First published in 1972, David Morrell’s First Blood tells the story of two men who go to war in what was then contemporary Kentucky.

Police Chief Wilfred Teasle runs Madison, Kentucky. He’s a Korean War veteran trusted with keeping his town quiet. When he spots a young, long-haired drifter, he harasses him and tries to run him out. When the drifter keeps coming back, Teasle arrests him. What Teasle doesn’t understand is that the young man is Rambo, a Vietnam veteran and former Green Beret still carrying the PTSD from his time as a POW. Triggered by a claustrophobic cell and the deputies putting hands on him, Rambo escapes into the mountains. One deputy dies in the station. Three more die on the first pursuit. Teasle becomes obsessed with taking him down even as his own injuries mount. Rambo knows he could slip the net and keep walking. The fight feels too good to leave. Many more people die before the novel reaches its tragic conclusion.

First Blood the novel is not a novelization of the film it later inspired. Rambo is not the misunderstood victim of the movie. He’s a mentally unstable man who kills numerous deputies and National Guardsmen. Teasle is not the snarling cartoon sheriff of the movie. He’s a stubborn, decorated chief who develops a strange respect for Rambo and feels a kinship because both of them served overseas. The difference is that Teasle was welcomed home. Society treats Rambo as a pariah, the walking symbol of an unpopular war.

Before we get into why this belongs in the horror column, First Blood is a very well-written novel. The chapters cut back and forth between Rambo and Teasle; both men are vividly drawn. The ending is dark and feels earned. Readers who expect the Stallone movie on paper will be surprised, and hopefully pleased.

As for the horror: you can read First Blood as Vietnam brought home. The same way Last House on the Left dragged overseas atrocity onto American porches, Morrell imagines the war fought in Kentucky hills. Rambo uses what the jungle taught him. Teasle becomes the stand-in for generals who cannot understand the enemy they created. The deputies and Guardsmen Rambo kills become the local version of the bodies left in the trees. Rambo is a monster. Like Frankenstein’s creature, he was shaped by the arrogance and carelessness of the people who made him.

No wonder Teasle feels sorry for him in the end.