The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan

The last werewolf is Jake Marlowe, and he knows that he is the sole target of the World Organization for the Control of Occult Phenomena, who will be out to kill him when he changes at the next full moon. But he is undergoing an existential crisis after 200 years of life, and decides to just let it happen. Then love surprises him, and he decides he really does want to live after all. He finds that some people want to help him survive (including a family of vampires), for their own dark reasons, while others are just as intent on doing him in. He doesn't know which people to trust or which way to go.

I can't entirely make up my mind about this book.

On one hand, I could find it to be a cleverly written ironic take on the werewolf legend, with an interesting anti-hero who sprinkles his first-person saga with philosophical musings and numerous references and quotes from literature. It tells a rather suspenseful yet trite story, but with a tongue-in-cheek and darkly humorous tone, making it somewhat of a parody. Looking at the novel in this way, it would be literary fiction rather than genre fiction.

On the other hand, I could find it to be a run-of-the-mill suspense thriller, which casts the hero as a werewolf rather than as a spy or private detective or ex-CIA agent to take advantage of today's Twilight-fueled fascination with manly monsters. It is drenched in graphic blood and violence in keeping with the conventions of this genre, and also features the genre's abundant sex, complete with the use of the most crude terms to describe the sex act. (The sex scenes, however, are not erotic in the least.) All the literary flourishes might seem to be preening on the part of the author, to show that even though he is basically writing just a conventional thriller he is really a very deep thinking and literary guy.

I think I've decided, then, that Duncan tried to straddle the line and write something that would sell as genre fiction and that would be respected as literary fiction at the same time. In one telling aside, the hero talks about the author Graham Greene, saying that he "had a semiparodic relationship with the genres his novels exploited...." Yes, Graham Greene did adopt the conventions of various genres, but he did not openly satirize or disparage them. He just did it better than anyone else. This writer was not comfortable enough with himself and his image to do that, in my opinion. He hedged his bets too much.

I don't know how much my opinion is influenced by the photo of the author on the back page, but I do know that he looks rather exactly as I would have pictured his werewolf to look. He is over 40, and has very long and curly dark hair and a purposefully soulful and "deep" expression. When I saw it, I thought to myself, "I'll bet this guy is an arrogant prick."

Many have liked and praised this book, but I don't believe I can fully recommend it. I could be wrong.