Progeny of the Adder (1965) by Leslie H. Whitten

When I was in 8th grade I picked up and read a book with cover art depicting a werewolf coming toward the viewer through tall grass at night. It is illuminated by a single handheld torch. As a lifelong lover of all things monster-related, my 13-year old self couldn’t resist and I bought and read the book within the span of a single week. That book was Moon of the Wolf, by Leslie H. Whitten and I immediately set about trying to locate and read anything I could by the author. The holy grail book at the time was Progeny of the Adder, which I eventually found decades later at a used book store.

So, what was so special about Progeny of the Adder? I learned that many consider it to have had a very distinct influence on Jeff Rice’s The Night Stalker, and on the surface alone, I can see merit in those claims. First published in 1965, a full 5 years before Rice wrote it and 7 years before it would see publication, they both share a lot of similar ideas, though the execution is very different. Oddly enough, Whitten’s werewolf tale was adapted as a TV movie of the week in 1972 thanks in part to the huge success of The Night Stalker TV movie.

In Whitten’s novel, it is 1965 and homicide detective Harry Picard becomes embroiled in investigating a series of murders in Washington, DC. All of the victims are blonde females who have been found in the Potomac River drained of blood with throats torn open. Additionally, they all appear to have suffered extreme weight loss prior to their deaths.

What follows is very much a police procedural with Picard going about the day-to-day task of trying to capture his suspect. He even has time to strike up a bit of a romance with Susy, another investigator on the force whose specialty is investigating links between the clothing of the deceased, though her role in the main plot will increase when she becomes directly involved with trying to lure the killer by posing undercover as a streetwalker.

The differences are starker than the similarities. For starters, and perhaps biggest of all, unlike The Night Stalker, at no point in Progeny of the Adder does anyone think they are up against a real vampire; they believe they are trying to find a killer who believes that he is a vampire and, as such, is suffering from a mental disorder. They hold to this faith in spite of mounting evidence that there is something clearly supernatural afoot, such as a killer who can be repeatedly shot and survive. This begins to make them seem thick-headed in the face of mounting evidence.

Additionally, Picard and his team actually do real detective work to crack the case and learn the killer’s identity, sometimes in painstakingly slow and mundane ways that don’t make for exciting storytelling. However, unlike Rice's Kolchak, whose big breaks are served to him on a silver platter, Picard puts in the time and legwork to learn that the killer is European, one Sebastien Paulier, who traveled to Canada and then on to America with a large trunk in tow. The reader immediately realizes this is his coffin, but the cops can’t seem to connect the dots that Whitten wants his reader to grasp. And that's part of Whitten's problem; he wants the reader to remain one step ahead of the progress of our protagonists. This severely robs any sense of mystery or discovery.

This is not really an action novel nor a horror novel, at least not in the classic sense. It is a police procedural with a twist. That said, there are a couple of protracted sequences of solid action. One is a chase in cars and on foot through Washington’s downtown area along the Potomac that is genuinely exciting and has a nice sense of geographical gravitas to it. The other is when the police have tracked Paulier to a farmhouse in rural DC where they eventually locate a barn where his trunk, filled with dirt, is hidden in the bales of hay. The dogs have found this spot by tracking the intense stench of death that is associated with Paulier, another trait he shares with The Night Stalker’s Janos Skorzeny. There is a great confrontation with Paulier when he returns just before sunrise to find his hiding place desecrated by the police and is forced to directly and violently engage them.

Overall, I don’t regret reading Progeny of the Adder. It is certainly an interesting footnote in 20th century vampire fiction. I really wish however that Whitten had committed fully to the vampire element, or at least had the conviction to turn the whole thing on its head in the end and have everyone realize that there is some truth to old-world superstition and folklore. A good dose of newly-minted Van Helsings banding together to destroy the impossible sure worked a few years later for Stephen King in ‘Salem’s Lot.

Review by Steve Carroll