SOLVED. Horror/ Thriller - Vampire bats attack town - At most 80s/early 90s. [s]

[David]

So, this is a very old book that belonged to my uncle.

Read at most 1993, and very likely was written way before that. He had books like Taipan & Shogun from James Clavell.

The few details I remember is that it was about some vampire bats that were attacking an area. It escalated from killing a cow, to isolated human attacks. They only attacked at sundown/night, I think.

Humans eventually figured out the bats were hiding in any of the caves that were in the area, and there was kind of a race to figure out which one before the next sundown/attack of the bats.

Don't remember any kind of disease transmitted by the bats, just the obvious draining of blood, but they might have escaped from a lab.

Some parts were from the POV of the bats, like how they awakened and rose from their slumber and later using ecolocation when flying to detect prey. Maybe it mentions using the heat signature of prey to hone it, but not sure.

Likely the town was in America, but not sure. I read it in Spanish (my mother tongue)

[Angela]

Nightwing by Martin Cruz Smith?

Or maybe Bats by William W. Johnstone?

[David]

Hmm, both look promising!

Bats seem to be too late from my memories, but can't discard it either by the content of the reviews.

Going to try to see if can find excerpts anywhere.

[Kris]

Google Books previews of Angela's suggestion:

Nightwing by Martin Cruz Smith:
1) https://books.google.com/books?id=GS6... There are different cover images.
2) https://books.google.com/books?id=BoC...

Bats by William W. Johnstone:
1) https://books.google.com/books?id=OLh... There are different cover images.

[David]

I have confirmed that Nightwing is my book.

Even if the Google preview hadn't included a segment of the bats' POV as I remembered it, between the publishing date (1977) and it being from the author of Gorky Park which was also in my uncle's book collection, I would have also considered it being the right one.

Also, the Google preview of Bats makes it seem like a decent book for my taste, so thanks for the suggestion!