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Wolf Tracks
A killer stalks the city's streets.
Only a crazed beast could have committed the ghastly murders that are terrorizing the city of Toronto. The victims are usually young women.
Their bodies have been hideously mangled, as though by the fangs of a rabid animal. Yet witnesses swear they have seen the hulking figure of a man nearby.
But everyone knows there's no such thing as a werewolf...
Only a crazed beast could have committed the ghastly murders that are terrorizing the city of Toronto. The victims are usually young women.
Their bodies have been hideously mangled, as though by the fangs of a rabid animal. Yet witnesses swear they have seen the hulking figure of a man nearby.
But everyone knows there's no such thing as a werewolf...
- GenresHorrorWerewolvesFiction
240 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
8 people are currently reading
125 people want to read
About the author
David Case
30 books13 followersDavid Case (1937-2018) was born in upstate New York. Since the early 1960s he lived in London, as well as spending time in Greece and Spain. His acclaimed collection The Cell: Three Tales of Horror appeared in 1969, and it was followed by the novels Fengriffen: A Chilling Tale, Wolf Tracks, and The Third Grave. His other collections include Brotherly Love and Other Tales of Trust and Knowledge, Pelican Cay & Other Disquieting Tales, and an omnibus volume in the 'Masters of the Weird Tale' series from Centipede Press. In recent years, his selected short horror fiction has been reprinted by Valancourt Books as The Cell & Other Transmorphic Tales and Fengriffen & Other Gothic Tales.
A regular contributor to the legendary Pan Book of Horror Stories series during the early 1970s, as well as a handful of westerns and pseudonymous porn novels, his powerful zombie novella “Pelican Cay” in Dark Terrors 5 was nominated for a World Fantasy Award in 2001.
(Bio adapted from Valancourt Books)
A regular contributor to the legendary Pan Book of Horror Stories series during the early 1970s, as well as a handful of westerns and pseudonymous porn novels, his powerful zombie novella “Pelican Cay” in Dark Terrors 5 was nominated for a World Fantasy Award in 2001.
(Bio adapted from Valancourt Books)
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
April 29, 2021
Werewolves; a classic horror monster typically found in the moors and going on rampages outside small villages until a rich nobleman comes along and slays it (or becomes a new one)… one does not typically see them on the big streets of Toronto Canada killing (in classic slasher fashion) scantily clad women. This book is something of a hybrid of a who-done it style police procedural meets werewolf story as we mostly follow two cops hunting down this killer.
I've been in a bit of a reading funk recently. Picking up book after book, only to put them down after around 10 or 20 pages. Nothing was holding my interest… and then along comes cheesy 80s werewolf horror to save the day. I don't ever really praise a publisher in my reviews, but bless Valancourt and the weird horror novels they find.
Let's get this out of the way, it is not a very "good" book. It has a lot of weird decisions (including third person narration, but one that changes point of view practically at any paragraph and sometimes almost a response to the last one, where one character thinks something and the next character's thoughts mirror and answer the other's). The mystery aspect is easy to solve, and I don't know what reporters ever did to hurt the author, but he makes it very clear that he has a grudge against them as does literally every character who has at least one tirade against them.
This book is so, so weird… and so, so fun.
It's over the top, it's at times ridiculous, but it is a blast on nearly every page. It's also very clear that the author is self-aware of this and also includes some extremely funny self-aware jokes about it (he also includes some wonderful genre meta-humor). Fun seems like such a copout way to review something; the lazy answer for one without a critique… but what does one expect from a book that is literally about a werewolf stalking a big city? Fun is the most I can ask for.
Well worth a read for horror fans, especially those who like a different sort of werewolf tale. 3/5 stars.
I've been in a bit of a reading funk recently. Picking up book after book, only to put them down after around 10 or 20 pages. Nothing was holding my interest… and then along comes cheesy 80s werewolf horror to save the day. I don't ever really praise a publisher in my reviews, but bless Valancourt and the weird horror novels they find.
Let's get this out of the way, it is not a very "good" book. It has a lot of weird decisions (including third person narration, but one that changes point of view practically at any paragraph and sometimes almost a response to the last one, where one character thinks something and the next character's thoughts mirror and answer the other's). The mystery aspect is easy to solve, and I don't know what reporters ever did to hurt the author, but he makes it very clear that he has a grudge against them as does literally every character who has at least one tirade against them.
This book is so, so weird… and so, so fun.
It's over the top, it's at times ridiculous, but it is a blast on nearly every page. It's also very clear that the author is self-aware of this and also includes some extremely funny self-aware jokes about it (he also includes some wonderful genre meta-humor). Fun seems like such a copout way to review something; the lazy answer for one without a critique… but what does one expect from a book that is literally about a werewolf stalking a big city? Fun is the most I can ask for.
