“The Night Stalker” by Jeff Rice

Nice approach to a modern vampire story. -- 4 Stars

I saw “The Night Stalker” TV movie when it first aired back in 1972. It was very striking for its time, so when I found a copy of the book on Ebay, I bid on it immediately.

Like the novel “Bloodlist,” “The Night Stalker” brings a noir feel to the vampire genre (though “The Night Stalker” takes place in its then modern time of 1970, while “Bloodlist” is set in the 30's). Even though it was written nearly 40 years ago, as evidenced by the antiquated newspaper techniques and technology, its commentary on politics and all of the dirty games and cover ups involved is still very relevant today. Too relevant, sadly.

The main thing I liked about the book, however, was its realistic approach to vampires. Assuming that vampires were real ... how would they have functioned in 1970's society? How would they hunt, how would they keep themselves safely fed, how would they deal with modern press exposure and police capabilities, and even the difficulties of moving country to country? This novel addresses all of those questions, and it does so very well.

My least favorite element of the book, the part that keeps me from giving it 5 stars, was a distracting number of typos! Some of which actually changed the context of the sentences, so that I had to read some passages more than once to figure out what it meant. Sometimes even character names changed in spelling. I don’t know if they had looser editing standards when this was written/published, but it was very annoying.

But all in all, I enjoyed the book very much. The climax was a little different from what I remember of the TV movie, but if anything, the book’s version was once again more realistic. So my prior knowledge turned out not to be a spoiler, but an opportunity for me to react, “Yes ... that makes more sense.”

So long as you are forewarned about the typos, I would recommend “The Night Strangler” to any fan of now classic horror novels.