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I’d never even heard of Glen Duncan before getting this novel. I learned he’s a British author of seven previous novels, one of which, I, LUCIFER, is being developed as a film. THE LAST WEREWOLF was a revelation for me. Superb writing that grabs one early. Especially in the second half, I raced through the pages. Literally couldn’t put it down. I know that phrase can be overused, but it’s the first book in a while for me that I could make that claim.

As the book opens, Jacob-Jake- Marlowe learns he’s the last werewolf left in the world when his human familiar, Harley, tells him the Berliner has been killed. You see, Jake was the last human turned by a bite and that was one hundred-sixty-seven years ago of his two hundred and one. The theory was that some sort of virus had come into play that just killed the victim. And then there was WOCOP(World Organization for the Control of Occult Phenomenon), the four hundred year old group that specialized in hunting down werewolves. Headed by Grainer, it was his protege Ellis that killed the Berliner. Jake was his special project. After all, he killed and ate the man’s father forty years before. And the Hunt takes their werewolves during the full moon phase. A wolf head makes a much better trophy.

They use all sorts of tricks for an old organization, even to using the internet to set up a fake sting, a sort of Match.com for werewolves that cost one hundred lives in a single day. You see, the ratio of Shes to Hes in the werewolf world is one to a hundred.

Though just middle-aged for a werewolf, Jake is tired and weary and makes the momentous decision to let himself be taken at the next full moon. That doesn’t sit well with Harley, a seventy year old gay man he’d saved from a savage beating fifty years before while in his werewolf phase, then spared the man. Harley had been his protector and friend ever since.

But there are factions in the world, two of them, that want Jake kept alive for their own reasons. Jake gets caught up in the battles when all he wants is to just let it end.

Until he makes a discovery that changes everything.

Duncan has taken the world of werewolves and introduced a new spin. Told in the first person, we are witness to the savagery, the sex, the gore, the humanity of this person know as Jake Marlowe. One comes to care about him and his life. The werewolves here are the ones that age. The human half stays the same as at the time of the bite, but the animal half is subject to aging, arthritis, all the things that the passing years will bring. He is blessed with fast healing wounds, a broken bone will take a day, though.

This book will be released July 12, 2011 and can be pre-ordered HERE. If you like a good horror novel with fine writing, I recommend this one.

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