Well worth a read for horror fans, especially those who like a different sort of werewolf tale. 3/5 stars.
October 19, 2023
Werewolf fiction reached a peak in 1981 with the release of the films "An American Werewolf in London," "Wolfen," and "The Howling," the latter two being inspired by novels from 1978 and 1977 respectively. This review will be looking at one lycanthropic novel that appeared just before that legendary year of 1981, but which never was made into a film. This is the almost forgotten "Wolf Tracks" by David Case. In fact, I almost forgot I had it unread on my shelves all these years. Is it a lost gem from the golden age of hairy shapeshifters?
Nope. But I did have a lot of fun with this one.
The plot is quite simple. A series of murders begin in Toronto that puzzle the police. The victims are bitten but not eaten, and wolf hairs and saliva are found on the bodies. However, human saliva also was found on the wounds, and several witnesses claim to have seen a strange man leaving the scene. Is this a case of a rogue wolf or a madman... or worse?
The main problem is that some of the characters, particularly when women are portrayed, come across as abrasive. We have a self-absorbed wife of the police chief who is devoted to her husband but doesn't listen to a single thing he says. We have an abused wife whose only thought after hearing the news that her daughter was brutally murdered was that she can divorce her bastard husband. And most irritating of all, the love interest of one of our main characters is constantly naked and spewing out tired women's lib, free-love, anti-establishment dialogue in a very unflattering way, establishing that the author himself likely held contempt for his generation's counterculture. She actually compares going to a baseball game to the spectacle of Christians being fed to lions, and criticizes her boyfriend for getting upset about women getting murdered in the city because he should care more about the atrocities that had been committed by America in Vietnam. Really?
I only state this as a potential trigger warning, but in fact, Case does a good job with overall character-building. Just when you think he has painted a two-dimensional picture of someone, he turns the tables and adds another layer of complexity to make an otherwise annoying character sympathetic and real. Take the above hippy girl, for instance. Turns out, she has her personal reasons for behaving the way she does with which we can empathize. And in one beautiful passage, Case summarizes her tragedy: "She had ideals but they didn’t fit quite right in her head, they were just stuffed in there every which way with the edges rubbing together. Lots of friction, when the edge on an idea starts rubbing against a concept. Enough friction to start a fire . . . chock-a-block full of ideas that didn’t fit. Big, solid blocks of conviction, slices of platitude, lumps of dedication shouldered out of position by wedges of habit . . ."
As far as the antagonist is concerned, you don't get much characterization per se, because you are not supposed to know who the killer is, whether or not the person really is a werewolf, or if it is even a person at all. However, a particular line of dialogue fairly early in the book makes it pretty obvious who has been commiting the murders.
Despite all this, I found it fairly compelling reading. It is written more like a police procedural murder mystery with classic horror elements, making this feel so familiar that you swear you've seen this as a movie on TV before. The carnage doesn't get too gruesome and suggests more than it relates, but there is enough werewolf action to keep the pace clipping along nicely until its satisfying conclusion.
A neat little thing the author does is use innocuous objects as symbols for entire events and emotions associated with them. A great example is how he focuses on a guy visiting Toronto who gets a flat tire. He carelessly leaves the old tire on the side of the street. This tire then becomes tangentially involved in a pivotal point in the novel. I can't say more than that, but it's kind of cool.
And hey, you can actually learn a bit of beer trivia from this book. I didn't know that Exhibition Stadium didn't allow beer to be sold during games, for instance. And the froth on a poured beer is called barm.
David Case got his start writing racy sexploitation novels and Westerns, and he was sharp enough to get into the horror paperback boom early enough to make a bit of a splash. Valancourt rediscovered his work in the macabre, and today you can find "Wolf Tracks" and his other weird tales much more easily. However, you can't beat that original cover art, featuring a treatment of the Lon Chaney Wolfman, which is actually quite accurate to how the monster is described in this book, as opposed to the more lupine creatures we would get after 1981.
Though never reaching legendary status, this novel is definitely worth reading for those of you who adore the Eighties world of werewolf weirdness.
SCORE: Three full moons out of five
WORD OF THE DAY: Zymurg
Nope. But I did have a lot of fun with this one.
The plot is quite simple. A series of murders begin in Toronto that puzzle the police. The victims are bitten but not eaten, and wolf hairs and saliva are found on the bodies. However, human saliva also was found on the wounds, and several witnesses claim to have seen a strange man leaving the scene. Is this a case of a rogue wolf or a madman... or worse?
