‘The Pluto Pact’ – Guy N. Smith (Hamlyn)

Page Count: 187 Pages

I’ve got a few books on the go but the last week, or so, has seen me fail to really get to grips with any of them. Not the fault of the books at all, this one is all down to me for reasons surrounding work, the weather being too damn hot, and looking after my girl’s pets while they were away. I never thought that looking after a cat and a rabbit would be any bother… Not until the weather got really hot, last week, and a pissed off rabbit decided that it was all the cat’s fault… Anyway.

A bit of a roundabout way of saying that I hit a little reading slump last week :o) I dealt with it though, watching a whole load of movies and picking up a book that I absolutely knew I’d finish. My last Guy N. Smith read was ‘Doomflight’, way back in April, so it was way past time that I picked up another book of his. Not sure what led me to pick ‘The Pluto Pact’, it took me a little longer to finish it, than I thought it would, but I’m glad that I finally gave it a go.

A Black Magician screaming curses of hatred…

A fiery object hurtling from the sky…

A patch of earth where no blade of grass will grow…

Centuries have passed since that terrible night of reckoning, but still the dark shadow hangs over a Scottish valley.

Bob Coyle believes that his home town is menaced by a new centre for disposing of nuclear waste – a lethally dangerous project he calls ‘Holocaust’. Yet his efforts to alert the people fall upon deaf – or angry – ear. For them, the centre means new found prosperity.

But a series of strange deaths and brutal killings at last starts to bring home the danger… and if Coyle’s worst fears are realised, countless millions will die in agony. Then the terrible curse of Balzur will be fulfilled.

If you’ve been around these parts for a while, you’ll know that Guy N. Smith’s books are a bit of a ‘go to’ for me. They’re a lot of fun to read and the ones that straddle a line between horror and eco-thriller are often very thoughtful at the same time. ‘The Pluto Pact’ is one of those ‘line straddlers’; an eco-thriller ‘race against time’ high stakes affair with a little dash of horror thrown in around the edges. It’s a little difficult to judge how effective the horror is, simply because it’s used very sparingly; it sets the scene at the beginning and then we don’t see much of it until the finale, just a few bits here and there to remind us that there is a supernatural element. To be fair, it works in providing a little edge to the proceedings, a reminder that forces are at play that we have no control over.

What I love about ‘The Pluto Pact’ though is that if you took the horror out entirely… Well, there’d be some work needed around the finale but the rest is a pretty taut thriller in it’s own right, loads of little plots playing out under a literal ticking timebomb. There is something here for everyone, in that respect, with the more personal stuff dovetailing perfectly with the wider picture of a Britain crumbling under the looming threat of a nuclear apocalypse, if World War 3 doesn’t happen first. And Bob Coyle is a great character to take us through all this. He’s as flawed as any of the rest of us but not only is he able to take responsibility for that, he’s able to put it to one side and concentrate on the bigger picture when that takes precedence. I can take a decent guess at what happened next for Bob but I wouldn’t have minded just one more chapter to get it down on paper. Less deserving ‘heroes’ have had that, Bob should have got it as well.

Would I have liked a little more horror in ‘The Pluto Pact’? Yes, I would but that’s just me. ‘The Pluto Pact’ is a great example of how there is more to Guy N. Smith than just pulp horror, he does a decent thriller as well.