The Hunter from the Woods By Robert McCammon

The Hunter from the Woods
By Robert McCammon
Copyright 2011

What is a lycanthrope in the eyes of God?

These stories all occur before or after the action in the McCammon novel, The Wolf's Hour.

The Great White Way
A young Mikhail is working as an animal keeper in a gypsy circus. He is having an affair with the girlfriend of the circus’ professional wrestler. She tries to set him up for a fall after he speaks to another woman. Mikhail has the last laugh.

The first story starts to fill in the backstory of Mikhail, still a youth freshly escaped from the fate that met his fellow werewolves. I loved the narrative voice combined with sparse dialogue.

The Man from London
A spy from London infiltrates a remote Russian village in search of a man that is believed to have extraordinary abilities that will help the British cause. He finds a filthy youth living in a church, surrounded by his own filth. He is disgusted by young Mikhail and the time he wasted in searching him out. However, when he tries to escape Russia, he finds that Mikhail does indeed live up to his billing.

As a stand-alone short story, this was a bit thin. However, it fills in another space in Mikhail’s backstory.

Sea Chase
Michael Gallatin is aboard a freighter in the days leading up to World War II. He is posing as a deck hand to protect a Nazi defector and his family aboard the ship. A Nazi ship is in pursuit and eventually catches up to them. Michael and the captain combine their efforts to lead their nearly crippled ship to safety while defeating the Nazis.

This was everything a short story with an established character should be. It can’t quite stand on its own because McCammon is assuming you know Gallatin’s backstory. However, the plot and the other characters work incredibly well and the story is inventive and exciting.

The Wolf and the Eagle
While flying from the desert battlefront to Cairo, Michael Gallatin’s plane is shot down during an aerial battle. His shoulder is badly injured and he is in the middle of nowhere. He is soon taken prisoner by the German aviator who shot down his plane. The enemies soon find common cause when they are hunted by desert warriors who know no side in the conflict and kill indiscriminately. They also face a common foe called thirst. Finally, coming upon a village of desert marauders, Gallatin hatches a plan to get water that will require the men to cooperate.

Not much of the werewolf trope in this story, but a good story nonetheless. It was not hard to see where it was going with the enemies having to combine forces to survive. What is remarkable is the portrayal of the German aviator as a great warrior and a decent human being. That characterization along with great storytelling make The Wolf and the Eagle another worthy entry in the life story of Michael Gallatin.

The Room at the Bottom of the Stairs
Michael Gallatin’s new assignment is the oldest of the old spy assignments. Make his way into Berlin to seduce a magazine photographer who has been quite adept at identifying members of the German resistance and having them killed. Gallatin meets her and the two are instantaneously taken with each other. Michael finds himself falling for her hard, despite what she is. Eventually word comes down that he’s the man to do it and it has to be done now. Michael dispenses with his usual means of disposing of people to do something different for this woman.

This was quite a long story and was mostly a love story. No werewolves were present until the end when Michael had to make his final escape. It was quite well told and, while we knew that McCammon could produce some decent erotica, we learn that he writes the stuff on par with Jacqueline Suzanne and Judith Krantz.

Death of a Hunter
It’s 1953 and Michael is living in his remote Scottish estate as a recluse. His last job involved learning more about Chinese operations in Singapore and he was photographed as a wolf. The Chinese have made it a point to capture him alive or dead – but preferably alive. When they arrive, he, at an advanced age, finds his toughest opponents yet.

This story was short and sad. All that we know about Michael – his tragic childhood, his warrior background, his proud lycathtropic heritage comes to an end. I felt the end of Michael Gallatin like I’ve felt the end of few characters. I did not realize how much this book added to how deeply I felt about him until I got to the end.

Comes the Blind Fury By John Saul

Comes the Blind Fury
By John Saul
Copyright 1980

A century ago, a young, blind girl walks along a path near her home. Familiar with the path, she is comfortable and happy making her way near a sheer bluff. But soon come the other kids to tease and taunt her because she is blind. She panics and stumbles over the bluff to her death. In her plummet to the beach below, she swears revenge.

