Stalking the A Fable of Tonight

It’s Halloween, and John Justin Mallory’s partner, Winnifred Carruthers, has been so busy preparing for the biggest holiday of the year (in his Manhattan, anyway) that she seems short of energy and pale. Mallory is worried that she’s been working too hard. Then he notices the two puncture marks on her neck… On this night when ghosts and goblins are out celebrating, detective Mallory must stalk the vampire who has threatened his assistant, Winnifred Carruthers, and killed her nephew. With the aid of Felina, the catgirl, Mallory and Carruthers investigate clubs and lairs that only seem to exist on this one night of the year. His hunt takes him to Creepy Conrad's Cut-Rate All-Night Mortuary, where he questions the living and the dead; to the Annual Zombies' Ball, to learn more about the undead; to the Hills of Home Cemetery, where the vampire sleeps by day; and to Battery Park, where all of Manhattan's bats come to feed and sleep. Along the way he meets a few old friends and enemies, and a host of strange new inhabitants of this otherworldly Manhattan. Locked in an intriguing battle of wits with the millennia-old vampire, Mallory has until dawn if he is to save his trusted partner.

It’s Valentine's Day and private detective John Justin Mallory is planning on closing up the office early and taking his partner, Col. Winnifred Carruthers, out to dinner, since he's sure no one else will do so. But before he can turn off the lights and lock the door, a panic-stricken Buffalo Bill Brody visits them. It seems that the Eastminster pet show is being held the next day, and his dragon, Fluffy, the heavy favorite, has been kidnapped. Mallory's nocturnal hunt for the miniature dragon takes him to some of the stranger sections of this Manhattan—Greenwitch Village (which is right around the corner from Greenwich Village and is populated by witches and covens); a wax museum where figures of Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre come alive; Gracie Mansion (which is haunted by the ghosts of former mayors); and the Bureau of Missing Creatures, a movie set where they're filming a PBS documentary on zombies and various other denizens of the Manhattan night. As Mallory follows the leads and hunts for clues, he comes up against one dead end after another. Along the way he meets a few old friends and enemies, and a host of strange new inhabitants of this otherworldly Manhattan. Aided by a strange goblin named Jeeves, Mallory has only one night to find a tiny dragon that's hidden somewhere in a city of seven million.

The collected short stories of detective John J. Mallory, the hero of Resnick's STALKING THE UNICORN, STALKING THE VAMPIRE and STALKING THE DRAGON. Eight, hilarious tales of a hard-boiled detective from our world, unhappily stranded in a Manhattan filled with trolls, pink elephants, a blue-nosed reindeer, powerful demons and more. The title story appears here for the first time.