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Caracal
When Bilal, a young Pakistani, signs various official documents in order to get to Britain ('the promised land'), he doesn't realise that he's being manipulated for cheap labour and will soon become an illegal immigrant on the run from the authorities. He also fails to realise that his pet caracal - a wild cat that is often domesticated back home - will return to its natural wild state if and when it doesn't receive the necessary training. And in the Welsh border hills there's plenty of space for it to hide. After it mauls a few sheep and pheasants, the hunt is on before it graduates to human meat.
- GenresHorror
176 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1980
1 person is currently reading
80 people want to read
About the author
Guy N. Smith
160 books304 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
May 21, 2024
You know you’re in trouble when the only likeable character is a ravenous, revenge seeking caracal!
October 4, 2024
Guy N. Smith was hardly a stranger to the "animals attack" subgenre of horror when this was published by New English Library in 1980, having become famous for his crabs novels and followed up with a pair of others featuring bats and locusts. However, this one feels very different to all those. For a start, the cat of the title is easily his most sympathetic monster, utterly unlike the evil exhibited by his giant crabs or indeed the impersonal deaths caused by the bats and locusts. The caracal is as much a victim as any of the animals or people it kills within these pages. Also, while I'd hardly call this an optimistic book, it's a long way from the pessimism of ‘Locusts’ and especially ‘Bats Out of Hell’.
We're back in Smith's beloved Welsh borders this time and our first port of call is an dilapidated former country home called Pentre outside the town of Knighton. The usual set of drug addicts and dropouts in it form a sort of commune but the latest arrival is an illegal immigrant from Pakistan, a boy called Bilal who has brought his pet kitten with him, a caracal, a large species of cat that's trained in his homeland to work like a hunting dog. Needless to say, it grows up and, without that training, it's highly dangerous and the death toll soon opens.
Interestingly, while the members of the commune, who have a prohibition on "racialism" do pick on him somewhat because of his race, Smith doesn't judge at all. In fact, he's acutely careful to detail that Bilal believed that he was emigrating legally, only discovering on the boat to the UK that he had fallen prey to a con. So, while none of the deaths still to come at the claws of the caracal would have happened had he not illegally immigrated, none of them would have happened had he not been suckered into a scam. I would expect that, had the process he followed actually been legal, he would not have been allowed to bring the caracal with him. The novel would have ended before it began.
The commune at Pentre is currently run by Lester Hoyle, a former lecturer at Cambridge who fell into a drug habit when his wife left him and still thinks of himself as important, so lords it over everyone else. Wes Lansdale and Wendy Drew, stand up for Bilal somewhat, as they're good people truly attempting to quit their own heroin habits and mostly succeeding. Lansdale is a writer, whose novel Whispers sold fifty thousand in paperback, but Hoyle is good at destroying his confidence as a means of control, so he hasn't finished anything new in the commune. Drew is his girlfriend, but Hoyle wants her too and what he wants he gets, at least until this point.
Much of the hope in the book is personified in Wes and Wendy. He finds a friend in Knighton, a zoologist and author of non-fiction works on the countryside such as 'Naturalised British Animals', by the name of Prof. Colin Rutter. The professor has a cottage there where he spends his weekends and he becomes the mentor that Wes needs, letting him write there in peace and offering him support and a way out of the mess he's got himself into. Meanwhile, of course, as a zoologist, he's who the locals immediately come to when the deaths start happening, albeit initially pheasants and sheep. So Wes also becomes a point of focused guilt in the novel and he has to overcome that as much as the heroin he shoots up.
Surprisingly, it's not until the end of chapter four—of only twelve because these are often long chapters of sixteen pages or more—that the caracal claims its first human victim, a contrary four-year-old boy in the woods because he was scared by a low-flying military jet and his father, a chief forester who should know better, leaves him to his own devices in his Land Rover. However, there's a great deal of traditional Smith material to go through before that point, some of it appearing for the first time but much of it a common theme already.
