[Flashback] Wolfen by Whitley Strieber

Author photo by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

The savage killing of two police officers leads two detectives—a man and a woman bound together by a strange passion—to hunt down werewolves…

The debut novel of Whitley Strieber, The Wolfen (1978), tells the story of two police detectives in New York City who are involved in the investigation of suspicious deaths across the city. The death are revealed to be the work of a race of intelligent beings descended from canids named the Wolfen. The novel is told from the point of view of the human characters as well from the Wolfen themselves.

In the dark, they are watching...

They are waiting for you.

No one has ever lived to tell the horrifying truth about them. Yet even now the Wolfen are gathered in the night-dark alleys ... unseen, poised ... ready to destroy their helpless human prey. Only one man and one woman, trained cops, willing to risk their lives, stand in the way.

The 1981 movie adaptation Wolfen was directed by Michael Wadleigh. The movie stars Albert Finney, Diane Venora, Gregory Hines and Edward James Olmos.

The Wolfen
Whitley Strieber
Crossroad Press, Macabre Ink First Digital edition
Categories: Occult Horror, Occult Fiction

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Reviews of The Wolfen by Whitley Strieber:

“Strieber’s first novel has a good balance between pulpy creature horror and investigative police procedural, between awe and wonder at the predatory perfection of the Wolfen and the stark inescapable fear their kind will always engender in that weaker and stupider species, mankind.” (Too Much Horror Fiction)

“Strieber loves his wolves and applies his lore with intense skill. He’s also brainy about humans and provides flat, funny, authentic dialogue that keeps us hanging onto every word. Sympathy for werewolves makes a horror-happy winner!” (Kirkus)

“If you are a fan of horror stories, and werewolves in particular, you owe it to yourself to hunt this book down. Forget about the naff movie adaption, as it has very little in common with what is without a doubt one of the best werewolf novels ever written.” (Graeme Reynolds’s Blog)

Whitley Strieber is the author of more than 40 works of both fiction and nonfiction. His books The WolfenThe HungerCommunion, and The Coming Global Superstorm (as The Day After Tomorrow) were all made into feature films. His sci-fi series Alien Hunter became the SyFy Channel series Hunters.

By the way, Strieber says that in 1985, he had an actual encounter with aliens—as described in his bestseller Communion. Along those lines, he also wrote Transformation, Majestic, and A New World. It has been said that others have also encountered the visitors with him, placing it among the most witnessed paranormal events in history.

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Chris Well

Chris Well been a writer pretty much his entire life. (Well, since his childhood.) Over the years, he has worked in newspapers, magazines, radio, and books. He now is the chief of the website Monster Complex, celebrating monster stories in lit and pop culture. He also writes horror comedy fiction that embraces Universal Monsters, 1960s sitcoms, 1980s action movies, and the X-Files.

https://chriswell.substack.com/
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