Jeff Rice - The Night Stalker

[dem]

Jeff Rice - The Night Stalker (Pocket December 1973)

The Night Stalker
Appendix: Jack the Ripper
Bibliography

Blurb:
Four Gorgeous Girls. Their bodies drained of blood ....
In Las Vegas even the kinkiest crimes don't cause much stir. Everyone's used to it.
But now women are lying in alleys, gutters and parking lots - their bodies drained of blood.
Is it possible? A vampire stalking the Las Vegas streets?

"Fantastically marvellous - executed with equally marvellous realism." Richard Matheson.

This novel seems to have received a bad press, but can't say I found anything to dislike about it first time around (circa 1995). Then again, I was big on vampire 'fact' and fiction at the time, and that sure ain't the case these days.

We open with a letter from Carl Kolchak to the author. In the wake of the vampire murders, "the greatest crime story of the century", our battered reporter is no longer employed by the Daily News or any other newspaper for that matter, a situation that is unlikely to change in the near future. According to Mr. Rice, Kolchak, 47, a shabby alcoholic who prefers the company of whores, barflies and street casualties, is the one man who dared write the truth about the Night stalker murders, although his stories were invariably censored or just plain suppressed in their entirety until his position on the paper was untenable and he quit the City. The cover-up, he claims, was perpetrated by mutual consent of the Mayor's department, the various Law Enforcement Agencies and the local press. Before quitting town, Kolchak passed his notes and cassette tapes to Rice and told him to write them a best-seller. The Night Stalker is the result.

The first known victim of the vampire was Cheryl Ann Hughes, a Casino worker, walking home alone at 3am on april 35th having been stood up by her stoner boyfriend. Cheryl's body was discovered neatly folded into a garbage can. The autopsy reveals twin puncture marks to her neck. She has been drained of ten pints of blood. Kolchak has made it his business to befriend (bribe) the city's leading Morticians so they'll "look the other way while I perform some mild necrophilic investigations." Come May 11th and the body-count is already up to three young women and rising. Our newshound has sniffed out a great scoop but his editor, Tony Vincenzo, is already being leaned on to bury it. Meanwhile, The Night Stalker fixes to strike again ...

TBC ...

[dem]

The sewage-breathed miscreant, tall, red-eyed 40-something dressed in black, makes away with the entire contents of the blood bank at the Parkway Hospital, repeating the trick at County General the following week. It doesn't quench his thirst for long and on the evening of May 15th he claims another victim, Stephen Hemphill, a 23 year old drag queen, method of murder the same as the other 'girls.' Henri St. Claire, the producer of "Paris Extraordinaire!" which is pulling in the punters at the Deauville Theatre, spots the man in black cruising a nightclub and recognises his face, but from where? It is only after reading newspaper reports of the murders and studying the artists impression of the killer that St. Claire remembers.

"Bucharest and Paris just before World War II. And London during the blitz. Janos Skorzeny, a man who had moved like a ghost and with no-one knowing much about him but everyone convinced he was ... odd, and for some unknown reason, strange and possibly dangerous. Why the man hardly seemed a day older than he'd been in 1939!"

Plenty of pop culture references to date (p.114 of 192): The Manson murders, Kent State University massacre, Dr. Zhivago, hippies, bell-bottoms. Chapter ten is a condensed version of Kolchak's original notes on vampires, werewolves and sex-killers (hence the bibliography at back).

[ripper]

Hi Dem. I am a big fan of the Kolchak TV films and series but have so far not read the Rice books. I see that both Night Stalker and Night Strangler are on Kindle, so I shall download the samples and check them out.

[dem]

Aug 11, 2014 9:54:07 GMT ripper said:

Hi Dem. I am a big fan of the Kolchak TV films and series but have so far not read the Rice books. I see that both Night Stalker and Night Strangler are on Kindle, so I shall download the samples and check them out.

Richard Matheson was likely being civil when he provided that rave endorsement, but I enjoyed The Night Stalker first time around and, with just 40 pages to go, it's not been a rematch i've regretted. This version of Kolchak is so crumpled and seedy he makes Columbo seem like Benedict Cumberbatch, and thankfully, Janos Skorzeny is as vicious a vampire as you could wish for, taking out any man, woman or dog who stands in his way. After a third raid on a blood bank, he out-muscles and outwits security guards and police, effortlessly outpacing their squad cars. And, of course, a juicy top-level cover up.

"Remember, son. This is a tourist town. A gambling centre. Gamblers, my boy, are a very superstitious breed of cat. Being proprietors of hotels and casinos makes them even worse. They don't even like guys with thin moustaches. Bad for business. And, a lot of talk making this loony out to be superhuman wouldn't help this town's business at all. We have to remember priorities. If people don't come here, they don't spend money here. And we stop eating. It's that simple."

"So we're going to forget all about it like we forgot all about those killings in the ex-mayor's home in North las Vegas?"

"Exactly."

[dem]

When the vampire again eludes the cops after taking several bullets to his head at point-blank range, the D. A. and the commissioner have no option but to try it Kolchak's way and arm their men with stakes, mallets and phials of holy water. Locating Skorzeny's hide-out, they find the two missing girls unconscious, chained to a bed and hooked up to a drip. They've so little blood left between them that they are good as dead. As if to demonstrate power-hungry humans are even greater monsters - especially when they are seeking re-election on an anti-hippie "Pot is rot!" ticket - the authorities perpetrate a perfect snow-job, leaving Kolchak as the patsy. He wisely quits town rather than wait around to die in "mysterious circumstances.".

"The Ripper's worst and final murder was a classic that even latecomers have been hard-pressed to equal for sheer ghoulish brutality." Rice appends Kolchak's notes on Jack the Ripper - he was planning a book - and suggests the harassed hack was of a mind that the murderer was either a midwife or abortionist. As you can tell from the tasteless extract, subtlety was never Catl's forte.

[Michael Connolly]

The Night Strangler was on Talking Pictures TV last night. I didn't know that Kolchak wore a wig!

And he didn't even recognize the Wicked Witch of the West!

[helrunar]

That's a wonderful capture from my favorite moment in the film (which I always enjoy revisiting).

Thanks, Michael!

Best,

Steve

[Swampirella]

I agree with Steve; a great capture of an under-rated show I loved from the first episode. Even the theme song is cool, in my humble opinion.

[andydecker]

May 23, 2018 14:49:07 GMT Swampirella said:

I agree with Steve; a great capture of an under-rated show I loved from the first episode. Even the theme song is cool, in my humble opinion.

It is quite unforgettable. Both the music and the show.

[helrunar]

For those who haven't seen it, another project Dan Curtis was involved in around this time was The Norliss Tapes. The pilot was released as an American TV movie and starred Roy Thinnes, I think around '73. It would have had a similar format to the Kolchak series but the Norliss character was much more downbeat.

H.

[jamesdoig]

May 23, 2018 21:18:05 GMT helrunar said:

For those who haven't seen it, another project Dan Curtis was involved in around this time was The Norliss Tapes.

I remember it well - it was on late night tele when I was a kid and scared the crap out of me - Angie Dickinson running down some sort of tunnel and tripping over dead bodies...