Thom reviewed The Kolchak Papers by Jeff Rice
Review of 'The Kolchak Papers' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I read each of the novels individually; this is a combined review of the two for this combined release.
Rice wrote "The Kolchak Papers" around 1970. That document was purchased and inspired a 1972 ABC movie-of-the-week adaptation by Richard Matheson - before it was even published. The first book, related to that, was released in 1973.
This is a story within a story - Kolchak provides his version of the story to Rice, who publishes it with comments and a few clarifications. The novel has typos and several paragraphs of vampire exposition - but it is also a page-turner and hard to put down. The descriptions of the villain are usually sparse, put down to Kolchak making notes while on the run or after the fact. Perhaps in this case the movie is better. The very brief appendix on Jack the Ripper seems out of place.
The author said of …
I read each of the novels individually; this is a combined review of the two for this combined release.
Rice wrote "The Kolchak Papers" around 1970. That document was purchased and inspired a 1972 ABC movie-of-the-week adaptation by Richard Matheson - before it was even published. The first book, related to that, was released in 1973.
This is a story within a story - Kolchak provides his version of the story to Rice, who publishes it with comments and a few clarifications. The novel has typos and several paragraphs of vampire exposition - but it is also a page-turner and hard to put down. The descriptions of the villain are usually sparse, put down to Kolchak making notes while on the run or after the fact. Perhaps in this case the movie is better. The very brief appendix on Jack the Ripper seems out of place.
The author said of the novel "I'd always wanted to write a vampire story, but more because I wanted to write something that involved Las Vegas." The brief location descriptions (Las Vegas in the late 60s) are fun to read.
In the second book, the roles were reversed - now Rice was writing a book based on the screenplay by Matheson. Surprisingly, I haven't seen the film in question, but this book reads like a novelization - it is a quick read, fun and few complaints. I especially enjoyed the role Seattle history and geography played in this story.
While Carl Kolchak saw a lot of things other people didn't, it was nice for the police to see something he didn't here. There is considerably less infodump in this book than in the first one. I liked the strong character of Louise Harper.
Near as I can tell, Jeff Rice didn't write anything more in this genre. Other novels, comics and collections of stories are available from Moonstone Press, who published the two combined Jeff Rice books as The Kolchak Papers.