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Moon of the Wolf
Moon Of The Wolf delivers a living, breathing Mississippi town in your hands.
- GenresHorrorWerewolvesFiction
188 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 3, 2017
Rating: 2.5* of five
Okay. Well, a few things to discuss: 1) The 1967 novel's perfectly adequate and not one whit better than it needs to be. 2) The made-for-ABC movie from 1972 is one of those really crummy movies of the week that ABC was (in)famous for in the 1970s, the Friday night teens-and-tweens monster flicks. 3) Author Whitten died at 89 on 1 December 2017.
The novel, an ancient paperback copy of which I've had for a zillion years, is an artifact of a bygone age. It was a mediocre un-horrifying horror novel or a middling police procedural, raised above the run of the mill insofar as it ever was, by the Mississippi setting and the daring for the times interracial sex and romance. It passed an afternoon, and it was less than memorable until I saw that the author died.
The TV movie is only tangentially related to the book. All the "miscegenation" and therefore titillation was removed, the setting changed to Bayou Louisiana, and the acting exactly what you'd expect from a 1970s TV film. The script? Ugh. All the stilted dialogue survived, none of the mildly exciting naughtiness did, the unLouisiana accents the actors attempted weren't good...no one down south says "pee-can" when speaking of the tree nut ever...and the whitewashing of the victim took away any smallest interest the murder has.
Author Whitten, gawd bless 'im, wasn't a dab hand at the novels. His bio of F. Lee Bailey isn't terribly deft either, but had the disadvantage of being written while the subject was alive. I had another of his novels around, Conflict of Interest, and it was pretty dadgummed dreary. It's been sitting in a box for years and I forgot I hadn't finished it. Bookmark evidence suggests I stalled on pp110-111. In casting my eyes over the prose, it brought back exactly nothing.
So no, don't go looking for the book. It's not unusual or intriguing. But I'm still a little sad when someone who dedicated his life to wordsmithing passes unnoticed from the world.
Okay. Well, a few things to discuss: 1) The 1967 novel's perfectly adequate and not one whit better than it needs to be. 2) The made-for-ABC movie from 1972 is one of those really crummy movies of the week that ABC was (in)famous for in the 1970s, the Friday night teens-and-tweens monster flicks. 3) Author Whitten died at 89 on 1 December 2017.
The novel, an ancient paperback copy of which I've had for a zillion years, is an artifact of a bygone age. It was a mediocre un-horrifying horror novel or a middling police procedural, raised above the run of the mill insofar as it ever was, by the Mississippi setting and the daring for the times interracial sex and romance. It passed an afternoon, and it was less than memorable until I saw that the author died.
The TV movie is only tangentially related to the book. All the "miscegenation" and therefore titillation was removed, the setting changed to Bayou Louisiana, and the acting exactly what you'd expect from a 1970s TV film. The script? Ugh. All the stilted dialogue survived, none of the mildly exciting naughtiness did, the unLouisiana accents the actors attempted weren't good...no one down south says "pee-can" when speaking of the tree nut ever...and the whitewashing of the victim took away any smallest interest the murder has.
Author Whitten, gawd bless 'im, wasn't a dab hand at the novels. His bio of F. Lee Bailey isn't terribly deft either, but had the disadvantage of being written while the subject was alive. I had another of his novels around, Conflict of Interest, and it was pretty dadgummed dreary. It's been sitting in a box for years and I forgot I hadn't finished it. Bookmark evidence suggests I stalled on pp110-111. In casting my eyes over the prose, it brought back exactly nothing.
So no, don't go looking for the book. It's not unusual or intriguing. But I'm still a little sad when someone who dedicated his life to wordsmithing passes unnoticed from the world.
April 8, 2018
(1968 Ace mass-market paperback with George Ziel art, 188 pages)
During the Depression-era 1930s, the people of a small farming community in Mississippi are spending their nights in fear of a vicious madman on the loose. The victims are so thoroughly torn apart that some think an animal, such as a wolf, is responsible. But then how did it break into the police station one night, and into a prisoner's cell? The black community in the poor section of town resort to voodoo concoctions and charms for protection against what they believe is neither man nor wolf, but both. Deputy Aaron Whitaker is tasked with with heading the investigation into the brutal murders.
Moon of the Wolf is basically framed as a police procedural, with Whitaker following various leads and clues, while all the while the reader knows who (and what) the culprit is. This makes for a rather frustrating read at times, as the whole story is set up as a mystery, and yet the solution is pretty obvious from the start. Still, the last 60-70 pages of the novel picks up the pace quite a bit, and contains a few pretty chilling moments, which somewhat makes up for the extremely slow first two-thirds.
