Book Six (Cabal), Chapter Three
“Twilight at the Towers”
Now here’s something out of left field–a spy-thriller/Manchurian Candidate/werewolf mash-up! Well, they’re not strictly werewolves per se, this being Clive Barker and everything, but lycanthropy is the myth being toyed with here. As I’m of the firm believe that we’re one rock-solid high-production-value maverick horror movie and/or comic away from werewolves becoming the next zombies, genre prognosticators are advised to pay close attention here.
It’s a real testament to Barker’s abilities at this stage in the series that he can graft this kind of horror into this kind of genre thriller (something he really hadn’t touched at all up until this point) and have it make so much thematic and plot-driven sense that you end up wondering why no one ever thought of it before. Shifting allegiances, hidden identities, the demands of the self vs. the demands of society–Barker horror and Cold War espionage have a whole lot in common, don’t they? To arrive at this conclusion Barker sets up an enjoyable and engrossing mystery that, in the end, leaves you cheering for the monsters. I suppose you could criticize the story for its (much less enthusiastic than many similar cases’) embrace of the ’80s-chic notion that the free West and Communist East were six one way, half a dozen the other, but I think that would be churlish and point-missing. The point is that monsters, good and bad, are everywhere,