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Alligators
Four Animal Rights activists break into their local zoo and free all the alligators in the Reptile House. This turns out to be a bad idea as two are soon eaten alive by killer Amazonian caimans, who then make a speedy exit into the nearby countryside. One of the group confesses everything to the local vet, who has been roped in to the 'gator hunt as the nearest local thing to an expert on the creatures. He's having problems with the police and the army who both want to shoot the 'gators once and for all, while he merely wants to tranquillise them and return them to the zoo.
- GenresHorror
176 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 19, 1987
3 people are currently reading
214 people want to read
About the author
Guy N. Smith
175 books298 followersI was born on November 21, 1939, in the small village of Hopwas, near Tamworth, Staffordshire, England. My mother was a pre-war historical novelist (E. M. Weale) and she always encouraged me to write.
I was first published at the age of 12 in The Tettenhall Observer, a local weekly newspaper. Between 1952-57 I wrote 56 stories for them, many serialized. In 1990 I collated these into a book entitled Fifty Tales from the Fifties.
My father was a dedicated bank manager and I was destined for banking from birth. I accepted it but never found it very interesting. During the early years when I was working in Birmingham, I spent most of my lunch hours in the Birmingham gun quarter. I would have loved to have served an apprenticeship in the gun trade but my father would not hear of it.
Shooting (hunting) was my first love, and all my spare time was spent in this way. In 1961 I designed and made a 12-bore shotgun, intending to follow it up with six more, but I did not have the money to do this. I still use the Guy N. Smith short-barrelled magnum. During 1960-67 I operated a small shotgun cartridge loading business but this finished when my components suppliers closed down and I could no longer obtain components at competitive prices.
My writing in those days only concerned shooting. I wrote regularly for most of the sporting magazines, interspersed with fiction for such magazines as the legendary London Mystery Selection, a quarterly anthology for which I contributed 18 stories between 1972-82.
In 1972 I launched my second hand bookselling business which eventually became Black Hill Books. Originally my intention was to concentrate on this and maybe build it up to a full-time business which would enable me to leave banking. Although we still have this business, writing came along and this proved to be the vehicle which gave me my freedom.
I wrote a horror novel for the New English Library in 1974 entitled Werewolf by Moonlight. This was followed by a couple more, but it was Night of the Crabs in 1976 which really launched me as a writer. It was a bestseller, spawning five sequels, and was followed by another 60 or so horror novels through to the mid-1990's. Amicus bought the film rights to Crabs in 1976 and this gave me the chance to leave banking and by my own place, including my shoot, on the Black Hill.
The Guy N. Smith Fan Club was formed in 1990 and still has an active membership. We hold a convention every year at my home which is always well attended.
Around this time I became Poland's best-selling author. Phantom Press published two GNS books each month, mostly with print runs of around 100,000.
I have written much, much more than just horror; crime and mystery (as Gavin Newman), and children's animal novels (as Jonathan Guy). I have written a dozen or so shooting and countryside books, a book on Writing Horror Fiction (A. & C. Black). In 1997 my first full length western novel, The Pony Riders was published by Pinnacle in the States.
With 100-plus books to my credit, I was looking for new challenges. In 1999 I formed my own publishing company and began to publish my own books. They did rather well and gave me a lot of satisfaction. We plan to publish one or two every year.
Still regretting that I had not served an apprenticeship in the gun trade, the best job of my life dropped into my lap in 1999 when I was offered the post of Gun Editor of The Countryman's Weekly, a weekly magazine which covers all field sports. This entails my writing five illustrated feature articles a week on guns, cartridges, deer stalking, big game hunting etc.
Alongside this we have expanded our mail order second hand crime fiction business, still publish a few books, and I find as much time as possible for shooting.
Jean, my wife, helps with the business. Our four children, Rowan, Tara, Gavin and Angus have all moved away from home but they visit on a regular basis.
I would not want to live anywhere other than m
I was first published at the age of 12 in The Tettenhall Observer, a local weekly newspaper. Between 1952-57 I wrote 56 stories for them, many serialized. In 1990 I collated these into a book entitled Fifty Tales from the Fifties.
