The Night Stalker (AKA The Kolchak Papers) (Kolchak #1) (1970)

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 HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2024

by Jeff Rice



A seedy Las Vegas reporter stumbles onto the story of a lifetime when the serial killer who has plunged the city into panic with a spree of vampire-like murders begins to look more and more like the real deal.

 


The story is presented as a restructuring of notes provided to the author by Carl Kolchak, whose mental health, sobriety, and career have all been ravaged by his brush with the supernatural. 



Jeff Rice’s background as a journalist is evident in the verisimilitude he brings to the milieu of the early 70s newspaper business, related in a terse “just the facts, ma’am” style that makes up for a lack of characterization.

 

Jeff Rice

He presents the workings of a big city newspaper in the early 70s as well as the social strata of Vegas from the city officials down to the bar girls, small-time gamblers, and prostitutes. 



It reads like a book that was supposed to be a crime novel except that the antagonist just happened to be a vampire. Darren McGavin’s portrayal of Kolchak in the great TV movie adaption, its sequel, and the subsequent TV series cemented the character in the minds of a generation of 70s and 80s adolescents as the quintessential occult investigator, but he also stands as a classic noir protagonist—a man whose strict commitment to exposing the truth makes him the protector of a society where he does not fully belong. The climax, which is quite different than the movie, doesn’t present Kolchak as the lone maverick he often was on television. This is the right ending for the book, but I can see how Richard Matheson’s teleplay features a better climax for a film.

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