I did find the race relations between the white and black communities very well-done, and Whitten effectively explores the differences between the two groups. Being the south in the 1930s, there is some racism, but mostly the white community believe in fairness and justice for victims no matter their color. Also, the author really sets an eerie, atmospheric tone with his descriptions of the foggy, swampy fields under the cold moonlight, and captures the overall fear of the town very well. You can feel the terror these people are experiencing. Not so much with specific individuals, but the town as a whole.
Overall, though, the snail-like pace of the majority of the novel mars what otherwise could have been a pretty effective thriller. It's still worth reading for fans of werewolf stories and Southern Gothics, imo, but don't go in expecting some non-stop thrill ride.
3.0 Stars
September 22, 2018
Dateline: Stanley, Mississippi (population 900) in late 1938-early 1939; a majority-black but white-ruled little community in the Mississippi River delta area, still mired in segregation and Depression-era poverty. At our story's opening, in the last days of December, part-time deputy sheriff (and former Marine) Aaron Whitaker is awakened at dawn, summoned out to a fallow field where Haitian-descended Ellie Burrifous, a 19-year-old black nursing student, has been found dead. One arm has been torn off at the shoulder and is missing; her throat and body have been savagely clawed. Perhaps she was mauled by feral dogs (of which the county has plenty), since wolves have been extinct in the area for some 50 years --but her face and neck have bruises that were made by hands, not paws.
I read Progeny of the Adder (1965) by Les Whitten --who, sadly, died in Dec. 2017-- as a teen. At the time, I was quite intrigued by his approach to the vampire mythos, depicting the way a 20th-century law enforcement agency might respond to killings that are in fact the work of a vampire; I like fictional treatments of the everyday world invaded by the supernatural, so the juxtaposition of mundane police procedural and vampire fiction was right up my alley. :-) In 1972, I learned of the existence of the book reviewed here, through watching the TV movie adaptation starring David Janssen and Bradford Dillman (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068967/ --I actually liked the movie, though some other Goodreaders have panned it, but I can state categorically that it departs from the book in several important ways). It was clear from the film version that here Whitten was doing the same thing for the werewolf mythos, so I definitely wanted to read the book. Back then, though, I knew little or nothing of interlibrary loan, and BookMooch (and the Internet) didn't exist. It took me until a few years ago to actually get my hands on a copy of the book, and until now to finally read it. It definitely didn't disappoint!
This isn't a well-known book; as some reviewers have noted, it was written before "horror" was a big-budget book trade category. And classifying and approaching it as "horror," a terminology I don't care for to begin with, is probably not the most helpful avenue here; for most modern readers, raised on splatter-punk and slasher flicks, the term apparently connotes an unceasing gore-fest from cover to cover, and that expectation is going to be dashed here. That kind of dashed expectation apparently accounts for the relatively low overall rating of this novel on Goodreads. The four other text reviews range from ratings of one star to three, and there are indications that the two reviewers who gave it three stars were confusing Goodreads' rating system with Amazon's (so that they probably meant to give it two). Words and concepts like "boring," "mediocre," and slow-paced show up; there are complaints of not continuous enough violent werewolf attacks, and of the book not being "horrifying" enough. (Of 19 ratings besides mine, only four were in the 4-5 star range; 13 are in the 2-3 range.) I note this to make it clear upfront that mine is a minority view, stemming from different tastes than those of most other reviewers. Your reaction, if you read it, will depend on your own tastes; but hopefully I can indicate what kind of read you can expect.
One reviewer complained that we already know (from the cover art) what's causing the killings, so that the mystery element is lost. IMO, that's not a problem; as in episodes of the old TV series Columbo, knowing the solution to the mystery is a given, but the interest is in seeing how the policeman will discover and prove it. Knowing something the protagonist doesn't can be an intriguing perspective for the reader, not the reverse. Within the werewolf sub-genre, this is definitely a traditional "werewolf as ravening killer" treatment; our antagonist here does not retain human morals in the transformed state. (It also doesn't interpret the transformation as shifting into actual wolf shape; as in the old movies with Lon Chaney, our werewolf here is a hairy man-animal hybrid.) I actually found the pacing to be perfect, building to a crescendo rather than wallowing in gore from the get-go, and the unfolding of the investigation to be anything but boring. (At 222 pages, it's a fairly quick read.) The author also evokes the setting very masterfully, and pays attention to the small-town racial and class relations and attitudes in that era. Characterization is serious and well-developed. The scary atmosphere is conjured effectively, and I found the places where tension and horror was called for to be as tense and horrific as I could want.
