Just when you think you’ve seen it all in the fictional werewolf/vampire/witch craze, British novelist Glen Duncan comes along with a story unlike anything else out there. His dark, atmospheric and gripping The Last Werewolf has more in common with Anne Rice than Stephenie Meyer, but it’s a book completely its own. As the title suggests, Jake Marlowe comes to learn he is the last werewolf on Earth. He’s been a man/werewolf hybrid for almost two centuries, and he’s had about enough. With the help of his friend Harley, Jake realizes he’s being hunted by the WOCOP (World Organization for the Control of Occult Phenomena), and that’s just fine with him.
Jake was turned in a random act of violence in the mid-19th century, and his new identity (complete with unimaginable bloodlust, sexual yearning and pain of transformation) caused him to kill his beloved wife, Arabella. And so Jake has merely survived in the years since, killing when he must, seeing prostitutes instead of engaging in meaningful relationships and documenting it all in the novel, which reads like a journal. But just when he is about to give up hope, Duncan gives us a shocking twist—one that motivates Jake to keep on living, if only for a few more days.
To say much more would spoil the fun of reading The Last Werewolf, a supernatural novel that somehow reads like the best of literary fiction. Elegant and thoughtful while thrilling and violent, this is a book to sink your teeth into.
