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

Last month saw me do pretty well at getting through the pile of books that I'd set myself to read; I haven't done quite so well at reviewing them quickly but it is what it is ;o) I've got one more book to go, after this one, but right now we're all about Guy N. Smith again, this time with 'Phobia'... If there's one thing that I've learned about Guy N.Smith's output (other than that it was more than sizable and that he really knew how to hit all the pulp targets for his readers), it's that he wasn't afraid to make his mark on whatever area of horror he thought he could turn into a book that would sell. And fair play to him, I think we all wish we could be a bit like that. So far, I've come across giant crabs, eco-horror, giant insects and even Communist zombies (well, kind of) but I'd yet to read a haunted house tale... Until now. 'Phobia' is that tale and it's not a bad one either.

Number thirteen Schooner Street was a typical terraced house in an up-and-coming area of south London - or so John and Leah Strike thought when they first moved in with their children. But then the nightmares started - vivid, harrowing images of gruesome violence that tore into their consciousness leaving behind rabid, phobic reactions to the simplest of everyday things. Caught in a web of their deepest fears - too scared to leave home, too terrified to remain - reason told them that the only thing to fear was fear itself. But then the terrors that festered in the shadows of the evil house took on a life of their own - and the grisly killings began …

I’m no expert on Guy N. Smith’s books but I think I’ve read enough now to have a decent idea of what he’s about. With that in mind then, I was interested to see how this would translate into what sets out to be a haunted house tale. Could these two strands work together? The answer is yes, ‘Phobia’ is a vicious blend of ghost story and horror which is very readable at the same time.

The treatment of the ‘Haunted House’ theme makes for a refreshing change here as 13 Schooner Street is haunted not only by Joseph Nason but all his phobias as well; this effectively doubles the fear and tension, running through the book, as John and his family must deal with a supernatural attack on two fronts. There’s a little imbalance here as Smith saves Nason up for the concluding scenes but his treatment of the ‘phobia hauntings’ (not sure how else to say it) make up for this as he really gets inside the heads of the family and shows us how these phobias attack them at the core of their being. The build up and payoff are both paced really well, holding your attention almost perfectly as events play out.

It is Guy N. Smith we’re talking about so there are a lot of familiar things here that you will have come across in his other work. For someone who likes to include a dash of illicit sex in his books, Smith is surprisingly moralistic about how this affects the eventual fate of certain characters. Basically, if you cheat on your wife then you will be punished in one way or another. That’s very much the case for John Strike and there is a subsequent air of inevitability, to the plot, that kept me reading (John isn’t particularly likeable so I wanted to see him get his comeuppance) but at the same time, also robbed the book of it’s ability to surprise (just a little bit). ‘Phobia’ very much has the capacity to shock but I was able to work out quite quickly who was going to die next etc so the tale did lose a little something in the telling. Smith also has a habit of punishing his main character by doing bad things to the supporting cast which fits the situation but always seems a little harsh in the case of the ‘woman whom the main character is having an affair with’. I’m still not a hundred percent sure about how I feel about this, especially in the case of Ruth who is clearly set up to be a shocking moment, later on, and not much else. It serves a purpose, for a quick pulp read, but doesn’t feel right introducing expendable women into your plot, just to make your reader gasp when something happens to them. I’m also thinking that the last members of John’s family deserved a little more than the ending they had.

There’s a bit then that doesn’t sit well in ‘Phobia’ but on the whole, this is a book that achieves what it sets out to do; tell an unsettling supernatural tale with a dash of horror to shock. One of Smith’s better books, at least from where I’m sat.