Smith was born in Hopwas, near Tamworth, Staffordshire, England. His mother was a pre-war historical novelist (E. M. Weale). Smith was first published at the age of 12 in the Tettenhall *Observer.* Between 1952-57 he wrote 56 stories for them. His father was a bank manager and Smith was destined for banking from birth. Guns and shooting became another early interest. In 1961 he designed and made a 12-bore shotgun, intending to follow it up with six more. During 1960-67 he operated a small shotgun cartridge loading business. During this time, he wrote regularly for most of the sporting magazines, interspersed with fiction for such magazines as the legendary London Mystery Selection, a quarterly anthology. In 1972 he launched a second hand bookselling business which eventually became Black Hill Books, which still operates today. In 1974 he published his first horror novel, *Werewolf by Moonlight*, but it was the bestselling *Night of the Crabs* in 1976 which really launched him as a writer of paperback horror originals. Amicus bought the film rights to *Crabs* in 1976, released as *Island Claws* in 1981 (albeit with no credit to Smith). The sale, however, gave Smith the chance to leave banking and support himself full-time by writing, spawning five sequels to *Night of the Crabs*, and was followed by another 60 or so horror novels through to the mid-1990's, spanning all genres including crime and mystery (as Gavin Newman), children's animal novels (as Jonathan Guy), a series of novelizations of popular Disney animated films including *Song of the South* and *The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,* a series of softcore erotic novels under various pseudonyms, and numerous how-to books devoted to fishing, shooting, animal identification, and other matters of practical gamekeeping.
Smith lived with his wife Jean. Together they had four adult children, Rowan, Tara, Gavin and Angus. A lifelong pipe-smoker, Smith won the British pipe-smoking championship in 2003, collected pipes and smoking ephemera, and wrote a book on tobacco.
Smith died due to complications of COVID-19, at the age of 81.
