'The Black Fedora' – Guy N. Smith (The Sheridan Book Company)


As much as I'm rediscovering my love for big, thick books, reading them means that I end up several books behind where I want to be as far as having posts, for the blog, goes. In the great scheme of things, it's not the worst problem in the world (by a long shot) but can be a bit off-putting and often leads to random films being pulled off the shelves as a quick alternatives.

But not at the moment though. 'Past Graeme' very kindly read a few books and then left them for me to find and use to fill in 'review gaps'. It was good of him to do this and I'm very grateful to him for it ;o)

One of my reading resolutions, for this year, was to read more of Guy N. Smith's work outside of the 'Crabs' books and 'The Black Fedora' was one of those books that I'd seen (in second hand bookshops) but never got round to picking up. This time, I thought I'd stop looking at it and start reading it instead (thanks to eBay, or Amazon, one of the two...)

I try not to do this normally but I'll warn you now that this post may well be a little more spoilery than others. 'The Black Fedora' is an odd read (well, I thought so) and I'm going to tell you exactly why, hence the spoilers. If you're planning on reading 'The Black Fedora' for the first time, this is your warning that this post might just give the game away (so stop reading now). For the rest of you...

The town of Lichfield is celebrating Festival week and the highlight of this year's Festival is a reconstruction of the siege of the cathedral during the Civil War. That's not the biggest thing happening though.The police have big problems: assassination threats have been issued against the guest of honour, Polish Premier Kosminski, reputed to be descended from Jack the Ripper; the priceless Lichfield Gospels are under threat of vandalism and theft; and a tip off has been received that the Antichrist is scheduled for a personal appearance. And at the centre of of it all, the man in the black fedora. He knows no-one but his piercing eyes terrify everyone and promise a week of mayhem. Can he be stopped? Should he be stopped...?

'The Black Fedora' is typical of Guy N. Smith with several antagonists set on each other in a 'last one standing is the winner' scenario that driven by larger than life characters and scenes of bloody terror. Smith clearly wrote to a formula and you know what, why not? There's always an argument for 'if it ain't broken...' and it's an approach that keeps the pages turning quickly. You know what you're getting with Smith and if you like any of his other books then you're bound to enjoy 'The Black Fedora' as well. It does exactly the same as all the other books and is good, honest pulp fiction. I find that I'm after more of this, these days, and Smith does not disappoint on this score.

Unfortunately though, 'The Black Fedora' does come across as a fairly uneven read that isn't quite sure whether it wants to be horror or crime fiction. I may have got this completely wrong and Smith is deliberately blindsiding us with the final revelation but that 'big reveal' isn't quite big enough to hang everything off. The book may finally decide what it is (crime, not so much a 'whodunnit' as a 'whydunnit') but to me, it felt like a decision made too late rather than deliberately holding back the 'reveal' until the right moment. As far as that goes, 'The Black Fedora' ends with a bit of a whimper rather than a bang.

It's a good job then that, on the whole, 'The Black Fedora' is a kit of fun to read in the meantime with a hefty dose of death and sex (not at the same time, thankfully) providing the spectacle that keeps things ticking over. And it's all done in the slightly moral way that Smith has about him. Bad guys get what they deserve while the hero(es) get to live happily ever after. It's formulaic but the formula works and you end up with a comfort read as a result (which always sounds weird, when you're talking about horror books but I'm standing by it).

What I would say though is that 'The Black Fedora' is all about making the most of the journey while you're on it. The destination itself isn't all that great when you get there...

And that's another Guy N. Smith book read :o) I've got a couple more on the TBR pile and I'm bidding on a whole load more on eBay, there will be more of these posts to come...

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