Overview
Then she opened her mouth to scream—and recognised me. It was what I’d been waiting for. She froze. She looked into my eyes. She said, “It’s you.”
Meet Jake. A bit on the elderly side (he turns 201 in March), but you’d never suspect it. Nonstop sex and exercise will do that for you—and a diet with lots of animal protein. Jake is a werewolf, and after the unfortunate and violent death of his one contemporary, he is now the last of his species. Although he is physically healthy, Jake is deeply distraught and lonely.
Jake’s depression has carried him to the point where he is actually contemplating suicide—even if it means terminating a legend thousands of years old. It would seem to be easy enough for him to end everything. But for very different reasons there are two dangerous groups pursuing him who will stop at nothing to keep him alive.
Here is a powerful, definitive new version of the werewolf legend—mesmerising and incredibly sexy. In Jake, Glen Duncan has given us a werewolf for the twenty-first century—a man whose deeds can only be described as monstrous but who is in some magical way deeply human.
One of the most original, audacious, and terrifying novels in years.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Jake Marlowe is the unhappiest 200-year-old werewolf you are ever likely to meet. In fact, Jake is reported to be the world's last surviving werewolf and while he is musing about suicide, others are hunting him down. A rabid anti-occult group has vowed to annihilate him for sport and a group of vampires want to keep him alive for equally selfish reasons: Apparently, a werewolf bite can serve as a sort of sun-block to guard the undead from deadly exposure. As Jake fights to be the captain of his own fate, he gets welcome news: He might not be the only living werewolf after all. An unconventional slant on an archetypal story.
Publishers Weekly
At the start of British author Duncan's fine supernatural thriller, centuries-old lycanthrope Jake Marlowe learns he has become the last known werewolf on earth. Soon Jake is on the run from not only WOCOP, an antioccult agency that wants to hunt him down for sport, but also vampires, who have discovered that a werewolf bite can desensitize them to the ravages of sun exposure. After escaping horrible torments at the hands of both parties, Jake is shocked to discover that he may not be the last wolf standing, and that it's crucial he survive to propagate his species. Duncan (A Day and a Night and a Day) keeps the pages turning with hairbreadth escapes that have Jake globe-trotting for dear life from Europe to the U.S., but the true allure of his tale is the poetic and evocative prose by which Jake relates his transformations, kills, and thoughts.Savvy and exceptionally literate, this is one smart modern werewolf tale. 100,000 first printing. (July)Library Journal
Yes, this novel by the keen-eyed, edgy Duncan (A Day and a Night and a Day) features the last living werewolf. And, yes, there are vampires here, who crave Jake for reasons that won't be revealed. But don't give this book to Twilight groupies; the frank tone, dark wit, and elegant, sophisticated language will likely do them in. Jake Marlowe knows he's alone in the world because his only friend, Harley, who's tapped into WOCOP (World Organisation for the Control of Occult Phenomena), has learned that the penultimate wulf was just killed. When Jake discovers his singular status, he's ready to die himself; he's lived two centuries with his burden and knows that he's targeted by a WOCOP higher-up whose father he killed and ate. Then something big happens to change Jake's resolve. Duncan does not pretty up Jake, instead making his monthly transformation and desire for sex, blood, and death ("fuckkilleat") unadorned and brutal. But he also makes Jake's drive to survive our own, even as he shows us Jake's—dare one say it—humanity. VERDICT An adult rendering of a legend that's currently running amok, this work is smart, original, and completely absorbing. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 1/3/11.]—Barbara Hoffert, Library JournalKirkus Reviews
Duncan continues the long tradition of werewolf literature in this harrowing novel of lupine transformation.
In the 21st century the victims of werewolves' bites have been dying rather than transforming, so when the penultimate werewolf is eliminated, Jake Marlowe becomes the last. Jake is on the hit list for WOCOP, the World Organization for the Control of Occult Phenomena, and he expects to be eliminated by Grainer, whose family he had killed and devoured during a full moon a while back. Helping Jake is his friend Harley, whom he had saved from a homophobic attack some 30 years before. Jake realizes the stakes are high when Harley's head is delivered to him...so obviously no help will come from that quarter. We find out that Jake was born in the early 19th century and became a werewolf through a brief and fluky encounter with one while on a trip to Wales. His transformation led him to kill and eat his beloved wife Arabella. (Duncan gives us much more information about werewolves to devour—for example, that their libidos become hyperactive during the time of the full moon.) Although Jake fully expects to be eliminated, he makes every effort to escape from the various, mostly inept hunters WOCOP sends. And then something unprecedented and earth-shattering occurs—his acute sense of smell leads him to find another werewolf, this one a female named Talulla Demetriou. Together they go on the lam, but Grainer continues his pursuit—at least until Ellis, Grainer's protégé, tries to strike a deal with Jake, for Ellis would like to kill Grainer instead. It seems as though having at least one werewolf alive gives Ellis a reason for living.
Duncan's writing is quirky and brilliant—and definitely not for kids.
Justin Cronin
The challenge for any writer working within an established genre, especially a genre with a reputation for high camp, is to bring something new to the table while adhering to tradition. On both points, Duncan…scores high marks…Marlowe…deliver[s] his lengthy confession…with the pounding energy of water shot from a fire hose. Two centuries of undead living have endowed him with a vast pile of cultural capital and a linguistic style that swings gleefully between the wisecracking cynicism of his noir namesake and the syntactical curlicues of Humbert Humbert. Like Nabokov's dandified pedophile, Marlowe imparts the contents of his inner life and his impressions of the world around him in a series of succulent verbal morsels.—The New York Times