Moon of the Wolf by Leslie H. Whitten Jr.

While not told from Picard’s perspective, the hardboiled detective is the reader’s main window into the day-to-day operations of the case. The Metropolitan Police to suspect a sex maniac. Signs of sexual assault, the fact that they all worked in the skin trade leads Were found emaciated and with torn throats. It is Picard who first makes note of the fact that the female victims Manhunting duties with Virginia and Maryland detectives as well as G-men from However, given D.C.’s jumbled geography, Picard has to share his Picard is the chief detective on theĬase. Other outlier victims include aĬhild and a shady real estate lawyer. The Scandian ambassador to the United States. One of the exceptions turns out to be the daughter of The victims are mostly blondeĪnd mostly streetwalkers. Of the best one hundred horror novels ever written, Progeny of the Adderįeatures a string of bizarre murders in D.C. The midst of dark autumn, it is time to resurrect Whitten’s many monsters. gadfly whose novels have been unjustly forgotten and left to rot. The novel, Progeny of the Adder, was written by Leslie H. TheĬharacter is Detective Harry Picard of the Metropolitan Police. Sleuths, from Carl Kolchak to the FBI agents of The X-Files, would not exist. Without this particular novel and its central gumshoe, so many supernatural Kinderman character lies in a little-remembered horror novel from 1965. Kinderman is the novel’s hero and the only man with enough occult knowledge to realize that the Gemini Killer (a version of the reportedly satanic Zodiac Killer) is not of this world. In Legion, Blatty’s sequel to The Exorcist, Lt. Kinderman is depicted as an intelligent and well-read bloodhound whose Jewish faith is tested, then reaffirmed by his brush with the Assyrian demon Pazuzu. Cobb in the film version of Blatty’s novel, Lt. Brought to life by the brilliant character actor Lee J. Kinderman, conducts spiritual warfare alongside Father Damien Karras in William Peter Blatty’s blockbuster terror tale, The Exorcist. The capital city’s most famous spook hunter, Lt.

dicks are best at tackling spectral evidence and crimes involving otherworldly antagonists. But, insofar as 20th-century novelists are concerned, D.C.

Sure, the men and women of the Metropolitan Police work all the kinds of cases one would expect to encounter in a big city - murder, arson, rape, and robbery.

Moon of the Wolf by Leslie H. Whitten Jr.