'Spiders' – Richard Lewis (Hamlyn Paperbacks)

Another quick post today. I'm still feeling rough, work is still giving me a bit of a kicking and with the best will in the world, there's only so much blog post that you're going to get out of a book that weighs in at a hundred and fifty three pages long. But here I am :o) Lets do it.

One of the things I absolutely love about old horror books (apart from reading them) is going straight to the back of the book and reading all the blurbs of the books where it all began. I can't remember which book I found the 'Spiders' blurb in (although it's a safe bet that it was by Guy N. Smith) but when I saw it, I knew I had to read the rest of the book myself. It took a little ebaying but I got there in the end ;o) So, let's talk 'Spiders'...

The Kentish countryside was bathed in golden autumn sunshine. All around lay peace and tranquility.

Maybe it was too peaceful, too ominously quiet, but who'd complain about that? Certainly not old Dan Mason, energetically tugging out weeds in his farmhouse garden.

What he'd uncovered there didn't alarm him. But it should have. For he'd just released a seething army of death...

If we're talking about bugs that scare me, it's always going to be wasps at the top of the list but since living on my own, spiders have made a quiet resurgence , They're so quiet, I hate it when I turn round to see one dangling in the air behind me (what if I hadn't turned round...?) and that feeling when you realise an absolutely HUGE one has been living in your bathroom and you never knew... Well, reading 'Spiders' has not made me feel better about any of, quite the opposite in fact. I still enjoyed it though, which is all the more surprising when you consider that...

'Spiders' doesn't really do anything that's new... A chunk of wildlife suddenly gone mad? Check. Characters set up with enough backstory to make it a bit of a shock when they go out in a blaze of fangs and gore? We're covered here as well. It's very easy to get into the ebb and flow of 'Spiders' which wasn't a bad thing but very easily could have been. I guess the question is, with books like these, are you actually looking for something new, or do you want something that is well worn and familiar? Your answer to that question will very much determine what you get out of this book.

But having said all that... Richard Lewis does have a couple of tricks up his sleeve which step things up a gear and rescued the book for me. His implacable and remorseless spiders are bloody terrifying as they literally will not stop until they're eating something (and it may be you). And while there are some big mutant spiders, it's Lewis' depictions of the little ones creeping into well... everywhere that really unsettle. After all, regular spiders find their way into my flat without even seeming to try so Lewis' spiders could be here already (he thinks to himself), I hate spiders.

A very unsettling read then, Lewis knows exactly why we hate spiders and throws all those reasons right back at us in his plot. It's not just that though, Lewis is quite happy to go that extra mile and really mess with our heads with some of the victims (Content Warning for parents of young children...) and what happens to them. What we suddenly have then is a book that not only creeps you right out but also turns your stomach. It's the perfect read, for me, in that respect. The introduction of a flawed but relentless hero is just the icing on the cake.

And thanks to it's short page count, that's all I can really say about 'Spiders' other than that if you like your horror and see a copy of 'Spiders' anywhere, do pick it up. I'll be looking for a copy of 'The Web' in the meantime.