Books like The Howling

An odd title for a charming coming of age story for a young girl.Just kidding.This is a gritty werewolf story.Most modern horror novels will read with clear connections to Stephen King or Dean Koontz, but The Howling, published in 1977 by Gary Brandner (and six years before King’s own werewolf novella Cycle of the Werewolf), bears the mark of the same author who influenced both King and Koontz – Richard Matheson, who died in 2013. (Coincidentally, so did Brandner) Distinguishing itself from the bloated, 500 page behemoths being printed these days, The Howling is a lean, fast moving 200 pager that draws the reader quickly to the action and never lets up, and develops the characters along the way while building a succinct occult thriller.Stephen King in his 1981 non-fiction discourse on the horror genre Danse Macabre, estimated that the werewolf, as literature, evolved from the 1886 publication The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, but was, of course, historical legend in origin. Brandner begins his novel with a 400-year-old prologue in a forest village near the Greek and Bulgarian border. This well placed opening setting heightens the reader’s awareness for an occult tale that is as trim and lethal as the wolf itself; a little formulaic at times, reads a little like a campfire scary story, but that is a part of its charm.