Satan's Mate

by George Henry Smith

Cover copy reads: "He pursued them relentlessly..mad with lust, tormented by hate and savage desire!"

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Early novels were risque (with lurid covers), but later moved to writing science fiction.

Not to be confused with George O. Smith, another SF writer.

Also used the following psuedonyms:
Clancy O'Brien
George Hudson Smith
Jan Smith
Jerry Jason
Hal Stryker
Jan Hudson

BUT... not to be confused with Jan Hudson who wrote young adult novels, a female author from Canada. She wrote Sweetgrass and Dawn Rider and was born in 1954 in Calgary Alberta.

Reviews

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

A stranger comes to town and all hell breaks loose in the bayou. Fast-paced with plenty of action but it's all sound and fury signifying nothing. Narrative point-of-view is a mess. Randomly omniscient. One sentence is objective the next is free-indirect the next is in another head. And the heads we are in keep dying so it is on to the next and the next and the next. Eventually the POV settles down and we stick with the stranger to the end. Will he survive or won't he? Will he save the town from the evil big shot running things? Will the baying bloodhounds - you just knew there had to be bloodhounds tracking them through the swamp didn't you? - catch the stranger?

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I get similar satisfaction out of G. H. Smith's swampbilly pulp novel as I do from the mid-century hicksploitation B-movies I love dearly, so much so that it almost reads like an extension of such trashy melodramas as Shanty Tramp or Bayou. The violence is cruel, the sex is primal, and racism scars every page. The chapters are quick and the changes of narrator are quicker, often backtracking the story's timeline to get several characters' perspectives on the same events. The writing errs on the side of convenience but paints a vivid portrait of a seedy, backwater community and its pitiable inhabitants. Moderately recommended.