My father was a dedicated bank manager and I was destined for banking from birth. I accepted it but never found it very interesting. During the early years when I was working in Birmingham, I spent most of my lunch hours in the Birmingham gun quarter. I would have loved to have served an apprenticeship in the gun trade but my father would not hear of it.
Shooting (hunting) was my first love, and all my spare time was spent in this way. In 1961 I designed and made a 12-bore shotgun, intending to follow it up with six more, but I did not have the money to do this. I still use the Guy N. Smith short-barrelled magnum. During 1960-67 I operated a small shotgun cartridge loading business but this finished when my components suppliers closed down and I could no longer obtain components at competitive prices.
My writing in those days only concerned shooting. I wrote regularly for most of the sporting magazines, interspersed with fiction for such magazines as the legendary London Mystery Selection, a quarterly anthology for which I contributed 18 stories between 1972-82.
In 1972 I launched my second hand bookselling business which eventually became Black Hill Books. Originally my intention was to concentrate on this and maybe build it up to a full-time business which would enable me to leave banking. Although we still have this business, writing came along and this proved to be the vehicle which gave me my freedom.
I wrote a horror novel for the New English Library in 1974 entitled Werewolf by Moonlight. This was followed by a couple more, but it was Night of the Crabs in 1976 which really launched me as a writer. It was a bestseller, spawning five sequels, and was followed by another 60 or so horror novels through to the mid-1990's. Amicus bought the film rights to Crabs in 1976 and this gave me the chance to leave banking and by my own place, including my shoot, on the Black Hill.
The Guy N. Smith Fan Club was formed in 1990 and still has an active membership. We hold a convention every year at my home which is always well attended.
Around this time I became Poland's best-selling author. Phantom Press published two GNS books each month, mostly with print runs of around 100,000.
I have written much, much more than just horror; crime and mystery (as Gavin Newman), and children's animal novels (as Jonathan Guy). I have written a dozen or so shooting and countryside books, a book on Writing Horror Fiction (A. & C. Black). In 1997 my first full length western novel, The Pony Riders was published by Pinnacle in the States.
With 100-plus books to my credit, I was looking for new challenges. In 1999 I formed my own publishing company and began to publish my own books. They did rather well and gave me a lot of satisfaction. We plan to publish one or two every year.
Still regretting that I had not served an apprenticeship in the gun trade, the best job of my life dropped into my lap in 1999 when I was offered the post of Gun Editor of The Countryman's Weekly, a weekly magazine which covers all field sports. This entails my writing five illustrated feature articles a week on guns, cartridges, deer stalking, big game hunting etc.
Alongside this we have expanded our mail order second hand crime fiction business, still publish a few books, and I find as much time as possible for shooting.
Jean, my wife, helps with the business. Our four children, Rowan, Tara, Gavin and Angus have all moved away from home but they visit on a regular basis.
I would not want to live anywhere other than m
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 27, 2015
Most of those stars are given for gore factor and a few well written creepy scenes. But overall I struggled with this book.
I got the distinct feeling that the author has a lot of different groups of people that he hates. Including but not limited to women, PoC, and people with mental illness. As he went out of his way to build up a lot of backstory for these people, mostly mocking what it was about them that he disliked whether their gender or the mental state, only to have them horribly mauled and eaten by caimans. There's really no nice guy here, except for the one character that he tried real hard to make into the White Savior god knows that poor Chinese girl needed. #blessed
The other problem I had was that I could just never picture the caiman. We never really got like...actual fact stats on her? It was just like SHE'S BIG, YO...LIKE REAL BIG. And so every time she lunged up and ate someone, I was mostly there going "..........Right but like how big?"
So. Meh.
I got the distinct feeling that the author has a lot of different groups of people that he hates. Including but not limited to women, PoC, and people with mental illness. As he went out of his way to build up a lot of backstory for these people, mostly mocking what it was about them that he disliked whether their gender or the mental state, only to have them horribly mauled and eaten by caimans. There's really no nice guy here, except for the one character that he tried real hard to make into the White Savior god knows that poor Chinese girl needed. #blessed
The other problem I had was that I could just never picture the caiman. We never really got like...actual fact stats on her? It was just like SHE'S BIG, YO...LIKE REAL BIG. And so every time she lunged up and ate someone, I was mostly there going "..........Right but like how big?"