The main problem is that some of the characters, particularly when women are portrayed, come across as abrasive. We have a self-absorbed wife of the police chief who is devoted to her husband but doesn't listen to a single thing he says. We have an abused wife whose only thought after hearing the news that her daughter was brutally murdered was that she can divorce her bastard husband. And most irritating of all, the love interest of one of our main characters is constantly naked and spewing out tired women's lib, free-love, anti-establishment dialogue in a very unflattering way, establishing that the author himself likely held contempt for his generation's counterculture. She actually compares going to a baseball game to the spectacle of Christians being fed to lions, and criticizes her boyfriend for getting upset about women getting murdered in the city because he should care more about the atrocities that had been committed by America in Vietnam. Really?
I only state this as a potential trigger warning, but in fact, Case does a good job with overall character-building. Just when you think he has painted a two-dimensional picture of someone, he turns the tables and adds another layer of complexity to make an otherwise annoying character sympathetic and real. Take the above hippy girl, for instance. Turns out, she has her personal reasons for behaving the way she does with which we can empathize. And in one beautiful passage, Case summarizes her tragedy: "She had ideals but they didn’t fit quite right in her head, they were just stuffed in there every which way with the edges rubbing together. Lots of friction, when the edge on an idea starts rubbing against a concept. Enough friction to start a fire . . . chock-a-block full of ideas that didn’t fit. Big, solid blocks of conviction, slices of platitude, lumps of dedication shouldered out of position by wedges of habit . . ."
As far as the antagonist is concerned, you don't get much characterization per se, because you are not supposed to know who the killer is, whether or not the person really is a werewolf, or if it is even a person at all. However, a particular line of dialogue fairly early in the book makes it pretty obvious who has been commiting the murders.
Despite all this, I found it fairly compelling reading. It is written more like a police procedural murder mystery with classic horror elements, making this feel so familiar that you swear you've seen this as a movie on TV before. The carnage doesn't get too gruesome and suggests more than it relates, but there is enough werewolf action to keep the pace clipping along nicely until its satisfying conclusion.
A neat little thing the author does is use innocuous objects as symbols for entire events and emotions associated with them. A great example is how he focuses on a guy visiting Toronto who gets a flat tire. He carelessly leaves the old tire on the side of the street. This tire then becomes tangentially involved in a pivotal point in the novel. I can't say more than that, but it's kind of cool.
And hey, you can actually learn a bit of beer trivia from this book. I didn't know that Exhibition Stadium didn't allow beer to be sold during games, for instance. And the froth on a poured beer is called barm.
David Case got his start writing racy sexploitation novels and Westerns, and he was sharp enough to get into the horror paperback boom early enough to make a bit of a splash. Valancourt rediscovered his work in the macabre, and today you can find "Wolf Tracks" and his other weird tales much more easily. However, you can't beat that original cover art, featuring a treatment of the Lon Chaney Wolfman, which is actually quite accurate to how the monster is described in this book, as opposed to the more lupine creatures we would get after 1981.
Though never reaching legendary status, this novel is definitely worth reading for those of you who adore the Eighties world of werewolf weirdness.
SCORE: Three full moons out of five
WORD OF THE DAY: Zymurg
March 24, 2017
Everyone knows how much Mr. Case enjoyed werewolves and the tropes therein, and so it should come as little surprise to find elements of many of his previous tales regarding 'Man/Beasts' in WOLF TRACKS.
"But is it any good?" I hear you ask. Well, it's alright. A bit dated, a bit muddled, a bit of a hodgepodge of his earlier stories, as mentioned. The whodunit aspect is rather obvious, which I've also found in other stories by Case. This makes me wonder if he was actually that bothered by the mystery element (kinda like the Columbo TV show), and more about the reasons why, and the detection thereof.
I hated Columbo, I'm more a Carl Kolchak man. Or Jim Rockford.
"But is it any good?" I hear you ask. Well, it's alright. A bit dated, a bit muddled, a bit of a hodgepodge of his earlier stories, as mentioned. The whodunit aspect is rather obvious, which I've also found in other stories by Case. This makes me wonder if he was actually that bothered by the mystery element (kinda like the Columbo TV show), and more about the reasons why, and the detection thereof.
I hated Columbo, I'm more a Carl Kolchak man. Or Jim Rockford.
October 4, 2022
A limp, poorly written excuse for a werewolf novel and a police procedural, full of monotonous, unlikeable characters, clumsy attempts at profundity, and a boring, obvious mystery. Not to mention the constant typos and spelling mistakes on every other page. Why Valancourt thought this was worth reprinting, I'll never know.