There's some bad language here, but it isn't pervasive. We also have a romantic element, and some non-explicit unmarried (though loving) sex; but the psychology behind it was understandable. It's also worth mentioning that Whitten apparently did his homework on medical literature that tries to explain lycanthropy as a medical condition; Louis-Florentin Calmeil, for instance, was an actual 19th-century French intellectual who really did write on lycanthropy. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis-F... ). Of course, I've classified this as supernatural, not science, fiction; IMO, no epileptic or other condition can naturally explain human bodies growing pelts of fur, fangs and claws, which then de-materialize at other times. (I took that as a realistic attempt that 20th-century medical and law enforcement professionals, confronted with this kind of phenomenon, would make to try somehow to fit it into their worldview --though we readers know that it won't.)
H. P. Lovecraft once observed that no writer, up to his own time, had done for the traditional werewolf mythos what Bram Stoker did for vampires in Dracula --a really definitive literary treatment. I'm not well-enough read in werewolf literature to say that this novel achieves that. But I personally think that it ought to be considered as in the running.
I read Progeny of the Adder (1965) by Les Whitten --who, sadly, died in Dec. 2017-- as a teen. At the time, I was quite intrigued by his approach to the vampire mythos, depicting the way a 20th-century law enforcement agency might respond to killings that are in fact the work of a vampire; I like fictional treatments of the everyday world invaded by the supernatural, so the juxtaposition of mundane police procedural and vampire fiction was right up my alley. :-) In 1972, I learned of the existence of the book reviewed here, through watching the TV movie adaptation starring David Janssen and Bradford Dillman (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068967/ --I actually liked the movie, though some other Goodreaders have panned it, but I can state categorically that it departs from the book in several important ways). It was clear from the film version that here Whitten was doing the same thing for the werewolf mythos, so I definitely wanted to read the book. Back then, though, I knew little or nothing of interlibrary loan, and BookMooch (and the Internet) didn't exist. It took me until a few years ago to actually get my hands on a copy of the book, and until now to finally read it. It definitely didn't disappoint!
This isn't a well-known book; as some reviewers have noted, it was written before "horror" was a big-budget book trade category. And classifying and approaching it as "horror," a terminology I don't care for to begin with, is probably not the most helpful avenue here; for most modern readers, raised on splatter-punk and slasher flicks, the term apparently connotes an unceasing gore-fest from cover to cover, and that expectation is going to be dashed here. That kind of dashed expectation apparently accounts for the relatively low overall rating of this novel on Goodreads. The four other text reviews range from ratings of one star to three, and there are indications that the two reviewers who gave it three stars were confusing Goodreads' rating system with Amazon's (so that they probably meant to give it two). Words and concepts like "boring," "mediocre," and slow-paced show up; there are complaints of not continuous enough violent werewolf attacks, and of the book not being "horrifying" enough. (Of 19 ratings besides mine, only four were in the 4-5 star range; 13 are in the 2-3 range.) I note this to make it clear upfront that mine is a minority view, stemming from different tastes than those of most other reviewers. Your reaction, if you read it, will depend on your own tastes; but hopefully I can indicate what kind of read you can expect.
One reviewer complained that we already know (from the cover art) what's causing the killings, so that the mystery element is lost. IMO, that's not a problem; as in episodes of the old TV series Columbo, knowing the solution to the mystery is a given, but the interest is in seeing how the policeman will discover and prove it. Knowing something the protagonist doesn't can be an intriguing perspective for the reader, not the reverse. Within the werewolf sub-genre, this is definitely a traditional "werewolf as ravening killer" treatment; our antagonist here does not retain human morals in the transformed state. (It also doesn't interpret the transformation as shifting into actual wolf shape; as in the old movies with Lon Chaney, our werewolf here is a hairy man-animal hybrid.) I actually found the pacing to be perfect, building to a crescendo rather than wallowing in gore from the get-go, and the unfolding of the investigation to be anything but boring. (At 222 pages, it's a fairly quick read.) The author also evokes the setting very masterfully, and pays attention to the small-town racial and class relations and attitudes in that era. Characterization is serious and well-developed. The scary atmosphere is conjured effectively, and I found the places where tension and horror was called for to be as tense and horrific as I could want.
There's some bad language here, but it isn't pervasive. We also have a romantic element, and some non-explicit unmarried (though loving) sex; but the psychology behind it was understandable. It's also worth mentioning that Whitten apparently did his homework on medical literature that tries to explain lycanthropy as a medical condition; Louis-Florentin Calmeil, for instance, was an actual 19th-century French intellectual who really did write on lycanthropy. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis-F... ). Of course, I've classified this as supernatural, not science, fiction; IMO, no epileptic or other condition can naturally explain human bodies growing pelts of fur, fangs and claws, which then de-materialize at other times. (I took that as a realistic attempt that 20th-century medical and law enforcement professionals, confronted with this kind of phenomenon, would make to try somehow to fit it into their worldview --though we readers know that it won't.)
