Scorpion: Second Generation

Novel by Michael R Linaker 1982.

In the sequel to 1980's Scorpion, a handful of scorpions - the only survivors from Long Point - make their way by boat down the coast from Kent to Cornwall, where they reach full size. By the second generation, that's a large full size: the beasts are now four feet long. Soon after they start attacking buildings and people, a local doctor conducting an autopsy twigs on to what's going on and brings in famous entomologist Miles Ranleigh. The hunt is then on to cleanse the tourist-crammed countryside of the scorpions before they create more carnage.

A decent but flawed second scorpion novel, from Michael Linaker, his third book after a poor and unrelated second horror novel, The Touch of Hell. The format unsurprisingly follows the traditional animals-on-the-rampage formula laid down in The Rats, but this has more in common with some of Guy Smith's early crabs books like Killer Crabs and Crabs' Moon, not least in the pincer power of their respective subject matter. Well written in the way Scorpion was and The Touch of Hell wasn't, the only real flaws come in the far too predictable ending; and the character of Jill Ansty, a far too perfect love interest. Otherwise, a worthy sequel and a pity that after three books in three years, Linaker contributed nothing else to the genre.