Mod-glam vampire rot hasfinally lost its reign at Top ofthe Pops. And in many ways,this is a story that pits thesepitiful snobs prone tocatatonia against the morecomely monsters of hunger,lust and depravity –werewolves. For a serious literary novelist onhis seventh book, this is a brave move.Duncan has made his name writing aboutsex and violence (see I, Lucifer), and to addfurther supernatural elements to thiswell-traversed territory risks triteness. Butthis isn’t your regular gothic-horror-thriller.

Jacob Marlowe, an Oxfordshire gentleman,turned werewolf 167 years ago (1842) on awalking tour in Wales. Now, he’s fallen intodeep despondency and melancholy. He’sexhausted the modes: ‘hedonism, asceticism,spontaneity, reflection, everything from miserableSocrates to the happy pig’. Thus whatensues is a fatalistic ennui, and preparednessto meet his death on the next moon of theCurse. He is the last of his species, beinghunted for years by the World Organisationfor the Control of Occult Phenomena(WOCOP). Of course, plans are hamperedby Hollywood plot twists and lycanthropichunger and lust – and, quite possibly, love.

Sure there are vampires, hookers and hiredmercenaries here too, and while it might allsmack of a work adapted from the screen topage, Duncan can certainly turn a phrase.Sitting in a three-piece-suit drinking Macallanand chain-smoking Camel filters, Marlowetells us that God is dead, but irony’sutterly alive. He’s painfully aware that monstersdie out when the collective imaginationno longer needs them. You’d be hard-pressednot to howl out loud at Marlowe’s sharp,depraved mind. Think Warren Zevon meetsGrinderman, and it’s little wonder that itbecomes all the more piquant to have sucha mythical beast tilt the lid on twenty-firstcentury humanity.

Luke May is assistant manager of Readings StKilda