Fengriffen and Other Stories by David Case
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
David Case's contribution to the horror genre - a couple of novels and two or three volumes' worth of short stories, spanning the last 40-odd years - is relatively unknown, but I find him compulsively readable and well worth the effort of hunting down whichever works are still in print. He writes in an unfussy British manner (despite being American, though settled in England), with the sort of lean yet lyrical prose epitomised by Ian Fleming - no one has me reaching for the dictionary like David Case - and his stories have that 'Hammer Horror' feel to them; almost quaint, certainly nostalgic, but with the bite of gore or horror never far away.
Fengriffen is a quietly hysterical short novel in the gothic vein - crumbling mansion, stormy nights, curses and villainy, and a supernatural element that remains elusive until the brilliant climax. The prose here is both lean and verbose and sets the mood perfectly.
Strange Roots continues the author's fascination with the werewolf, here in a more rational vein, as a scientist creates lycanthropy in a lab. The science is solid enough for the time, and Case throws in some research and references that mark this out from the usual horror fare, though the subplot with the government agency adds very little more than extrapolation to the main story. And, of course, this is a horror story, so the finale forgoes the science for a bit of a morbid twist.
Among The Wolves begins as a serial killer investigation, but just when it seems that story is predictable, it twists into a wilderness survival tale worthy of London or Hemingway, before a subdued climax that is all the more unnerving for its open-ended matter-of-fact nature.
It's such a shame that this book has never been reprinted, save for a movie tie-in edition for Fengriffen, filmed as And Now The Screaming Starts. Case seemed to be working in the short form in that horror hinterland before Stephen King and James Herbert revitalised the genre, and was doing so with a strong voice and a thoughtful approach.
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