For instance, most of chapter four is taken up by a "Big Shoot", an organised affair to hunt and kill the caracal before it kills more animals. Smith had been involved with shoots of many descriptions since he was a child and he could write this stuff from a hundred perspectives in his sleep. He often wrote about professional shooters with great admiration but he also often wrote about amateurs, well-meaning or not with great disdain. He touches here on the need to kill, not only for food but to help conservation, but also on the responsibility to kill cleanly and not inflict pain and suffering on animals through sheer incompetence. Responsibility is a huge deal in this book, not always but often tied to shooting.
Regular readers of his work, even if that was just his horror novels, of which this was his sixteenth, had to recognise these themes by now. However, none of them would have realised that "alien big cats", as they're unfortunately known—yes, that abbreviates to ABCs—was a passion of his too, because this was the first time it came up. When unscrupulous gamekeeper Melvyn Hughes goes to Prof. Rutter with the news about the caracal's first kills, of a dozen of his poults, Rutter checks out the scene and discovers a footprint that looks like that of a lynx. Of course, it's not a native, he points out, but there are escapes from wildlife parks and he lists a few from recent years: "two wolves in Argyllshire, three boar hunts, a beaver on Speyside and a wolverine by Loch Ness, not to mention the mythical Sussex Puma."
To the best of my knowledge, Guy never caught one of these ABCs, but he certainly tried. I have a photo somewhere that he took of me inside the puma cage he built and set in a field just up the road from his house on the Black Hill. He owned the shooting rights up there and had seen a large cat in the forestry commission's woods. He's written about other experiences he had over the years in articles and would eventually write a chapbook on the subject, 'Hunting Big Cats in Britain', and a further horror novel on the same theme called 'Maneater'.
But that's a book for another day. Back to this one and little Eddie Evans earns the dubious distinction of being the caracal's first human kill. It's notable that, while this is not remotely the most gratuitous horror novel Smith ever wrote, even up to this point, most of the victims are kids. Perhaps this is simply because King—Wendy Drew named it with Bilal's agreement late in chapter two—gains in ambition as it grows, but next up are the four kids of June Whymark, whom she's sent to play outside because they were arguing with each other. They range from two to seven and it's two-year-old Dominic who triggers the attack by throwing a rock at King. All four are killed and June, who hears their screams while close to an orgasm upstairs and runs out stark naked to cradle their dead bodies in her arms, promptly dies of a heart attack dealing with the moment.
That's brutal and it's not the last brutal kill, even if we're surely all rooting for the caracal when it gets to rather unsympathetic characters towards the end of the book. One is trapped inside a building, tries to escape through a bathroom window, gets stuck and is promptly savaged from toes to rear end with a sharp set of teeth and claws. It couldn't have happened to a nicer bloke. However, these scenes could be described with far more gratuitous gore than Smith delivers, at least until a police marksmen loses his eyes to the caracal's claws after missing a crucial shot. And I mean that literally; they dangle down onto his cheeks as yet another reminder that, if we're going to kill an animal, we should do it cleanly. Even a beast like King does that. He kills Tige the lead otter-hound in the pack that's sent after him, but in a quick altercation that's clearly described as mortal combat, a fair defence of territory.
There's so much of Guy N. Smith in this book that it almost feels like a personal one for him, though I'm not aware of particular connections to specific moments in his life. Maybe he worked all those out of his system in 'Bats Out of Hell'. Unlike some previous novels, there isn't a single character that's obviously based on him, but there's some of him in a few of them. There's some of him in Wes Lansdale, of course, because he's a writer and he's trying to find a path forward as that and not whatever else he has been. There's some of him in Prof. Colin Rutter too, not just as an expert on wildlife who's written a number of books on the subject, but as someone who understands conservation as a balance. And there's some of him in Tim Grayling, a journalist and weekly columnist for the 'Sporting Gazette', though I hope not too much, because Grayling is an ass.