So. Meh.
September 10, 2021
"Now man and reptile must match their strength and cunning in a bloody battle for survival - or death."
July 30, 2019
I recently saw the movie Crawl with my girlfriend so I wanted to read Guy’s Alligators. It hit all the right notes for me. Plenty of grisly gator mayhem but it's not TOO over the top. Reads like a B-Movie unfolding before your very eyes. Wasn’t too big a fan of the relationship between Philip Grant and Susie Lee – it has more than a hint of shadiness behind it, especially initially – but the book was a satisfying read despite that. At 176 pages, Guy gets right to the point and doesn’t waste much time. I liked the sleaziness of the character Maurice Young. He appeared just enough to be a very detestable human antagonist, and it could be argued that he’s a far greater menace than the gators and caimans that occupy the story. Lots of fun crazy side characters here like Keith Prescott and his terrible BO. Or 60 year old Betty Wardle, resigned to taking care of her ailing mother and regretting it. But Brian Brown takes the cake. Introduced on page 161 of 176, he’s a 40 year old character described as “largely insignificant” in the game of life. His fiancee Edna Jones called off the wedding when she discovered his obsession with collecting teddy bears, all Toby Twirl publications and such. Deemed ill fit to be a capable and loving adult partner, Edna Jones dumped him and he never quite recovered. Spiraling into a deep dark hole of depression, Brian Brown holds 3 suicide attempts to his name. He becomes religious and struggles with his own conscience over his desire to masturbate. Yes, this all happens randomly near the end of the book, which goes to show you what an absolutely bonkers writer Guy N. Smith is! His writing can be pretty random and outlandish to say the very least. Ernest Hemingway he is not, but he’s never boring. At any rate, my favorite and most memorable scene here is the family accosted by a caiman hatchling in the middle of their own bed. It’s the stuff nightmares are made of and is far creepier than a lot of other things which are deemed “creepy.” The climax feels a bit rushed but it’s a fun ride there nevertheless. I’m looking forward to reading Guy’s other “when animals attack” books. If they’re anywhere as fun as Alligators then I know I’ll be in for a real treat.
April 2, 2020
I love this book, it is a complex Read with different views but that made this book all so special. I just love it. Story line is great, writing amazing. The author did a great job being able to capture from an animals point of view which very few are able to do.
Gore, feelings and mystery. All you can ask for.
Gore, feelings and mystery. All you can ask for.
April 10, 2019
This is the second of Smith's books I've read this year, the other being terrible, glorious trainwreck that was Maneater, and of the two Alligators is definitely the more competent effort. It's certainly not good, don't get me wrong, but while Maneater was basically just Smith's personal manifesto, a collection of insane rants about the evils of gun control and why shooting animals is great, there is at least something resembling a horror story here.
That's not to say he manages to rein in his politics for this one, though. The villain of the piece is an insane, homicidal animal rights activist who is driven into murderous rages whenever he sees what he perceives as cruelty to animals. Smith is keen to show that he never really cares for the animals, as in Smith's world it is the hunters who are the true animal lovers; animal rights activists are either naive kids needing to be shown the light or actual maniacs.
The other main message Smith seems to want to get over is that women are shit. They're all whores who deserve to be bitten in half by alligators for losing their virginity before 18, you see, and he revels in both graphic descriptions of their naked bodies (they always seem to find some excuse to take their clothes off before being mauled by alligators) and the process of them being torn apart.
The absolute standout for me though is our hero, a middle aged veterinarian (who is also against animal rights for some reason?) who, on finding out a 16 year old girl was involved in releasing the alligators and is now on the run from her murderous ex-boyfriend decides to give her a job and let her live in his spare room rent free. This would be fine, if he didn't then immediately start fucking her. Smith clearly even knows how bad of a look this is, as he makes sure to tell us that it's totally cool, she's way into it and is not being coerced in any way, but come on man. He's her landlord, her boss, and has info that would put her in jail. It's a bizarre choice of a love interest, and seems to only have been done so she could be tied up (naked, of course) near the alligator to give our hero some additional motivation in the finale.
Outside of Smith's political shoehorning, the book falls into a pretty basic rhythm. A character or group of characters are introduced, they decide to do some river-based activity despite knowing there are escaped alligators in the area, they probably fuck, or even just have a flashback to some fucking, so Smith can add another sex scene, then to everyone's surprise get ripped apart by alligators. The characters are all so paper thin and Smith's prose so basic that there's never any real tension here, but the kills themselves are enjoyably brutal, and he does not discriminate when it comes to victims. Everyone is fair game, so if you want to read a graphic description of a 5 year old boy's face being torn off by a baby alligator, this is the book for you.
On the whole it's not awful, but in some ways I enjoyed it less than Maneater because of it. This is just a mediocre animal attack thriller bogged down by Smith's inability not to cram his politic opinions into everything he writes, whereas Maneater was transcendantly awful to the point it become a hugely enjoyable read.
That's not to say he manages to rein in his politics for this one, though. The villain of the piece is an insane, homicidal animal rights activist who is driven into murderous rages whenever he sees what he perceives as cruelty to animals. Smith is keen to show that he never really cares for the animals, as in Smith's world it is the hunters who are the true animal lovers; animal rights activists are either naive kids needing to be shown the light or actual maniacs.
The other main message Smith seems to want to get over is that women are shit. They're all whores who deserve to be bitten in half by alligators for losing their virginity before 18, you see, and he revels in both graphic descriptions of their naked bodies (they always seem to find some excuse to take their clothes off before being mauled by alligators) and the process of them being torn apart.
The absolute standout for me though is our hero, a middle aged veterinarian (who is also against animal rights for some reason?) who, on finding out a 16 year old girl was involved in releasing the alligators and is now on the run from her murderous ex-boyfriend decides to give her a job and let her live in his spare room rent free. This would be fine, if he didn't then immediately start fucking her. Smith clearly even knows how bad of a look this is, as he makes sure to tell us that it's totally cool, she's way into it and is not being coerced in any way, but come on man. He's her landlord, her boss, and has info that would put her in jail. It's a bizarre choice of a love interest, and seems to only have been done so she could be tied up (naked, of course) near the alligator to give our hero some additional motivation in the finale.
Outside of Smith's political shoehorning, the book falls into a pretty basic rhythm. A character or group of characters are introduced, they decide to do some river-based activity despite knowing there are escaped alligators in the area, they probably fuck, or even just have a flashback to some fucking, so Smith can add another sex scene, then to everyone's surprise get ripped apart by alligators. The characters are all so paper thin and Smith's prose so basic that there's never any real tension here, but the kills themselves are enjoyably brutal, and he does not discriminate when it comes to victims. Everyone is fair game, so if you want to read a graphic description of a 5 year old boy's face being torn off by a baby alligator, this is the book for you.
On the whole it's not awful, but in some ways I enjoyed it less than Maneater because of it. This is just a mediocre animal attack thriller bogged down by Smith's inability not to cram his politic opinions into everything he writes, whereas Maneater was transcendantly awful to the point it become a hugely enjoyable read.
July 25, 2023
Excellent
A truly bonkers and face paced tale with plenty of Gore and shocking sequences. A must read for animal attack horror fans
A truly bonkers and face paced tale with plenty of Gore and shocking sequences. A must read for animal attack horror fans
January 3, 2024
Alligators (well caiman actually) lurking in the local river. This must be what all kids fear when they are little and think that old rotting log is secretly watching them.
September 12, 2024
As ever with Guy's books they are classic 80s horror. I really enjoy these quick reads. Killer Alligators on the lose in a town eating everyone. Yes please. There was a particular gory scene involving a pond that really was horrifying and very graphic. The reason I didn't give higher stars was I don't remember enjoying the ending.
December 17, 2020
Alligators let loose from captivity tear, rip, consume flesh and intestines with ferocity. Typical deplorable characters and a willingness to cheer for the alligators to take more victims. Gore a plenty, entertaining, visceral, chomp on this.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews