Wormwood #20
Number 20, Spring 2013
Published by Tartarus Press, 2013
Camera Obscura by Mark Valentine
Wolf Hunter by J.L. Benét, Belfire Press 2012, 200pp.
In the dying days of World War Two Hitler Youth member
Viktor Huelen is summoned to Schloss Huelchrath to take part
in an experiment intended to create a group of fanatical young
devotees of the Reich who would be able to transform them-
selves into werewolves. Decades later, two are still alive in the
United States; but when one of them is killed it becomes clear
that someone else knows of their existence—and possesses the
power to find and destroy them. Two university students are
fascinated by werewolf lore and the possibility of using occult
means to turn into the creatures they desire to be. Joining
forces and stalked by the mysterious killer, the paths of all
three cross in the pursuit, for their own differing ends, of the
aging survivor.
When considering Wolf Hunter it is difficult not to recall
Darker Than You Think, Jack Williamson’s celebrated novel of
lycanthropy first published in book form in 1948. Like its elder
pack sibling, Benét’s novel is no great work of literature, but
an honest and straightforward piece of pulp fiction horror
mixing legend and folklore with a pseudoscience overlay to
produce a vigorous and often gory story owing much to its
genre ancestry. Wolf Hunter also invokes the perennial appeal
(if not desire) of the despised and commonplace for transfor-
mation into the glamorous, powerful—and deadly.