Gila! – Les Simons (Kathryn Ptacek)

Signet – 1981

To be honest, I chose to read this book because it’s only 166 pages long. It’s not good.

Some lizards on a nuclear testing site get big and start rampaging through New Mexico, eating everybody in their path. A reptile-expert from the local college is brought out to assess the situation. She falls in love with an ex-colleague, and they have a lot of sex. The lizards really go nuts at a fair, and the authorities’ first attempts to kill them fail. Eventually the scientist comes up with a way to kill them, and everything looks like it’s going to work out until the last page of the novel.

There are some gory scenes, but nothing memorable. Two of the characters are frequently banging eachother, but the reader is never invited to share the experience. One of the shaggers is a Native American, and although the inclusion of a mixed race couple might have seemed progressive in 1981, the interactions between this couple would not fly today. I think at one point the woman tells the man to go back to his wigwam.

This was one of the most predictable, unimaginative books I have ever read. It felt like reading a practice run for a novel, like it was written just so the author could get a feel for sticking 150+ pages of words together. This was Kathryn Ptacek’s first novel, so maybe her others are better. It’s not surprising she used a pseudonym for this one. The plot here is on autopilot, and the only surprising thing about this book is that it found a publisher. It really seems like anyone with enough time to type out a manuscript could have had a book published in the 80s

I’m not a huge fan of animal horror, and this book did nothing to change my opinion. It was pretty shit, but I didn’t absolutely hate it.