One hundred years later, Michelle Pendleton moves to Paradise Point from Boston. Eager to enjoy small town life and make new friends, Amanda welcomes the move. Her father, Dr. Cal Pendleton, is there to take over the practice of the aging town doctor.

While moving in, Michelle finds an old china doll in a closet. She names the doll Amanda. She soon learns from her new friends that a little girl named Amanda once lived in her house and died after falling from the bluff. Amanda’s grave is quite well known in the town as his her mother’s whose stone has quite the cryptic inscription.

Michelle’s mother soon gives birth to Michelle’s new sister and events turn for Michelle. She is adopted and becomes painfully aware that her parents now have a biological daughter of their own. One day, she is at a picnic on the beach with several friends when a girl starts teasing her about being adopted. Michelle runs away, but trips on the bluff and falls. She is badly injured.

After a while, her physical injuries heal, but she maintains that she needs a cane to walk. She starts dressing in all black. Soon, she is an outcast and the kids routinely make fun of her. She seems not to care. After all, she has a new friend in Amanda who comes to show her things.

Soon, kids around Paradise Cove begin dying. Those who torment Michelle seem to die in unfortunate accidents or are outright murdered. The only person present when these deaths occur is Michelle. Soon, the past and the present converge, brought about by a vengeful spirit and a vengeful human bent on visiting his family curse upon a man he feels wronged him.

This is John Saul’s fourth novel and he employs what became his standard format for many of his books. Child wronged a hundred years ago seeks revenge by employing a child of today. The characters and circumstances are different, but, with a few exceptions, the same trope applies. Nonetheless, Saul has a way of telling a good story employing this framework again and again.

The story is much tighter than Saul’s earlier works. The evil is defined. The reason the past is important is part of the mystery that is brought nicely to fruition. The main character is two parts sympathetic, one part slacker. Saul did leave us with a taste of ambiguity that worked for the story. Did Michelle kill because she wanted to? Or did Amanda’s lust for revenge drive her to it.

All the usual Saul tropes are here. The weak, indecisive father. The ancient evil bent on revenge. The wife who has no idea what is going on around her. The small town cop who is friends with the family around which all the evil is transpiring. One could complain that Saul tells the same tale over and over again. Perhaps, but many great books are retellings of older books. Saul uses the same devices over and over again to tell decent stories. This is never going to earn him a spot in the pantheon of great horror writers who weave a different tale every time. But that does not make him any less fun to read and sometimes, it’s good to have fun while reading.

The Exorcist By William Peter Blatty

The Exorcist
By William Peter Blatty
Copyright 1971

The book. The movie. Both acclaimed in their respective media. Both are chilling. Both are fantastic.

From Wikipedia:
An elderly Jesuit priest named Father Lankester Merrin is leading an archaeological dig in northern Iraq and is studying ancient relics. After discovering a small statue of the demon Pazuzu (an actual ancient Assyrian demigod), a series of omens alerts him to a pending confrontation with a powerful evil, which, unknown to the reader at this point, he has battled before in an exorcism in Africa.

Meanwhile, in Georgetown, a young girl named Regan MacNeil is living with her famous mother, actress Chris MacNeil, who is in Georgetown filming a movie. As Chris finishes her work on the film, Regan begins to become inexplicably ill. After a gradual series of poltergeist-like disturbances in their rented house, for which Chris attempts to find rational explanations, Regan begins to rapidly undergo disturbing psychological and physical changes: she refuses to eat or sleep, becomes withdrawn and frenetic, and increasingly aggressive and violent. Chris initially mistakes Regan's behavior as a result of repressed anger over her parents' divorce and absent father.

After several unsuccessful psychiatric and medical treatments, Regan's mother, an atheist, turns to a local Jesuit priest for help as Regan's personality becomes increasingly disturbed. Father Damien Karras, who is currently going through a crisis of faith coupled with the loss of his mother, agrees to see Regan as a psychiatrist, but initially resists the notion that it is an actual demonic possession. After a few meetings with the child, now completely inhabited by a diabolical personality, he turns to the local bishop for permission to perform an exorcism on the child.

The bishop with whom he consults does not believe Karras is qualified to perform the rites, and appoints the experienced Merrin—who has recently returned to the United States—to perform the exorcism, although he does allow the doubt-ridden Karras to assist him. The lengthy exorcism tests the priests both physically and spiritually. When Merrin, who had previously suffered cardiac arrhythmia, dies during the process, completion of the exorcism ultimately falls upon Father Karras. When he demands that the demonic spirit inhabit him instead of the innocent Regan, the demon seizes the opportunity to possess the priest. Karras heroically surrenders his own life in exchange for Regan's by jumping out of her bedroom window and falling to his death, regaining his faith in God as his last rites are read.

The name William Peter Blatty is not a household name like Stephen King. He did not produce a prolific amount of horror fiction or much fiction for that matter. But in delivering The Exorcist, Blatty wrote one of the absolute cornerstones of the horror genre and built upon the ground laid by writers like Ira Levin to put horror novels back on the shelves and inspire novelists to write horror after the genre was nearly dormant for more than a decade.

It’s hard to put a finger on just what makes The Exorcist so good because it does have a few problems. The dialogue is atrocious. Blatty has a tin ear for the spoken word. It was stilted, choppy, and sometimes painful to read. I know he was trying hard to develop the detective as a deliberate bumbler – Columbo before Columbo. But he tried too hard. It was difficult to read when he talked.

One of the plot devices Blatty employs – the desecration of the churches – is never fully utilized or developed. We are supposed to understand that Regan did this or that Pazuzu did it. But the link is never established. This could have taken the novel to whole new levels of terror. I wanted to see so much more done with this.


What is good is the development of Chris MacNeil as a mother. She is a famous actress and Blatty gives us just enough of this to make her interesting. What he does so much more thoroughly for the benefit of the reader is develop her as a mother with a seemingly unsolvable problem with her daughter. She is desperate. She is frightened. In an age when eschewing faith was trendy with the nation’s elite, she was forced to return to it. It all was developed wonderfully.

The setting added a lot to the plot. This was not a medieval village or a remote part of Europe or the Middle East. Pazuzu took his act right to the nation’s capital, just off the Georgetown campus. It was urban America. It was a wealthy family with a wealthy child. American readers could relate. The landmarks were real to them. The people were real. That went a long way to making The Exorcist an excellent horror novel.

The strongest element was the blending of science and religion. Father Karras is not only a priest, but a psychiatrist. He tries science, grasping at the rational before employing his wavering faith. He exhausts the solutions science has to offer before seeking a religious solution. This blending lent a great deal of rationality to the novel in an era when society sought rational answers for all dysfunction.

I’ve heard the movie called the scariest film of all time. I disagree. It is a good film bordering on great. But scary? No. The book ranks very highly on the various rankings of horror novels. Is it that terrifying? I didn’t think so. It is interesting. It is compelling reading. It is a good story, well paced and tightly told. But it didn’t have me transfixed the way The Shining or the Haunting of Hill House did. Those are superior scary stories.

Blatty’s novel was timely inasmuch as Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby was. Faith in the church in America was ebbing in 1971. The social revolution of the 1960s had ended, but its aftermath was still much a part of the American fabric. Blatty’s novel served to remind America of the power of faith. I don’t mean to preach the gospel. It’s just an observation that faith and religion are powerful. At a time when its importance was diminishing, Blatty’s novel and movie was as subtle as a brick to the forehead.

If you are a fan of horror, The Exorcist is an absolute must-read. The tropes Blatty establishes would be used by many other authors for stories of possession. Blatty drew from fact and solid research and introduced it to the horror community. It became a wellspring of modern possession tales and should be valued for that if nothing else.