'Satanic Armageddon' – Guy N. Smith (Sinister Horror Company)

It won't surprise you at all to learn that I've had my eye on this book since the end of last month; I was just waiting for publication and then I was just waiting for payday (dammit!) I got there in the end though and along with the celebratory pizza, I thought I'd finally read a Guy N. Smith book that was brand new (which is something that I haven't managed to do until now). So I picked up 'Satanic Armageddon' with mixed feelings, mostly because there are now only two more new books to come from Smith but also because, and I'll be completely honest, Smith's later works haven't hit the spot in the same way that his earlier books did.

So, where did 'Satanic Armageddon' land in the great scheme of things? Well, let me tell you...

The forces of evil, led by Satan's disciple, were massing worldwide to overthrow democracy. Throughout the UK and Europe the forces of evil were gathering to destroy democracy. Bombs, shootings, vehicles mowing down unsuspecting pedestrians in the streets. Death and destruction were rife.

Military and police were stretched. A terrorist, reputed to have a connection with the Dark Powers, was organising a massive army of fanatical murderers. He had to be located and killed before sheer evil ruled the world.
There was one man who just might be able to achieve this, John Mayo, known as the Man in the Black Fedora. He is summoned out of retirement by Counter Terrorism Command and given the task of achieving a seemingly impossible mission against overwhelming odds.

'The Black Fedora' was a bit of an odd read but one thing I did like was the character of John Mayo and I was keen to find out what he got up to, after that book ended, and also how he coped with this new mission. 'Satanic Armageddon' doesn't disappoint on that score as we get to find out what happened to John, in the years since his first mission in Lichfield, as well as seeing that even though he's in his sixties now, Mayo is still capable of mixing it up with villains both occult and otherwise. In that respect, it was definitely good to catch up with Mayo again and his escapades kept me reading along with him.

The book, as a whole though didn't feel like it flowed as easily as Mayo did and that made for a situation where things felt very uneven. I think that the book hamstrung itself by not giving itself the room to really show us what was going on. 'Satanic' Armageddon' is only 102 pages long, on the Kindle, and just simply isn't enough book to really show us that Armageddon taking place; we just get odd snatches of 'this is happening' that are quickly interupted as Mayo really needs to be getting on with saving the world. There certainly isn't enough room for the kind of 'pulp fiction evil' that Smith was known for; one occult(ish) execution is cool but not really enough to drive home how evil Zinovsky is supposed to be. What we get instead are loads of people telling us how evil Zinovsky is and a wild boar that might be evil but also just as likely to have been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Okay, there is enough to suggest that our wild boar was evil, I would have liked to have seen more of that.

Now I get the possible reasons why 'Satanic Armageddon' came in so short but there was clearly always going to be a price for that. 'Satanic Armageddon' works best as a short, sharp thriller, 'rescue the girl and go home' kind of book; I can totally get on board with that and did in fact, it's a good read on those lines. It's when it wants to be more that the short page count really works against it. There simply isn't the room for it to really go all out and hit the 'Armageddon' in the title.