John Blackburn

The Face of the Lion John Blackburn

'John Blackburn is today's master of horror.' - Times Literary Supplement

'Achieves a delicious sense of nausea.' - The Guardian

'[G]iant monsters . . . products of a mutation . . . bubonic plague!' - The Observer

'He is certainly the best British novelist in his field and deserves the widest recognition.' - Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural

A remote area of the Scottish Highlands has been cordoned off and is being guarded by an army of I. R. A. mercenaries and ex-Nazi thugs. Local rumour has it that eccentric laird James Fraser Clyde is looking for buried treasure, but the British government fears he might be building an atomic bomb in an attempt to win Scottish independence. Yet the truth may be something far worse: a mysterious contagion is turning the locals into deformed, grunting creatures, with a single-minded urge to kill and spread their infection. Sir Marcus Levin, the Nobel Prize-winning bacteriologist, must find a way to halt the epidemic before it gets out of hand and destroys the world. But what is causing it? Who started it, and why? And can it be stopped?

First published in 1976, John Blackburn's horror thriller The Face of the Lion capitalized on the popularity of apocalyptic zombie tales in the wake of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). This edition includes a new introduction by Greg Gbur, which situates Blackburn's novel within the tradition of zombie literature.