Whitley Strieber's The Wolfen

The Wolfen is a 1978 horror novel by Whitley Strieber. The title suggests that this is going to be a werewolf story but it isn’t really. Or rather it is, but it’s a very very unconventional werewolf tale. And it’s unconventional in extremely interesting ways.

It starts with two New York cops on a routine duty in the auto pound. It’s very boring duty but it’s about the safest job in the whole NYPD. Or so they these two cops thought. Within minutes they’re torn to pieces. And eaten.

The detectives assigned to the case are Wilson and Becky Neff. Wilson is middle-aged, irascible, embittered, doesn’t approve of lady cops but he’s a brilliant detective. He doesn’t approve of Becky Neff until he has to grudgingly admit that she really does have a fine investigative brain. They bicker constantly, but they’re a great team. They hate each other, and they love each other.

This case is puzzling to say the least. The two dead cops were clearly killed by animals. Large powerful animals. Animals such as dogs. But they could not have been killed by dogs. Nothing about the way they were killed is consistent with a dog attack. Dogs just don’t operate that way. The department wants the case buried.

Then more bodies turn up. Wilson and Neff have found out a few things that make the case more puzzling. The animal tracks found nearby belong to no known species. It’s more and more obvious that it was an attack by a pack of animals, but a pack that behaves nothing like a pack of dogs. And nothing like a pack of wolves.

And then Wilson and Neff realise they’re being hunted. This is a story in which both sets of antagonists are both hunters and hunted.

The Chief Medical Examiner is baffled. Wilson and Neff turn to scientific experts for help. Dr Ferguson has a theory but he’s reluctant to reveal it. It’s too outlandish. The ridicule it would attract would end his career. But Wilson and Neff suspect his crazy theory is pretty close to the truth.

The Commissioner and the Chief of Detectives are too intent on playing politics to offer any assistance. In fact they’re planning to offer up the two detectives as scapegoats.

Becky Neff’s marital problems complicate things.

I’m not going to reveal what is really going on. It becomes clear quite early on but it’s more fun if you figure out it out at the same as the two detectives do so. It’s a very clever and original variation on the werewolf idea.

As in The Hunger Strieber gets us into the minds of non-human creatures. In this case the more we know about these creatures the more terrifying they are. And as in The Hunger he’s interested in the mindset of predators.

It’s also similar to The Hunger in its cynicism about power structures and the murky motivations of institutions.

The two cops are flawed but interesting. Becky Neff has a crooked cop husband to worry about but he’s not a crook in a straightforward way. Wilson isn’t conventionally likeable but we develop a certain respect for him and the relationship between the two detectives develops in intriguing ways.

There’s plenty of visceral horror but it isn’t gratuitous. We need to be appalled by the killings.

I haven’t read any of the UFO novels for which Strieber is best known but so far I’m very impressed by his horror fiction. The Wolfen is highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed The Hunger.