The House of the Wolf1983

High above the tiny Hungarian village of Lugos rise the frowning spires and towers of Castle Homolky. Within dwell the hereditary members of the Homolky family, including the Count and his lovely daughter Nadia; below, in the subterranean dungeons beneath the castle, lie the remains of an incredible chamber of horrors devised by a degenerate ancestor of the Homolkys to torture his enemies. So tragic are the traditions interwoven with the castle that it is known to villagers as The House of the Wolf. Into this legend-haunted region comes John Coleridge, an American professor who has journeyed to Lugos to attend a meeting on European folklore. Upon his arrival Coleridge encounters the funeral procession of a village peasant whose throat has been ravaged, and he is apprised of local superstition regarding a great black wolf with preternatural powers. Later Coleridge is a guest at the Castle Homolky, where he meets the mysterious Count and his family, learns of the terrible curse that holds the Homolkys in thrall, and then discovers a monstrous marauder in the form of a huge wolf that lurks through the shadowy corridors of the castle. Amid scenes of savage murder and horrendous carnage, Coleridge begins to track down his bestial adversary in a spine-tingling quest that extends from the catacombs underneath the castle to the glassed-in conservatories on the heights ... to the final astonishing revelation of The House of the Wolf. The author of over eighty books in his native England, Basil Copper received ecstatic critical notices for his previous novel, the gaslight gothic Necropolis. Copper returns to the Victorian thriller with The House of the Wolf and triumphantly reaffirms his stature in the grand tradition of master British storytellers.