The Last Werewolf

The supernatural is hot these days in almost all media: books, TV, film; from the ridiculous (Twilight) to the sublime (True Blood). You wouldn't think a book about a werewolf could possibly break any new ground, or rise above it's pulp antecedents, but Glen Duncan's The Last Werewolf, which puts on a literary spin on a popular genre, managed to do just that. It's terrific.

Duncan observes most of the laws that were filtered through folklore by Curt Siodmak, who wrote the Universal film The Wolfman, which created most of the familiar tropes of the genre. Sure enough, Duncan's werewolf changes at the full moon, can be defeated by silver, and becomes a werewolf by being bitten by another werewolf. Duncan adds a few elemental details, though, as if anticipating our "wait, buts," the curse requires the werewolf to eat human flesh, so no cheating by eating, say, a moose, and living to about 400 years, but looking the same age as when they were first turned.

Our protagonist and narrator is Jacob Marlowe, who was bitten by a werewolf in Wales in the 1830s. It's now modern times, and he's the last of his kind, as a worldwide anti-occult organization has tracked down and killed all the others. He's resigned to his fate, tired of living the life that is shared with his "brother," who supplies the hunger. He's tired of being on the run, and tired of being lonely, as he has sex with prostitutes whom he pointedly does not personally like.

Marlowe is a great companion--urbane and witty, and with a conscience: he has killed many people, but has taken his vast fortune and tried to do good for people. He also points out, "Two nights ago I'd eaten a forty-three-year-old hedge fun specialist. I've been in a phase of taking the ones no one wants."

Marlowe is on fairly good terms with one of his hunters, Ellis, but the one who wants to kill him is a fellow named Grainer: "Forty years ago I killed and ate Grainer's father. Grainer was ten at the time. There's always someone's father, someone's mother, someone's wife, someone's son. This is the problem with killing and eating people. One of the problems."

A few plot points I won't spoil, such as the climax of Marlowe's flashback to what happened after he turned (he was married to a beautiful American woman) or the major plot twist that happens halfway through the book. Suffice it to say that the title may be misleading.

The book is very erudite, but also viscerally bloody. A few of Marlowe's kills are described in anatomical detail, and one of them has the added frisson of the TV show America's Next Top Model on in the background. Oh, and there are also vampires, and as we have been led to believe, werewolves and vampires don't like each other. In direct contradiction with Stephenie Meyers' vampire laws, Duncan's bloodsuckers can't have sex, which is why they envy the werewolf.

The Last Werewolf is the werewolf novel for the literary minded. I think the generic horror fan would enjoy it, too, although it does get a bit existential here and there and drop literary references. But most of it is thrilling stuff. Here, on describing the first time Marlowe transforms into a wolf: "A breeze stirred the honeysuckle, the hairs on my ears and delirious wet snout. My scrotum twitched and my breath passed hot over my tongue. My anus was tenderly alert. I pictured my human self jumping the twenty feet, felt the shock of smashed ankles and slivered shins--then the new power like an inkling of depravity. I leaped from the window and bounded into the moonlight."