David Samuel (5)

Few horror novels are courageous enough to cross the bridge between literature and genre fiction. Literature is more character-oriented, and genre is more plot-oriented. “Nightwolf,” however, by David L. Samuel (Kindle Books, February 2011), dares to go where angels (and most werewolves for that matter) fear to tread. I’m not sure he successfully navigates this treacherous territory.

“Nightwolf” starts out with a suspenseful sighting of a wolf that is beyond imagination, until show more it’s caught on videotape. But at that point, the author flashes back into a coming-of-age story about a nine-year-old boy named Danny Correll who loses his mother in an auto accident and moves in with his aunt and uncle in Tennessee.

We are then treated to the next nine years of Danny’s life as he moves through high school and overcomes such difficulties as bullying, peer pressure, and the ignorance of all things manly that his uncle David eventually teaches him, such as how to fight, hunt, play sports, pick up girls, etc.

He becomes quite successful at all these things, but on a hunting trip to Canada, a wolf bites him and his transformation into a werewolf begins.

The good news is he has complete control over when he changes into a werewolf and when he changes back into a man. For the most part he prefers being a werewolf. He often sneaks out at night and changes into a werewolf so he can hunt for deer, rabbits, and other assorted forest creatures au naturel—that is until the day his uncle and great-uncle are brutally murdered. Then he uses his power to make “The Change” for an altogether different reason.

There are no English moors or silver bullets, no “Blue Moon” by the Marcels, no single nurses in London, and no pentagrams in the Slaughtered Lamb. This is a story of a werewolf almost no one cares to notice. Nevertheless, Samuel explores the nature of the predator, and does so from the point of view of a hunter, a murderer, and a werewolf all in a way that would make this novel acceptable to a young adult audience.

Granted, you’ll be the one flipping the pages; it may get hard to do at times; they aren’t going to flip themselves, but what Nightwolf offers that other werewolf stories do not is a truly in-depth look at all the characters involved. And if it becomes one of a series of books by this author (which a rather exciting ending leaves open to possibility), “Nightwolf” will provide an essential backdrop to those future, hopefully more plot-driven, narratives.

If you like werewolf stories, this is one you should consider.

Reviewed by Edward Gordon
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