H. P. Lovecraft once observed that no writer, up to his own time, had done for the traditional werewolf mythos what Bram Stoker did for vampires in Dracula --a really definitive literary treatment. I'm not well-enough read in werewolf literature to say that this novel achieves that. But I personally think that it ought to be considered as in the running.
August 5, 2017
To be honest, if there were half stars this would be a 2 and 1/2. Both reviews on Goodreads (here and in the two-fer volume: Moon of the Wolf/Progeny of the Adder/2 Books in 1) are similar - they tag MOON OF THE WOLF as a boring horror novel.
I'd actually approach the book this way - MOON OF THE WOLF is a pretty boring horror novel. But MOON OF THE WOLF is actually a fairly interesting (if occasionally flat) Southern Gothic/Mystery/Rural Police Procedural. So the non-spoilery review is pretty easy - if you're looking for action packed horror, look elsewhere. Even if you're a fan of old school weird fiction, this probably will not satisfy, as it's more mass-market paperback novel from before "horror" was a profitable marketing niche. It has more in common with those endless stream of 60's women's "Gothic" novels (a woman runs across a moor in her nightgown, as a light burns in the window behind her), even though the main character is a man.
One the other hand, if you like a good Southern Gothic with some class-transgressing romance, or a rural mystery from the Depression era with a fairly well-sketched, realistic locale and some details of race relations in the time and place (Mississippi, 1938), you may want to check this out. Just don't expect too much. Also, if you're more than a fan of horror fiction, and consider yourself something of an armchair scholar with perhaps a particular interest in the Werewolf myth and how it manifests in popular culture, you might find this book interesting as well. Because all is not it seems...
Everything beyond this will be in the spoiler zone. You have been warned.
This was turned into a made-for-tv movie (that dropped the period setting and changed part of the mystery), which I reviewed here
I'd actually approach the book this way - MOON OF THE WOLF is a pretty boring horror novel. But MOON OF THE WOLF is actually a fairly interesting (if occasionally flat) Southern Gothic/Mystery/Rural Police Procedural. So the non-spoilery review is pretty easy - if you're looking for action packed horror, look elsewhere. Even if you're a fan of old school weird fiction, this probably will not satisfy, as it's more mass-market paperback novel from before "horror" was a profitable marketing niche. It has more in common with those endless stream of 60's women's "Gothic" novels (a woman runs across a moor in her nightgown, as a light burns in the window behind her), even though the main character is a man.
One the other hand, if you like a good Southern Gothic with some class-transgressing romance, or a rural mystery from the Depression era with a fairly well-sketched, realistic locale and some details of race relations in the time and place (Mississippi, 1938), you may want to check this out. Just don't expect too much. Also, if you're more than a fan of horror fiction, and consider yourself something of an armchair scholar with perhaps a particular interest in the Werewolf myth and how it manifests in popular culture, you might find this book interesting as well. Because all is not it seems...
Everything beyond this will be in the spoiler zone. You have been warned.
This was turned into a made-for-tv movie (that dropped the period setting and changed part of the mystery), which I reviewed here
January 2, 2020
4.0 stars
1960's Southern Gothic werewolf tale. I cut old horror novels slack. That's why I give Dracula a perfect 5.0 star rating. Perhaps Moon of the Wolf feels dated, but hey what can you do? What will today's horror feel like in 2125? Dated? Probably. That said, Moon of the Wolf is several howls ahead of most werewolf novels. If you're a werewolf devotee, don't shy away from this bargain barrel horror buy!
1960's Southern Gothic werewolf tale. I cut old horror novels slack. That's why I give Dracula a perfect 5.0 star rating. Perhaps Moon of the Wolf feels dated, but hey what can you do? What will today's horror feel like in 2125? Dated? Probably. That said, Moon of the Wolf is several howls ahead of most werewolf novels. If you're a werewolf devotee, don't shy away from this bargain barrel horror buy!
March 11, 2020
Slow, fairly uneventful southern gothic wolfman novel that takes place in the 1930s. Very little thrills, some police procedural work but lacks any excitement until the final showdown.
June 29, 2020
Read in 1975. Horror about a wolf man.
November 6, 2023
1.5 - No chapters or section breaks. Reads like a 200 page run-on sentence.
January 18, 2017
read during summer 1969
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