It could be argued that there's so much of him in this book that he felt comfortable with throwing out a fresh Welsh placename as if everyone reading will know how to pronounce Bwlchybryngolan. If there is that much of him here, then I wonder if he wrote this as a thriller and added a few gorier moments at a request from his publisher, given that his horror was selling so well. Most of the thrillers he wanted to write in the seventies didn't get written because the publishers had other ideas. Those that he did and which got published, like the second 'Truckers' novel and 'Bamboo Guerillas', weren't really what they were supposed to be, the former a countryside thriller forced into its series' mindset and the latter an exploitation movie as much as a war novel.
This is another countryside novel, another look at themes that Smith held dear, a first dip into a world of "alien big cats". And, quite frankly, it's all three of those before it's a horror novel, though I have to emphasise that's what it was marketed as and isn't an unfair description. It wrapped up 1980 for him, a fourth horror novel in a row to most fans but, while 'Deathbell' was a standard British horror novel and 'Satan's Snowdrop' was a standard American horror novel, 'Thirst' and 'Caracal' were different types of thriller. Even within the horror genre, Smith was telling a lot of different stories and that continues on with his first 1981 novel, 'Doomflight', clearly a horror novel but with a very different outlook again.
Originally posted at the Nameless Zine in August 2022:
https://www.thenamelesszine.org/Voice...
Index of all my Nameless Zine reviews:
https://books.apocalypselaterempire.com/
We're back in Smith's beloved Welsh borders this time and our first port of call is an dilapidated former country home called Pentre outside the town of Knighton. The usual set of drug addicts and dropouts in it form a sort of commune but the latest arrival is an illegal immigrant from Pakistan, a boy called Bilal who has brought his pet kitten with him, a caracal, a large species of cat that's trained in his homeland to work like a hunting dog. Needless to say, it grows up and, without that training, it's highly dangerous and the death toll soon opens.
Interestingly, while the members of the commune, who have a prohibition on "racialism" do pick on him somewhat because of his race, Smith doesn't judge at all. In fact, he's acutely careful to detail that Bilal believed that he was emigrating legally, only discovering on the boat to the UK that he had fallen prey to a con. So, while none of the deaths still to come at the claws of the caracal would have happened had he not illegally immigrated, none of them would have happened had he not been suckered into a scam. I would expect that, had the process he followed actually been legal, he would not have been allowed to bring the caracal with him. The novel would have ended before it began.
The commune at Pentre is currently run by Lester Hoyle, a former lecturer at Cambridge who fell into a drug habit when his wife left him and still thinks of himself as important, so lords it over everyone else. Wes Lansdale and Wendy Drew, stand up for Bilal somewhat, as they're good people truly attempting to quit their own heroin habits and mostly succeeding. Lansdale is a writer, whose novel Whispers sold fifty thousand in paperback, but Hoyle is good at destroying his confidence as a means of control, so he hasn't finished anything new in the commune. Drew is his girlfriend, but Hoyle wants her too and what he wants he gets, at least until this point.
Much of the hope in the book is personified in Wes and Wendy. He finds a friend in Knighton, a zoologist and author of non-fiction works on the countryside such as 'Naturalised British Animals', by the name of Prof. Colin Rutter. The professor has a cottage there where he spends his weekends and he becomes the mentor that Wes needs, letting him write there in peace and offering him support and a way out of the mess he's got himself into. Meanwhile, of course, as a zoologist, he's who the locals immediately come to when the deaths start happening, albeit initially pheasants and sheep. So Wes also becomes a point of focused guilt in the novel and he has to overcome that as much as the heroin he shoots up.
Surprisingly, it's not until the end of chapter four—of only twelve because these are often long chapters of sixteen pages or more—that the caracal claims its first human victim, a contrary four-year-old boy in the woods because he was scared by a low-flying military jet and his father, a chief forester who should know better, leaves him to his own devices in his Land Rover. However, there's a great deal of traditional Smith material to go through before that point, some of it appearing for the first time but much of it a common theme already.
