The Wolfen By Whitley Strieber

The Wolfen
By Whitley Strieber
1979 Bantam Books
Paperback, 275 pages

                This is another one of those classic horror books that I’ve seen the movie of, but I never got around to reading. I took the bait recently when I found two different copies in thrift stores. I bought them both, if only to assure myself that I had to read it. Well, I did and I’m glad. It is pretty great.

 

                Two cops are found mutilated in a remote autobody yard in New York. The city’s finest homicide detectives are put on the case; George Wilson, an older, slovenly, misogynistic, racist curmudgeon who makes up for his lack of social skills with a keen detective’s eye, and Becky Neff, a young but proven cop. This odd couple has the unenvious job of trying to figure out who or what killed these two. The bodies look eaten. There are paw prints. Dogs? Could there have been wolves? Werewolves?

 

                The bodies keep piling up and the duo are starting to lean towards the latter, even though they know such things don’t exist. But something is out there, and they are as smart as man, stealthy and incredibly fast. Ferguson, a doctor at the Museum of Natural History is starting to believe them. He has extrapolated what they might look like from a plaster cast of a pawprint. The Medical Examiner is also on board. But how could it be?

 

                Strieber’s werewolf history works for me here. These canids have been around for a long time and yes, the werewolf legends probably derived from them. But they are so stealthy, and they cover their tracks so well that they have gone almost unnoticed for thousands of years. Passages of the book are told from the Wolfen’s point of view, so we understand a lot about their intelligence and the laws of the pack. I buy it implicitly. This species is so smart, they think of wolves as vacant and dumb. And they know that they have to find and remove the two detectives who could reveal their secret.

 

                Everybody has an opinion on older books and this one gets slammed for being misogynistic. Yes, Wilson certainly is. He’s an old-fashioned dope, but Neff is such a strong and capable character that to me, she erases any negativity that the reader might (incorrectly) surmise. In fact, not mentioned in any of the dozens of online reviews that I compared my own thoughts to, is that Wilson and Neff’s relationship changes and corresponds with that of the leaders of the Wolfen pack that is terrorizing New York. (Though Wilson’s revelation of his romantic love for his partner is unneeded.)

 

                The book blows the movie away. The movie could never touch on the inner working of the Wolfen mind, nor could it have survived with the police procedural layout of the book. The film (Michael Wadleigh, 1981) added in extraneous bullshit that takes the souls of the Wolfen away, and that’s one of the book’s most relevant aspects. Good movie, excellent book.

Man-Eater By Ted Willis

 

Man-Eater
By Ted Willis
1976 Bantam
Paperback, 200 pages

 

This is a good one. More thriller than flat out horror, it delivers the gory goods while maintaining an exciting and compelling story. A washed-up animal trainer releases a pair of tigers into the English countryside and even though they had been raised in captivity, their survival instincts take over. Terror and mayhem ensue.

Willis fills the book with believable characters and even though they might seem cookie-cutter on paper (the tired detective, the eccentric sharp-shooter, socialite, etc.) they are brought to vivid life, and I totally bought it all. Best of all, when the story takes on the tigers’ point of view, it adds another layer of adventure and pathos, rather than falling into silliness like it might in a lesser writer’s hands. The book chugs along quickly and you embrace all of the characters involved, both human and feline.

Willis (eventually Lord Willis) never ventured any closer to the horror genre than he did with Man-Eater. A successful playwright, screenwriter and, especially, TV writer, he even wound up in the Guinness Book of World Records as world's most prolific writer for television. Man-Eater was made into a TV movie for CBS in 1978 called Maneaters Are Loose starring Tom Skerrit. In the film, the action moved from England to California, naturally.

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Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ By Mendal W. Johnson

 

Let’s Go Play at the Adams’
By Mendal W. Johnson
1974 Bantam
Paperback, 282 pages

 

                This novel is inspired by the Sylvia Likens murder case, as was Jack Ketchum’s later work The Girl Next Door (1989). Thanks to Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell, this book has had a resurgence in interest, driving already high prices even higher. Vanguard has reprinted it under the PfH banner. Perhaps that is why I found an original at a good price. I took the plunge.

 

                While the Adams are vacationing in Europe, they have their responsible baby-sitter Barbara minding their two children: 13-year-old Bobby and 10-year-old Cindy. All is rosy until Barbara wakes up to find herself tethered to her bed. She comes to learn that it is a “game” being played by the Freedom Five, the two Adams kids and their friends, 16-year-old John, Dianne, almost 18, and her brother Paul, also in his young teens. They consider her, at 20, to be an adult and, though they like her, she is one of them… a grown-up. Now the kids were in power.

               

                Naturally, things ascend, though they happen at a slow pace. There were times that I was afraid I was going to give up on it (a la Stephen King’s Gerald’s Game, a book I found so desperately boring that I didn’t finish it and haven’t read a King book since), but the prose made me stick with it, for better or worse. As the story progresses, so do the children’s cruel ambitions, and Barbara is methodically stripped, raped, and tortured. Much of this made me angry. I’m like, come on! You’re bigger and smarter than they are… make it stop. But this was just all a part of Johnson’s mastery of storytelling.

 

                Every character’s point of view is explored, from the 10-year-old right up through to the captive Barbara. In parts, I couldn’t tell if I thought it was wildly misogynistic or if that might just be how certain characters felt about the situation. At any rate, it made me very uneasy for much of the book’s length, but I had to keep going. Such is the strength of this narrative.

 

                The book absolutely kicked my ass.

 

                It took a few days (weeks?) to come up from the lows this book made me feel. It is said that Johnson’s wife blames this book, the author’s only published work, for killing him, driving him into deeper drink and depression. I can believe it. The attention to detail put into the psyche of each character makes everyone’s motives and beliefs crystal clear. And that makes it all even more horrifying.

 

                My wife has read Ketcham’s book and said I should avoid it, that it would make me mad. I have also heard that Adams’ is a “lighter” take on the same subject. I shall definitely be avoiding Ketcham’s book. Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ absolutely kicked my ass.

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Flowers of Evil By Robert Charles

 

Flowers of Evil
By Robert Charles
1982, Bantam
Paperback, 200 pages

 

I love nature when it strikes back. Of course, animals killing humans is the best but let’s hear it for the flora that gets into the action as well! A lesser-known entry in the plant-panic pantheon is Flowers of Evil and it’s a worthwhile read.

Some odd little flowers are discovered near a nuclear fallout zone in Russia and one of the research team grabs a couple of the pretty blooms. She gives one to her seafaring brother before she realizes that they are nourished by blood and very capable of getting it. The plant’s seeds are eventually sent adrift, only to plant themselves on a remote island where a troubled family is stationed for the season. So, we get a bloodthirsty plant epidemic in two places simultaneously.

Robert Charles (aka Robert Charles Smith and Robert Leader) primarily writes thrillers, but he does a great job with this eco-horror entry. It’s not overly graphic but the story development and the characters keep the pages turning and the plants are formidable foes, growing larger with every drop of blood. One thing that really struck a chord with me, an amateur naturalist, was that the remote island was a resting spot for migratory birds, and the plants were decimating the populations as they landed, making the island a tangled, evil mess.

Not as grisly as many horror pulps from the same period, but this is a compelling and well written book that can still be grabbed on the cheap.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #9, March, 2022.

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