July 30, 2021
Fun, fast read. Good flow does keep you guessing as to who the wolf is, but once you find out, it was probably who your 1st guessed lol. Not a lot of character development, but I do not feel it was needed. Also adds elements of slasher movies/books and detective books so a little bit for everyone.
March 14, 2021
Different concept of a werewolf. Was able to tell "who did it" well before the end of the book.
December 17, 2008
It was well written though not really the sort of book I would normally read.
October 16, 2014
many typos. wolf biologist is in m convincing hippie
February 10, 2025
In the seedy Toronto streets, a body found, torn apart, chewed, desecrated like a wild animal attack. Cops vomited on-site of this meat mess. Wolf hairs were found in the flesh wounds. The autopsy showed human and lupine saliva. Lycanthropy is the study of werewolves. Another victim, more chewing marks, flesh gone. The city in fear. The killers mind was there but blurred, a throbbing savage sensation. A head twisted, another thrown like a doll. The arteries in the throat ripped out, looking like a tin of sardines opened. The killer is back in human form. Confused but the hot thick taste of wonderful blood still present. A silver bullet to the chest is the only option. I learnt adumbration and chiaroscuro from this pulpy book but this does have some cerebral moments.
August 17, 2025
Read this in a couple of sittings over the past two weekends and enjoyed it well enough, even if I'm not exactly mystified as to why this never made its way to the silver screen in an era where at least a couple of other novels about werewolves very much did.
The Toronto setting is impressively novel, and I appreciated the characterization of the policemen working on the case. Didn't know that the Blue Jays - at least circa 1980 (and maybe just pre-Skydome/Rogers Centre?) - didn't sell beer at their games. That's insane to me! Why even have a baseball game?
Anyway, the solution to the mystery here is more or less hidden in plain sight, but I appreciated the way it was revealed. I also enjoyed the grim finality of the ending, and the wry joke on which the whole thing concludes.
The Toronto setting is impressively novel, and I appreciated the characterization of the policemen working on the case. Didn't know that the Blue Jays - at least circa 1980 (and maybe just pre-Skydome/Rogers Centre?) - didn't sell beer at their games. That's insane to me! Why even have a baseball game?
Anyway, the solution to the mystery here is more or less hidden in plain sight, but I appreciated the way it was revealed. I also enjoyed the grim finality of the ending, and the wry joke on which the whole thing concludes.
October 11, 2021
Well, based on the title, cover and description, one might not be too shocked to discover this is a book about lycanthrophy. I wasn't prepared for it to be like one of the Ed McBain 87th precinct books however, just with a shape shifter. Here characters come in and out the story as we follow a world weary cop and his younger partner following the carnage of a werewolf in Toronto. The main downside is that the "who is the werewolf" mystery is somewhat obvious. It's like the polar opposite of The Beast Must Die but...beggars can't be choosers when it comes to werewolf mysteries! Still this was a dog-gone good time.
May 18, 2025
Very much a by-the-book thriller that doesn't add much to werewolf lore but it still manages to be a mildly fun whodunit, if overly obvious about who the culprit is.
Kind of sexist in spots, but it's kind of hard to get away from that when you're reading these paperbacks from hell.
Kind of sexist in spots, but it's kind of hard to get away from that when you're reading these paperbacks from hell.
June 4, 2025
Not Case’s best by a long shot, but still humorously trashy and engaging. Seems like the author had some societal complaints at the time of writing, and felt he needed to air his grievances throughout. I can see why it was forgotten, and it’s certainly not a classic.
August 25, 2025
For a 200-page book there sure were a lot of characters that all kind of felt the same. Because of this I found some of it hard to follow and keep up with who's who. Nevertheless, I persevered and finished the book. Enjoyable for sure but not one I'll remember too much of.
May 5, 2021
This was actually pretty good. I rarely think this but this book could have been longer and it would have made it better. Pretty fun
September 6, 2022
Really enjoyable for a werewolf story! Short but fun. Reads like a crime novel, with some twists.
January 26, 2025
Wolf Man
A police investigation entwined with a good horror story set in Toronto. A great yarn from to go. Ends on a comedic note.
A police investigation entwined with a good horror story set in Toronto. A great yarn from to go. Ends on a comedic note.
March 30, 2025
Napeto, krvavo, ali nerealno
May 6, 2025
Classic pulp werewolf novel, set in Toronto, originally published in 1980. Case was a skilled storyteller and delivers the goods.
July 7, 2025
Lon Chaney Jr. type werewolf. Excellent werewolf/detective story.
The Wolfman takes Toronto in 1990. Can the gruff old murder detective solve the crime and stop the killing?
The Wolfman takes Toronto in 1990. Can the gruff old murder detective solve the crime and stop the killing?
March 14, 2015
donated to The Smith Family charity
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews