MY FATHER'S FORTUNE

by Michael Frayn
288 pages, Metropolitan Books

Review by Bill Kirton

As well as being an entertaining, absorbing read, this is a master class in the art and craft of writing. It’s a memoir in the course of which Frayn sketches the broad sweep of the history of his immediate family, with his recollections of his father and the similarities and differences between them as his primary focus.

It must be difficult, when writing something as personal as this, to separate the writer and the person doing the recollecting. When taking something as intimate as a childhood memory or a close family relationship and then using writerly skills to present it in its clearest form and with exactly the impact you felt it had on you yourself, you run the risk of fictionalising it, creating a distance between you and the memory. In fact, Stendhal, in his memoirs, often stopped and told the reader ‘I’m not going to describe this any further because it would be to “faire du roman”’, i.e. turn it into fiction. But Frayn has no such problems; he’s totally honest about what are the facts of events and what he’s guessing may have been happening. He often prefaces a description of an incident, a person or an experience by telling us that he thinks it was thus but it may have been otherwise. Many of the sequences begin with ‘I’m pretty sure that …’, ‘I suppose …’ and other such expressions.

But the people and places in his life are all given a real, independent presence, with their hairstyles, the clothes they wear, their habits and way of speaking, or their rooms, the colours of the walls, the character of their neighbours. And subtly, amongst them all, interacting with them, observing and affecting them, there’s Frayn the boy and young man, being evoked at his various stages by Frayn the writer as the one becomes the other.

The ‘Fortune’ of the title is carefully chosen because the book’s not just about the shifting finances of the Frayn clan during the war and post-war years but also the luck, bad and good, which befell his father and the family. One of his earliest memories is of his mother telling him, when he was about six, that his forebears were French and that, in the 16th century, one of them, a pirate, was caught and hanged. His ship was impounded and its gold was still being held ‘in Chancery’ for any Frayn who could prove he was a descendant. And it’s from such telling little details that Frayn constructs the various themes of his tale and sets up ironies, parallels, mysterious ‘correspondances’ (sic) which give meaning to events as they unfold.

Frayn makes much of the accidental nature of life, nowhere more so than in recounting how his parents met. He feels ‘an instant of vertigo’ when he thinks of the implications of that chance event but then  he recounts it in the simplest terms, telling how a friend asked Tom, Frayn’s father to be, to go to a party with him because the friend fancied a girl called Vi who was going to be there. Tom shrugged and agreed to go. Frayn’s aunt told him that, when the two men came into the room, Tom saw the girl his friend fancied, walked straight across to her and said ‘I’m Tom. I suppose you’re Vi’. And that was it. From that meeting came, in Frayn’s words, ‘My existence, for a start, and my sister’s. The lives of my three children and my sister’s two. Of our eleven grandchildren…’

He’s articulating simple truths that govern the existence of each one of us, and his narrative recalls not just his own people and surroundings but the changing face and pace of London, the shifting social and cultural moods and habits of Britain. When you read My Father's Fortune, you get to know Frayn and his family but your own memories are triggered or new ones are formed by sharing his persuasive evocation of life over the decades from the thirties onwards. It’s a wonderful book.

MONSTERS OF WEST VIRGINIA

by Rosemary Ellen Guiley
144 pages, Stackpole Books

Review by Hereward L.M. Proops

For as long as I can remember, I've been a little bit obsessed with monsters, ghosts and things that go bump in the night. Once, when I was about eight years old, I wore a set of plastic werewolf teeth and ran around the local D.I.Y. Store growling at the terrified / bemused adults. I spent hours poring over luridly illustrated children's books exploring the paranormal and for a number of years I was convinced that I had seen the demon hound Black Shuck (most sightings of Black Shuck occur in East Anglia but I was certain that I had seen him in a field in Devon). With age came maturity and the realisation that what I had seen that foggy evening was, in fact, a calf.

Age, however, did not rob me of my fascination with the paranormal. Whenever I visit somewhere new, I read all I can about any strange goings on in the area. Horror movies, particularly those involving strange and fantastic creatures, are real passion of mine. I've never given up trying to convince my darling wife that “Tremors” is one of the best films of the 1980s. I'm a subscriber to the monthly nerd-fest that is “Fortean Times” magazine and I find a heck of a lot of inspiration for my own strange stories within its pages (look out for my upcoming short story featuring a cat with two faces).

When I saw “Monsters of West Virginia” reviewed in the latest issue of Fortean Times, I couldn't resist buying a copy. I've no particular interest in West Virginia (other than a couple of unprintable jokes an American friend of my father's once told me) but it seems the mountain state has more than its fair share of strange creatures and creepy goings-on.

Now might be the time to mention that whilst I totally love the idea of ghosts and monsters, I don't actually believe in them. I think it would be awesome if they did exist but with the advances in science and our growing understanding of the world we live in, it seems increasingly less likely. For a truly immersive experience of such cold scientific facts crushing a pleasant fantasy I recommend visiting the Loch Ness Centre and Exhibition... pay ￡7 entry only to have the faint glimmer of hope that the Loch Ness monster is real mercilessly bludgeoned out of you by an endless stream of evidence arguing against the existence of such a creature. But I digress...

Rosemary Ellen Guiley, the author of “Monsters of West Virginia” does believe in the existence of monsters. To be more specific, she believes in alternative dimensions  where such creatures exist and the theory that they occasionally find a way through the fabric of space and time into our own world.

Bullshit, I know.

Tenuous pseudo-scientific explanations aside, Guiley's short book is great entertainment. “Monsters of West Virginia” examines all manner of paranormal sightings: from possible UFO crash-sites to monstrous birds, demon dogs to big cats. There are whole chapters devoted to the Yayho (West Virginia's own equivalent of Bigfoot) and the state's most famous cryptozoological critter, the Richard Gere-pestering Mothman. Other chapters in the book detail some very strange beasties such as the Sheepsquatch (a vicious man-sheep thing) and the Snallygaster (an enormous flying lizard thing).

Whilst Guiley is undoubtedly from the Fox Mulder school of thought and actively wants to believe, she does bring a healthy dose of scepticism to the table. A number of the sightings of the creatures come from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a time when unscrupulous editors would fabricate ridiculous stories in order to sell more newspapers (much like the utterly sordid and regrettably untrue affair between myself and Scarlett Johansson). Guiley also utilises her knowledge of Native American folklore to add an extra level of depth when examining the strange cases. The sightings of giant birds are linked to the myth of the Thunderbird and Guiley also provides the reader with accounts of Yayho or Bigfoot sightings from a Native American perspective.

There were a couple of occasions when even I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief and I began to wonder whether the author was so monumentally naïve that she would include any old nonsense in order to pad out the book a bit more. The giant flying manta ray spotted flying over a road seemed less than plausible whilst the entire final chapter, “The Enchanted Holler”, sounded like the deranged ramblings of that nutter you always end up sitting next to on the bus.

 “Monsters of West Virginia” isn't going to set the world aflame. Any book of this sort is aimed at a niche market. It's a pleasant little distraction for those interested in the paranormal but it is unlikely to convert any sceptics into fully-fledged Bigfoot-hunters. I enjoyed reading it and I'm sure others will too. Just remember to take it with a pinch of salt... or maybe even a bucketful.

Hereward L.M. Proops

AUTHOR INTERVIEW:

Will Macmillan Jones, author of the madcap fantasy The Amulet of Kings: The Banned Underground, Book one.

Interview by Pat Black

Booksquawk: The Amulet of Kings is as much a work of comedy as it is of fantasy (if not more). In the review, I point out that although it would seem to have a lot in common with the work of Terry Pratchett, at heart it’s more in tune with Douglas Adams. Would you say this is fair enough?

Will Macmillan Jones: Perhaps that’s right. Myself, I’ve always felt a strong affinity for the work of the towering comic genius of Spike Milligan and the immortal Goon Show. Perhaps with a more modern dash of Robert Rankin thrown in for good measure.

