Customer Reviews

Night of the Wolf

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Starting way, way back in the early seventies, what is forgotten by most is that Leisure, supposedly started as an offshoot of a porn publishing company, has had the longest continuing horror line in paperback history. For the most part of their history they published unknown authors like Jay Callahan or Jeff Fain. It wasn't until the late eighties that more familiar names, like Dana Reed or William Schoell (both still publishing) would start to pop up.

I don't know who Jay Callahan was, or is. If Callahan is a real person, then this seems to be his only novel other than a juvenille in the Twilight series in 1983. If Callahan is a pseudonym, then I don't know who was hiding behind it (children's author Jay O'Callahan?). Whatever the case, Callahan's werewolf novel was published during a time when Gary Brandner's "Howling" novels and movies were popular, and there are some real similarities between Brandner's and Callahan's products.

Quintin Barkley is a magazine photo reporter, and he gets the assignment from "Environment Magazine" to go to the small backwoods village of Thistle Hollow, Tennessee where a pack of exotic red wolves have been spotted so he could do a series of photo articles on them.

Stuck in an unhappy relationship, Quintin leaves his relationship behind, but takes his dog with him, and travels to Thistle Hollow where he meets a typical series of odd characters. After pulling into Thistle Hollow he meets Aunt Bel (Aunt Bee ?!?) who runs the local country store and who is the town's matriarch. She gives Quintin the grand tour of the town were he meets the sensual and seductive country beauty, the redheaded Serena, the local sineater Esco Fitts, the fanatical Reverend Poke, and the only local youth, the scared Tommy Lee. And there is the strange Lillie who seems to have gotten pregnant about the same time the last reporter was visiting Thistle Hollow, and who fell "mysteriously" to his death.

Then he is attacked by the pack of red wolves, his dog is killed, and there is a mysterious rash of deaths. That this is a rip-off of the "Howling" movie is seen in the novel's structure, wolves are mysteriously seen in a backwoods village, a man becomes estranged from his former life, is seduced by the local femme fatal, who we all know is somehow involved in the werewolf pack, and there is even a matriarch/patriarch that is manipulating the lead character from behind his back.

Yet, despite all of this, "Night Of The Wolf" works as a decent, if formula, short werewolf pulp novel, even if Quintin is a bit arrogant, and a bit dense. As formula fiction you can see where everything in "Night Of The Wolf" is going miles away, the problem that the novel really has however, is with the its ending. It sucks. There is no polite way to state it. The ending just out and out sucks.

Despite all that happens, the ending takes a hundred and twenty degree turn, ignores the plot's logic and the protagonist's previous feelings and intents. The ending is wrapped up in a few paragraphs and is reminiscent of one of those cheap "B" movies where somebody is trying to be overly clever, but isn't very clever at all, and gives the impression that Callahan had run up against his world limit and had to quickly wrap things up. Either that or Callahan had no idea how to end his novel. This is not a bad novel, but pretty unessential except for serious horror or werewolf buffs.

On the other hand, one of the things that Leisure Books used to have and it was excellent covers. "Night Of The Wolf" has an excellent and intense purple cover by "RSB" in which a wolf with blazing red eyes is glaring menacingly at the reader, and is reaching out to grab us with a human hand.