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Author Smith's Book Reviews

Constant Change
More a triptych than a trilogy, Paths of Error gives us 3 views through the same window of time. In this the second book, Constant Change, the main character, Blue, begins as an idealist with no ideals. His way is found through women. Rejected by his first girlfriend he drifts into the Merchant Navy, jumps ship in Sri Lanka. Through an American girl there he discovers Buddhism. In London, through an Irish girl, he comes back to boozy earth with a bump . ...
Happiness
Within the supreme Space civilization the one moon of the planet Happiness goes missing and all ships and their crew that try to leave the planet are destroyed. Except for the local police ship. A set of characters - ranging from a bureaucratic Space Department director, a female astrophysicist, an anthropologist, an expert on Nautili, a cameraman, a mysterious businessman, an aging gymnast, a Senator from a distant Space city, as well as the police cons...
Marks
.... three things happen to turn Somerset divorce detective George Hawkins' view of life upside down. On the same day that he witnesses a hit'n run, his house is burgled and his live-in girlfriend disappears. The police suspect him of hiding her body. As a psychological novel, this has the detective subsequently projecting his inner histories onto the puzzling events around him. While on another level 'Marks' becomes an historical novel, with its roots ...
Not Now: Death, Dreams & Reasons for Living
Within the supreme Space civilisation a young poet, Okinwe Orbinson, is recruited by a mysterious stranger who, swearing him to secrecy, deposits him on a planet where he is to attempt a solution to an epidemic of suicide among a race of telepathic people. Okinwe Orbinson witnesses three graphic suicides and retreats to a lakeside, where he falls in love. And slowly, piece by piece, he finds the solution to the suicides. ...

Smith booklist

Paths of Error: As Recorded
A story in its own right, 'As Recorded'is the third and final book of Sam Smith's Torbay trilogy, 'Paths of Error'. Told throughout in interview form, in 'As Recorded' the hero, Sniff - as he was known in 'Constant Change' and 'Undeclared War' - tells of the childhood of the trilogy's 5 main characters - Newt, Blue, Pancho, Mort and himself - from their starting school in Curledge Street to their all going on to Totnes Grammar; and of their fi...
Perceived Histories
The book describes a 24 hour shift with RSW Fat Barry in a British 'care' home for adolescent girls. During those 24 hours one girl teeters on the dge of psychosis, others sniff solvents, 3 go on the game; and they fight, one cuts, one smears faeces, one steals; and one member of staff slips towards a nervous breakdown... Throughout we are given the case history of each girl, c.v. of each member of staff, all interspersed with quotes from invented texts....
Porlock Counterpoint
Porlock Counterpoint has two couples: the middle class smugglers in their yacht set against the very different preoccupations of the young couple, just out of Care, who begin the story by stealing the smugglers' car in order to get to hospital. The police come upon the stolen car in the hospital carpark and find in it two jerrycans of raw cocaine. Which they leave there, in the hope of trapping whoever has stolen the car. But the thief gets away with th...
Sister Blister
A gangster's wife and youngest children are killed by a car bomb. To overcome his own grief, he becomes a grief counsellor; but on his own starts to confide in his stillborn twin sister. This introspection is interrupted by two men who break into his woodland garden in search of their missing sons......
The End of Science Fiction
A woman is murdered: the English Prime Minister informs his cabinet that there are 6 days to the end of the world. Prior to learning of this a police inspector begins his investigation of the murder. That investigation is stubbornly pursued - with asides from various science fiction clasics (invented) - while the world goes to pieces around him....
Undeclared War
More a triptych than a trilogy, 'Paths of Error' gives us 3 views through the same window of time. This, the first, 'Undeclared War', sees rebel-born Tom Newson fighting his way out of Paignton, into the army, through Cyprus and out of the army. In 60s Brixham he discovers drugs. In Crete he finds a life worth living. Then he finds an old girlfriend. But he ends up, lost, dealing in 70s London......

Sam Smith list of books

We Need Madmen
A survivor of a totalitarian Europe, but living under an army of occupation, following Europe's defeat by the rest of the world, Henry accidentally steals the funds of the defeated Soperites. Bankrolled by them he sets out, gradually, to avenge himself and wipe out all those remaining Soperite sympathisers still at large. Using first a knife, he progresses to an automatic weapon and from obvious functionaries of the totalitarian state to its more ambiguo...