being slaked by the internet. Think about the first thing you ever saw online that truly shocked or nauseated you. How can Guy N Smith's tale of Dick Dastardly wolfmen running around rooftops compare with the reality of warzones, snuff videos and the increasingly Lovecraftian world of extreme pornography? Night of the Werewolf is Scooby Doo in comparison.
Like the early Hammer films, Smith's werewolf is toothless in the modern world. But although our aged horrors may not quite be so scary or shocking any more, we are affectionate about them. Faces are ripped off, severed heads bounce down the road like coconuts and skulls are smashed like Easter eggs, but this book seems cute. Reading it is an escape from the real world of chaos, carnage, death and grief, not an embrace of it.

Many of Guy N Smith's books are available on Kindle at very low prices. They are mostly horror novels, but he had a good pop at other insalubrious genres - dirty truckers, crime, straight-up-and-down pornography. It must be heartening for the guy to have his books out there and available for people again. He was, and is, prolific. All that you can ask as an artist is for your work to survive.

I’ve given Smith a kicking here, but at the end of the day he’s a published, professional author with an extensive back catalogue, and I am not. For all my snark, if you’re looking for a bit of fun and a bloody romp, then this ticks the boxes. It’s a cheap thrill. Smith’s precedent is in the pages of the penny dreadfuls, in Varney the Vampyre, or any number of killer titles from yesteryear.

His books are, above all, not meant to be taken seriously, so I guess this review was a failure from the start. Guy N Smith’s novels are not pretentious. They are not abstruse. And they are not, praise Cthulhu, ironic. They are an honest enterprise. This one in particular happens to be crap, but I had a fair idea this would be the case.

Will I be back?

‘Course I will.