The Nightwalker by Thomas Tessier (1979): The Howling Beast on the Borderline

In a way, The Nightwalker is the best werewolf novel in which the werewolf never appears. Or does it? A slim read at 200 pages, Thomas Tessier's second novel is deceptively complex and thoughtful. It depicts a young Vietnam vet who succumbs to unbidden violent desires: but are these desires the result of supernatural lycanthropy, or simply (well, as simply as these things ever are) homicidal bloodthirst and rage?

Bobby Ives is an American living in London in the late 1970s, plagued by migraines and memories of Vietnam. While in Hyde Park one day he has an intense hallucination of becoming a zombie (not the cannibal kind) on the island of Guadelupe in the West Indies. He tells this story to his English girlfriend Annie, and also about an incident in Vietnam in which he shot a young Vietnamese girl. He also relates how a soldier also named Bobby Ives is killed  in the war, but the army thinks it's our Bobby Ives that died. With these types of memories swirling in his subconscious, Tessier intimates, Bobby seems psychologically predisposed to some sort of mental breakdown. When Annie is killed suddenly, he wonders if he is responsible and, strangely, goes to see a clairvoyant. Yeah... she's got some bad news for him. Real bad.

Hilariously awesome, rather accurate, UK promo poster

Improbably he picks up a runaway punk girl in a park and takes her back to his flat. Improbably until she reveals she's having her period. I suppose you can guess what follows - or maybe you can't. Tessier gets some good metaphoric mileage out of a well-done scene in a dingy punk club she takes Bobby to. The whole time, however, Bobby's distress at his symptoms comes and goes; some moments he wishes to embrace his predatory new nature as a logical step in his life, while others, he is truly fearful and guilt-stricken at his terrifying capacity for evil. Perhaps he can even control it...

The black hole he was flying into was sick, morbid, cruel and murderous. It couldn't go on; it had to end, full stop, forever. Not just for this lifetime. He wanted to disintegrate into scattered atoms that would never again reform as a conscious entity. It's not my fault, Ives almost said aloud...

1989 Berkeley Books edition with Halloween werewolf glove

Tessier's approach is believably psychological, and he inserts ambiguous moments throughout and has an interesting discourse on lycanthropy in history from the clairvoyant. This ambiguity can be seen on the cover of the original 1981 paperback from Signet, top, but by the late '80s when The Nightwalker was republished after Tessier had gained more of a name for himself, all doubt is removed in order, I suppose, to trick the potential book-buyer. Same goes for the latest paperback cover, which makes it look like a paranormal romance. Sucks, because if someone is expecting An American Werewolf in London-style horror novel or, I don't know, an erotic wolfman, they're not gonna get it. Solidly written and containing vivid passages of grungy sex and violence, The Nightwalker is another worthwhile and original work from the underrated Tessier.

Current 2008 edition; still wrong, guys!