The Changing

Ryerson Biergarten #1

by F.W. Armstrong (Pseudonym), T.M. Wright

Several employees at Rochester's Eastman Kodak plant are brutally murdered and, based on the testimony of a dying victim, Police Chief Thomas Hastings fears that the murderer may be a werewolf.

Genres: Horror, Occult Detective

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Pen name of T.M. Wright

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ryerson Biergarten (what a name for a character), a psychic investigator, helps Tom McCabe (police) to uncovering the murders in Kodak Park (yes, it has something to do with the film company). Soon they know they are hunting for something supernatural. Is it a male or a female killer? What is it they try to hunt down (please have a look at the cover)? Too many unlikable characters (incl. the main one), few compelling moments, tedious, not written in a exciting way, very spare scary moments. No, I didn't enjoy this book at all. There are many interesting and fine books from the Golden Age of Horror. This is none of them, even if it was written by T.M. Wright, a big name author (Armstrong was a pen name of his). You definitely don't have to read this book except you are a big T.M.Wright fan and want to read everything from him.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Ryerson Biergarten books have always been my favorites of T.M. Wright's works. The first two, The Changing and The Devouring, were published under the pseudonym of F.W. Armstrong in the mid-1980s, and the other two, Goodlow's Ghosts and The Ascending, were published under his own name in the mid-1990s. Biergarten is a psychic who works with the forces of law and order to solve horrific crimes. With his faithful canine companion, Creosote, he helps both the living and the not-so-much who are in need of aid. The books are full of interesting and amusing investigations, along with Wright's usual ambiguous and occasionally seemingly contradictory interactions with ghosts, but Ryerson also deals with werewolves, vampires, and other popular demons of the day. They're a bit dated in spots, I'm sure (the covers of the first two are very much a relic of their era), but skimming through I think they would still hold pretty well. Wright was an excellent writer who excelled at creating a dreamlike quality in his quiet horror novels, an aspect which is present but secondary to rigorous plotting and good pacing in the Biergarten books. Ryerson was a literary descendant of Hodgson's Carnacki and a forerunner of Butcher's Dresden.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting take on the werewolf story. I liked Ryerson and I am hoping that he gets a little more character development in the next couple of books. The characters were pretty flat and boring, not much depth to any of them, including Ryerson. The writing was pretty basic, nothing flowery or complicated but it worked with the story and the characters. The only thing that bugged me about it was the characters said each other's names way too much. Sometimes as often as twice in the same sentence. It was mildly annoying since when there is a conversation between two people, there is no need to keep saying the person's name throughout the whole thing. Ryerson must have called Tom by his name every other sentence for each conversation they had. The only other thing was the lack of explanation for what exactly happened in the book at the end. Was it a demon? Why did it feel the need to have people kill? I really hope that the next book continues the story of this entity we see in the book and explains what it is and how it works. 3 out of 5 stars.

[Matthew Bielawa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book because I’m a recent fan of T.M. Wright. When I went looking for more of his books, I found this one…not realizing that he wrote it under the pseudonym F.W. Armstrong. I must admit that this book, The Changing, did not grab me like others in Wright’s Strange See and Manhattan Ghost Story series. But The Changing was a quick read and still a bit of fun. It certainly helped that I did not go in with any expectations. The story moved along nicely but without my favorite aspects of T.M. Wright’s atmosphere and impending sense of other and quiet uneasiness. The characters were somewhat flat but did exhibit some shock and some humor, a reminder of the good old days of reading when I was younger. Although I enjoyed the quick fun read, minus the one hospital scene that came out of the blue and did not seem to fit the story at all, I don’t think I’m going to go going on to other books in the series, at least for now. But I still remain a T.M. Wright fan!

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

In two pages, Wright can introduce me to (and subsequently kill off) a character, yet I still feel more familiar with said character than those in books spending hundreds of pages doing the same thing. This was a quick, fun read, yet Wright's intelligent, subtle style makes it more than that. I bet Wright could author a grocery list that would keep me interested.

On to book two...

[TheCultureVulture · Rating 3 out of 5]

Second half was a bit of a letdown but a very unique read from the creature, to the setting of Kodak Park a giant industrial campus, to our psychic investigator protagonist who can speak with ghosts and read minds (but doesn't believe in werewolves) along with his gassy sidekick Boston bull terrier.

[Al Treadwell · Rating 2 out of 5]

“And what’s a werewolf? A werewolf’s your basic supernatural grunt, he’s a dogface, a slob.”

Werewolfism serves time and time again as a convenient metaphor for literary tropes, especially puberty and sexual freedom. On occasion, however, The Werewolf is nothing more than a smelly, vapid, and voracious monster who needs its rabies shots. ENTER: The Changing by late pulp writer T.M. Wright, who followed up this doozy of a novel with three sequels under the name F.W. Armstrong. It’s time to hang up your thinking caps and tuck right into some good old-fashioned horror from the era of Reaganomics and Dayglo...

Continue reading at Books that Bite:

https://www.booksthatbite.com/p/retro...

[Art · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favorite horror writers from my Rochester, NY, days. The setting of this book, Kodak Park and the surrounding neighborhoods, brought back a flood of memories, but also made me sad, given Kodak's lingering death.

[library goddess · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book captured my interest but I hated the way that the ending wasn't really the ending

[Renee Butler · Rating 1 out of 5]

Avoid this book at all costs. I made it through three of the 20-some chapters in this book. It was like pulling teeth.. Way too much filler to introduce the characters, bad pacing, hokey resolution.