For instance, most of chapter four is taken up by a "Big Shoot", an organised affair to hunt and kill the caracal before it kills more animals. Smith had been involved with shoots of many descriptions since he was a child and he could write this stuff from a hundred perspectives in his sleep. He often wrote about professional shooters with great admiration but he also often wrote about amateurs, well-meaning or not with great disdain. He touches here on the need to kill, not only for food but to help conservation, but also on the responsibility to kill cleanly and not inflict pain and suffering on animals through sheer incompetence. Responsibility is a huge deal in this book, not always but often tied to shooting.
Regular readers of his work, even if that was just his horror novels, of which this was his sixteenth, had to recognise these themes by now. However, none of them would have realised that "alien big cats", as they're unfortunately known—yes, that abbreviates to ABCs—was a passion of his too, because this was the first time it came up. When unscrupulous gamekeeper Melvyn Hughes goes to Prof. Rutter with the news about the caracal's first kills, of a dozen of his poults, Rutter checks out the scene and discovers a footprint that looks like that of a lynx. Of course, it's not a native, he points out, but there are escapes from wildlife parks and he lists a few from recent years: "two wolves in Argyllshire, three boar hunts, a beaver on Speyside and a wolverine by Loch Ness, not to mention the mythical Sussex Puma."
To the best of my knowledge, Guy never caught one of these ABCs, but he certainly tried. I have a photo somewhere that he took of me inside the puma cage he built and set in a field just up the road from his house on the Black Hill. He owned the shooting rights up there and had seen a large cat in the forestry commission's woods. He's written about other experiences he had over the years in articles and would eventually write a chapbook on the subject, 'Hunting Big Cats in Britain', and a further horror novel on the same theme called 'Maneater'.
But that's a book for another day. Back to this one and little Eddie Evans earns the dubious distinction of being the caracal's first human kill. It's notable that, while this is not remotely the most gratuitous horror novel Smith ever wrote, even up to this point, most of the victims are kids. Perhaps this is simply because King—Wendy Drew named it with Bilal's agreement late in chapter two—gains in ambition as it grows, but next up are the four kids of June Whymark, whom she's sent to play outside because they were arguing with each other. They range from two to seven and it's two-year-old Dominic who triggers the attack by throwing a rock at King. All four are killed and June, who hears their screams while close to an orgasm upstairs and runs out stark naked to cradle their dead bodies in her arms, promptly dies of a heart attack dealing with the moment.
That's brutal and it's not the last brutal kill, even if we're surely all rooting for the caracal when it gets to rather unsympathetic characters towards the end of the book. One is trapped inside a building, tries to escape through a bathroom window, gets stuck and is promptly savaged from toes to rear end with a sharp set of teeth and claws. It couldn't have happened to a nicer bloke. However, these scenes could be described with far more gratuitous gore than Smith delivers, at least until a police marksmen loses his eyes to the caracal's claws after missing a crucial shot. And I mean that literally; they dangle down onto his cheeks as yet another reminder that, if we're going to kill an animal, we should do it cleanly. Even a beast like King does that. He kills Tige the lead otter-hound in the pack that's sent after him, but in a quick altercation that's clearly described as mortal combat, a fair defence of territory.
There's so much of Guy N. Smith in this book that it almost feels like a personal one for him, though I'm not aware of particular connections to specific moments in his life. Maybe he worked all those out of his system in 'Bats Out of Hell'. Unlike some previous novels, there isn't a single character that's obviously based on him, but there's some of him in a few of them. There's some of him in Wes Lansdale, of course, because he's a writer and he's trying to find a path forward as that and not whatever else he has been. There's some of him in Prof. Colin Rutter too, not just as an expert on wildlife who's written a number of books on the subject, but as someone who understands conservation as a balance. And there's some of him in Tim Grayling, a journalist and weekly columnist for the 'Sporting Gazette', though I hope not too much, because Grayling is an ass.
It could be argued that there's so much of him in this book that he felt comfortable with throwing out a fresh Welsh placename as if everyone reading will know how to pronounce Bwlchybryngolan. If there is that much of him here, then I wonder if he wrote this as a thriller and added a few gorier moments at a request from his publisher, given that his horror was selling so well. Most of the thrillers he wanted to write in the seventies didn't get written because the publishers had other ideas. Those that he did and which got published, like the second 'Truckers' novel and 'Bamboo Guerillas', weren't really what they were supposed to be, the former a countryside thriller forced into its series' mindset and the latter an exploitation movie as much as a war novel.
This is another countryside novel, another look at themes that Smith held dear, a first dip into a world of "alien big cats". And, quite frankly, it's all three of those before it's a horror novel, though I have to emphasise that's what it was marketed as and isn't an unfair description. It wrapped up 1980 for him, a fourth horror novel in a row to most fans but, while 'Deathbell' was a standard British horror novel and 'Satan's Snowdrop' was a standard American horror novel, 'Thirst' and 'Caracal' were different types of thriller. Even within the horror genre, Smith was telling a lot of different stories and that continues on with his first 1981 novel, 'Doomflight', clearly a horror novel but with a very different outlook again.
Originally posted at the Nameless Zine in August 2022:
https://www.thenamelesszine.org/Voice...
Index of all my Nameless Zine reviews:
https://books.apocalypselaterempire.com/
May 13, 2020
Could have been great! But wasn't.
How does a horror story about a man-eating beast that is only under 200 pages long actually feel dragged out? Well, let ol' Guy N. Smith pick up his pipe and explain how it is done.
There is a lot of potential here, despite the now worn-out premise so familiar to horror fans today. "Caracal" was written as a cash-in on the 70s and 80s popularity of the "animals-amok" subgenre of horror and science fiction started with novels like "Jaws" and "The Rats." But there are many elements of the human condition explored here that make this novel smarter than its contemporaries.
In particular, a major theme deals with the human rights violations associated with the smuggling of illegal immigrants. Bilal is a Pakistani teenager who gets duped into what he thinks is a legitimate and legal work visa to the United Kingdom, only to be packed up in the cargo hold of a ship for an arduous journey with his pet caracal cub in a box as his only companion. Bilal arrives in Wales with no friends and no means of support, and is used as cheap labor shelling beans in a hippie commune. Despite the surface-level antiracism virtue-signalling among the colony, he is mistreated and forced to sleep in an unfinished attic infested with bats. He is also told he must get rid of his pet, which ends up escaping and grows up quickly with a ravenous appetite.
The exploration of a changing Wales which brings pheasant hunting, poaching, and squatting onto the acres of once aristocratic estates is another major theme. The author populates this story with a lot of talk about the culture of game-keeping and hunting of which he knows a thing or two as he has written several nonfiction works on the subject. One of Smith's pet peeves is the amount of suffering that hunting causes an animal when done by amateurs with less than expert marksmanship. The novel also contrasts the numbing of failure and mediocrity with drug addiction and the healing powers of creative catharsis and meaningful work. Also, almost every character is guilty of some inner hypocrisy, and the novel seems to make this a vulnerabiltiy for the old slice-and-dice rather than the typical premarital sex of 80s horror. All of this makes for a much more interesting read than just a straight forward creature feature.
But Guy N. Smith is a horror pulp writer, and so what could be a deeper and more tragic story beneath the scares becomes ham-fisted and boring, dragging out an otherwise simple narrative far too long despite its short length . Making things worse, there is too much description of the townsfolk planning to hunt down the animal, their various guns and weaponry, and superficial arguments.
What would have elevated this by at least a star was if more pathos were injected into the story and the themes were actually central to the plot in order to develop that pathos. For example, if the caracal had first tasted human blood because it had to defend itself against human cruelty, or protect Bilal from some plot before turning into a menace to society, that would have been cliche but more effective. Or the consequences of an illegal immigrant harboring a dangerous animal could have been explored in more detail and made for some real drama. Though the latter was suggested as an issue for a few characters, it was of little consequence. None of the characters are very interesting, and potentially juicy story arcs were not pursued, so the human element feels more like padding.
The caracal itself is an unusual villain which still feels rooted in some degree of reality, and the kills are brutal, though still tame when compared to the likes of horror contemporaries like Shaun Hutson, R. Patrick Gates, and Ed Lee.
"A sharp jab with claws going deep, his navel popping out like the core of a baking apple, on downwards to tear out clumps of pubic hair, shredding the cotton jeans."
That's some pretty good 80s gore right there. And this novel does not have scruples. Whether an innocent child or a pregnant woman, no characters are safe from the caracal's claws.
Overall, a solid piece of 80s pulp from a prolific master of the genre that tries to be something more, but ultimately ends up being a guilty pleasure for horror hounds.
How does a horror story about a man-eating beast that is only under 200 pages long actually feel dragged out? Well, let ol' Guy N. Smith pick up his pipe and explain how it is done.
There is a lot of potential here, despite the now worn-out premise so familiar to horror fans today. "Caracal" was written as a cash-in on the 70s and 80s popularity of the "animals-amok" subgenre of horror and science fiction started with novels like "Jaws" and "The Rats." But there are many elements of the human condition explored here that make this novel smarter than its contemporaries.
In particular, a major theme deals with the human rights violations associated with the smuggling of illegal immigrants. Bilal is a Pakistani teenager who gets duped into what he thinks is a legitimate and legal work visa to the United Kingdom, only to be packed up in the cargo hold of a ship for an arduous journey with his pet caracal cub in a box as his only companion. Bilal arrives in Wales with no friends and no means of support, and is used as cheap labor shelling beans in a hippie commune. Despite the surface-level antiracism virtue-signalling among the colony, he is mistreated and forced to sleep in an unfinished attic infested with bats. He is also told he must get rid of his pet, which ends up escaping and grows up quickly with a ravenous appetite.
The exploration of a changing Wales which brings pheasant hunting, poaching, and squatting onto the acres of once aristocratic estates is another major theme. The author populates this story with a lot of talk about the culture of game-keeping and hunting of which he knows a thing or two as he has written several nonfiction works on the subject. One of Smith's pet peeves is the amount of suffering that hunting causes an animal when done by amateurs with less than expert marksmanship. The novel also contrasts the numbing of failure and mediocrity with drug addiction and the healing powers of creative catharsis and meaningful work. Also, almost every character is guilty of some inner hypocrisy, and the novel seems to make this a vulnerabiltiy for the old slice-and-dice rather than the typical premarital sex of 80s horror. All of this makes for a much more interesting read than just a straight forward creature feature.
But Guy N. Smith is a horror pulp writer, and so what could be a deeper and more tragic story beneath the scares becomes ham-fisted and boring, dragging out an otherwise simple narrative far too long despite its short length . Making things worse, there is too much description of the townsfolk planning to hunt down the animal, their various guns and weaponry, and superficial arguments.
What would have elevated this by at least a star was if more pathos were injected into the story and the themes were actually central to the plot in order to develop that pathos. For example, if the caracal had first tasted human blood because it had to defend itself against human cruelty, or protect Bilal from some plot before turning into a menace to society, that would have been cliche but more effective. Or the consequences of an illegal immigrant harboring a dangerous animal could have been explored in more detail and made for some real drama. Though the latter was suggested as an issue for a few characters, it was of little consequence. None of the characters are very interesting, and potentially juicy story arcs were not pursued, so the human element feels more like padding.
The caracal itself is an unusual villain which still feels rooted in some degree of reality, and the kills are brutal, though still tame when compared to the likes of horror contemporaries like Shaun Hutson, R. Patrick Gates, and Ed Lee.
"A sharp jab with claws going deep, his navel popping out like the core of a baking apple, on downwards to tear out clumps of pubic hair, shredding the cotton jeans."
That's some pretty good 80s gore right there. And this novel does not have scruples. Whether an innocent child or a pregnant woman, no characters are safe from the caracal's claws.
Overall, a solid piece of 80s pulp from a prolific master of the genre that tries to be something more, but ultimately ends up being a guilty pleasure for horror hounds.
May 13, 2020
How does a horror story about a man-eating beast that is only under 200 pages long actually feel dragged out? Well, let ol' Guy N. Smith pick up his pipe and explain how it is done.
There is a lot of potential here, despite the now worn-out premise so familiar to horror fans today. "Caracal" was written as a cash-in on the 70s and 80s popularity of the "animals-amok" subgenre of horror and science fiction started with novels like "Jaws" and "The Rats." But there are many elements of the human condition explored here that make this novel smarter than its contemporaries.
In particular, a major theme deals with the human rights violations associated with the smuggling of illegal immigrants. Bilal is a Pakistani teenager who gets duped into what he thinks is a legitimate and legal work visa to the United Kingdom, only to be packed up in the cargo hold of a ship for an arduous journey with his pet caracal cub in a box as his only companion. Bilal arrives in Wales with no friends and no means of support, and is used as cheap labor shelling beans in a hippie commune. Despite the surface-level antiracism virtue-signalling among the colony, he is mistreated and forced to sleep in an unfinished attic infested with bats. He is also told he must get rid of his pet, which ends up escaping and grows up quickly with a ravenous appetite.
The exploration of a changing Wales which brings pheasant hunting, poaching, and squatting onto the acres of once aristocratic estates is another major theme. The author populates this story with a lot of talk about the culture of game-keeping and hunting of which he knows a thing or two as he has written several nonfiction works on the subject. One of Smith's pet peeves is the amount of suffering that hunting causes an animal when done by amateurs with less than expert marksmanship. The novel also contrasts the numbing of failure and mediocrity with drug addiction and the healing powers of creative catharsis and meaningful work. Also, almost every character is guilty of some inner hypocrisy, and the novel seems to make this a vulnerabiltiy for the old slice-and-dice rather than the typical premarital sex of 80s horror. All of this makes for a much more interesting read than just a straight forward creature feature.
But Guy N. Smith is a horror pulp writer, and so what could be a deeper and more tragic story beneath the scares becomes ham-fisted and boring, dragging out an otherwise simple narrative far too long despite its short length . Making things worse, there is too much description of the townsfolk planning to hunt down the animal, their various guns and weaponry, and superficial arguments.
What would have elevated this by at least a star was if more pathos were injected into the story and the themes were actually central to the plot in order to develop that pathos. For example, if the caracal had first tasted human blood because it had to defend itself against human cruelty, or protect Bilal from some plot before turning into a menace to society, that would have been cliche but more effective. Or the consequences of an illegal immigrant harboring a dangerous animal could have been explored in more detail and made for some real drama. Though the latter was suggested as an issue for a few characters, it was of little consequence. None of the characters are very interesting, and potentially juicy story arcs were not pursued, so the human element feels more like padding.
The caracal itself is an unusual villain which still feels rooted in some degree of reality, and the kills are brutal, though still tame when compared to the likes of horror contemporaries like Shaun Hutson, R. Patrick Gates, and Ed Lee.
"A sharp jab with claws going deep, his navel popping out like the core of a baking apple, on downwards to tear out clumps of pubic hair, shredding the cotton jeans."
That's some pretty good 80s gore right there. And this novel does not have scruples. Whether an innocent child or a pregnant woman, no characters are safe from the caracal's claws.
Overall, a solid piece of 80s pulp from a prolific master of the genre that tries to be something more, but ultimately ends up being a guilty pleasure for horror hounds.
There is a lot of potential here, despite the now worn-out premise so familiar to horror fans today. "Caracal" was written as a cash-in on the 70s and 80s popularity of the "animals-amok" subgenre of horror and science fiction started with novels like "Jaws" and "The Rats." But there are many elements of the human condition explored here that make this novel smarter than its contemporaries.
In particular, a major theme deals with the human rights violations associated with the smuggling of illegal immigrants. Bilal is a Pakistani teenager who gets duped into what he thinks is a legitimate and legal work visa to the United Kingdom, only to be packed up in the cargo hold of a ship for an arduous journey with his pet caracal cub in a box as his only companion. Bilal arrives in Wales with no friends and no means of support, and is used as cheap labor shelling beans in a hippie commune. Despite the surface-level antiracism virtue-signalling among the colony, he is mistreated and forced to sleep in an unfinished attic infested with bats. He is also told he must get rid of his pet, which ends up escaping and grows up quickly with a ravenous appetite.
The exploration of a changing Wales which brings pheasant hunting, poaching, and squatting onto the acres of once aristocratic estates is another major theme. The author populates this story with a lot of talk about the culture of game-keeping and hunting of which he knows a thing or two as he has written several nonfiction works on the subject. One of Smith's pet peeves is the amount of suffering that hunting causes an animal when done by amateurs with less than expert marksmanship. The novel also contrasts the numbing of failure and mediocrity with drug addiction and the healing powers of creative catharsis and meaningful work. Also, almost every character is guilty of some inner hypocrisy, and the novel seems to make this a vulnerabiltiy for the old slice-and-dice rather than the typical premarital sex of 80s horror. All of this makes for a much more interesting read than just a straight forward creature feature.
But Guy N. Smith is a horror pulp writer, and so what could be a deeper and more tragic story beneath the scares becomes ham-fisted and boring, dragging out an otherwise simple narrative far too long despite its short length . Making things worse, there is too much description of the townsfolk planning to hunt down the animal, their various guns and weaponry, and superficial arguments.
What would have elevated this by at least a star was if more pathos were injected into the story and the themes were actually central to the plot in order to develop that pathos. For example, if the caracal had first tasted human blood because it had to defend itself against human cruelty, or protect Bilal from some plot before turning into a menace to society, that would have been cliche but more effective. Or the consequences of an illegal immigrant harboring a dangerous animal could have been explored in more detail and made for some real drama. Though the latter was suggested as an issue for a few characters, it was of little consequence. None of the characters are very interesting, and potentially juicy story arcs were not pursued, so the human element feels more like padding.
The caracal itself is an unusual villain which still feels rooted in some degree of reality, and the kills are brutal, though still tame when compared to the likes of horror contemporaries like Shaun Hutson, R. Patrick Gates, and Ed Lee.
"A sharp jab with claws going deep, his navel popping out like the core of a baking apple, on downwards to tear out clumps of pubic hair, shredding the cotton jeans."
That's some pretty good 80s gore right there. And this novel does not have scruples. Whether an innocent child or a pregnant woman, no characters are safe from the caracal's claws.
Overall, a solid piece of 80s pulp from a prolific master of the genre that tries to be something more, but ultimately ends up being a guilty pleasure for horror hounds.
November 23, 2020
While I wasn't expecting much from this one - I never do from a Guy N. Smith novel - the author really delivers with an authentic story with lots of detail that can only have come from Smith's own experiences as a gun enthusiast and outdoors man. Thus he laces his tale with a real depth of knowledge and understanding that bring the characters, the setting and the situation to life. The killer caracal is more cuddly than frightening, one of his most sympathetic of "monsters", but he liberally laces the story with the usual gore to make this repelling stuff. Exciting, to boot...
Read
August 7, 2019Recording the fact that I read this book either in the late 70s or early 80s
December 30, 2023
As I have previously stated I like a good animal attack novel and this one was pretty good.
It starts off a bit slow but after the first human attack what’s s not to like.
It starts off a bit slow but after the first human attack what’s s not to like.
August 1, 2021
A new borne Caracal travels the seas with an Asian immigrant and eventually causes havoc in Britain with its needle-like claws ripping into eyes, puncturing pupils, dragging them from their sockets, ripping four small children to death causes their mother a heart attack, a massive pick being gouged and eaten up to his scrotum in a toilet. However one will feel extreme sympathy for this beautiful strong animal in an unfortunate circumstance. The destruction of this creature is heart wrenching.
October 26, 2012
Enjoyed this tale of a man-eating big cat wandering the Welsh countryside. Fun read - and I'd never heard of a caracal before looking it up when I started reading this book. Learn something new every day :)
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