B: Location is important to the story – although the Helvyndelve isn’t a real place, the Lake District and Helvellyn are, obviously. How did the real-life location inspire you?

WMJ: The lakes are possibly my favourite place in the world. I haven’t given up entirely on an ambition to live there. The sense of mystery, of myth, and the feeling that even in this mundane. overly safe world we have made for ourselves, adventure can still be found lurks around every hill, every fold, along every stream. I’ve got an edition of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen which shows an enchanted dwarf sitting on a rock, naturally enough with a drink. That was an inspiration too – the mystical and magical here present in this world with us, if we walk a familiar path at a different time of day.

B: Oompa-oompa oom pa-pah. Let’s talk about music now – there’s barely a sentence goes by without a gag or reference to rock n’ roll bands. Name your ideal 10-track mix CD to accompany The Amulet of Kings. Do you play music yourself, or are you more of a listener rather than an active combatant?

WMJ: Yes, I’ve got a much beloved Les Paul Studio. But I’m not good enough to play more than the very odd gig with some extremely charitable friends, who turn my amp down when I’m not looking...Tracks? Too many to list, really. But anyone could start with Led Zep’s ‘Rock n Roll’, AC/DC and ‘Whole lot o’ Rosie’, then classics: ‘Jailhouse Rock’, ‘Johnnie B Goode’ ‘Gimme Some Lovin’, ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ – oh the list can go on. My ipod is crammed with blues, rock and jazz.

B:  Let’s place Fungus the Boogieman in a three-way fantasy deathmatch with Animal from the Muppets and the late Bob Holness, who popular myth once had it played the sax riff on Baker Street. What happens next?

WMJ: Oh come on, we all know that Urban Myth is just a myth...maybe. Close as Fungus is to my heart, who’s ever going to put Animal second to anyone????

B: You’ve just released the sequel to The Amulet of Kings – The Mystic Accountants. Can you talk a little about that, and where the series is going after that?

WMJ: Mystic arrived in my head shortly after the first major rewrite of Amulet of Kings. The bulk of the book was on paper in four weeks, would you believe? I think that I wore that keyboard out completely, I was typing so fast! Well, it’s another day, and another gig. But this time the feedback blows the Throne of the King Under The Mountain to Kingdom come. And The Banned have to replace it... Introducing Dai, the bass playing Bass drinking dragon, a rather put upon RAF fighter pilot and a lot of bad jokes about traffic policemen... The problem with my plots are that they can get a bit surreal, I’m afraid, but I wouldn’t want to spoil any surprises. But the music is there, as you’ve already guessed. The Banned are off on tour. My off-white witch even gets pulled at a beach rave this time, but I’m not allowed to talk about that in case she comes after me!

I’m actually signed for eight books, book 3 – The Vampire Mechanic is now in copyediting at the Publishers for a 1 November release, and book 4 – Sex and Thugs and Rock n Roll – is pouring out as we speak. There’s actually too much material, and some of it is going to wind up in book 7 instead. Book 5 (Their Dark Design) is partly written already and book 6 (Have Frog, Will Travel) is in advance plotting, so Safkhet and I are planning on a new book every 6 months for another couple of years yet! I’ve just created a fantastic new character ( no, I’m not going to tell you Ricky Valens’ real name and give the joke away) and already he’s demanding a whole book of his own.

Fortunately, each book is planned to be a completely standalone story, so I can have as much fun as I like with the characters, and then run away to play with some others whilst the first lot find it in their hearts to forgive me for what I’ve done to them!

THE BANNED UNDERGROUND:

The Amulet of Kings
by Will Macmillan Jones
174 pages, Safkhet Publishing

Review by Pat Black

Jazz! Bee deep a bop booyah. A wonder what a jazz troll would call himself? Boulders Starduster? Bridge Canyonhowler? TripTrap McScrotum?

Anyway, The Banned Underground: The Amulet ofKings, Will Macmillan Jones’s 90-jokes-per-page comic fantasy, isn’t about a jazz troll – it’s about a bog troll, Fungus the Boogieman. He plays sax for the band in the title, an underground (literally) rock n’ roll band made up of dwarves and other fantasy creatures who play in the Helvyndelve. This is the dwarf city underneath Helvellyn in the Lake District, where all manner of insane goings-on are taking place – not to mention the old sword-and-guts type of warfare for the sake of the Amulet of Kings.

The story follows Chris and Linda, a pair of teenagers sent to stay with their Uncle Ben and Aunt Dot – real name Grizelda – in the Lake District one summer. Except Dot’s a witch, not averse to turning taxmen and cold-callers into toads. During an attack on the couple’s magic cottage by Ned, a servant of the Grey Mage (the baddie), Chris and Linda are rescued by Fungus the bog troll and whisked into Helvyndelve, where they’re plunged into the middle of a plot by the Dark Lord and his henchmen, the Bodgandor, to steal the Amulet of Kings and attain unlimited power, or control over his taxation affairs, one of the two.

So much for the plot; although it moves fast, and deals with not a few battles, the true joy of this story is in the banter between characters. There’s no-one, from dancing plants and skyrocketing goats, who don’t have some sort of punchline or insane remark to make. The dialogue tickles many funny bones, and will remind you in the best way of Spike Milligan, the Goons and their spiritual heirs, the Pythons. In terms of the fantasy setting, the book most recalls Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, but there are strong echoes of the inspired inanity of Douglas Adams. Whereas in Adams’ world, you could imagine him putting together plots for the HitchHiker’s Guide as he travels around Europe, then I can see how Macmillan Jones came up with plots and gags for his own fantasy world from the Lake District, particularly Helvellyn – places close to my own heart.

Music is another of the author’s favourite themes, and there’s some rib-tickling musical references all through the text. AC/DC fans in particular will enjoy the references to the Antipodes’ finest export – but there’s barely a paragraph goes by without a joke. Lovers of footnotes will also find lots of asterisked gags beneath the line to chew on.

Read the Author Interview here.

A fine piece of work for lovers of fantasy and comedy - or simply miserable buggers who could do with cheering up.  

THE BEST SUPERNATURAL STORIES OF JOHN BUCHAN

Selected and Introduced by John Haining

Review by Hereward L.M. Proops

I've been a huge fan of The Thirty Nine Steps ever since I picked up a copy one lazy afternoon as a student and read the whole thing in one sitting. Although I was studying English literature, John Buchan's classic thriller wasn't a set text for any of my modules. If memory serves me correctly (and let's remember, I was a student at this time so much of my short-term memory underwent some serious punishment in those hazy days) I'd only heard the author's name mentioned by some of my more engaging lecturers as someone whose work they felt I'd enjoy. They weren't wrong. Buchan's short novel blew me away. Sure, there are aspects of it which have aged very badly (Buchan's anti-semitism is pretty hard to avoid) but the frantic pacing and the brilliant build-up of tension throughout the novel puts it in a league of its own. Small wonder that it is often cited as the first modern thriller and the forefather of Ian Fleming's Bond adventures. In the twelve years since I was first introduced to the dashing, square-jawed Richard Hannay, I've read The Thirty Nine Steps three or four times and it never fails to entertain me.

Skip forward to October 2011. A plumper, hairier, more sober Hereward is taking a jaunt to Inverness and finds himself, screaming toddler in arms, in Leakey's Bookshop. Those lucky enough to live in Scotland who don't know this fantastic second-hand bookshop would do well to seek it out. A converted church literally packed to the rafters with a staggering range of books, Leakey's is a book-geek's nirvana. So there I was, my daughter grizzling away on my shoulder, scanning the shelves for a bargain. When I saw this book, I must confess that I came pretty close to dropping the little one. TheBest Supernatural Stories of John Buchan... holy shit. Regular readers will know that I am a total sucker for anything remotely supernatural. I had no idea that Buchan had turned his hand to short stories of the fantastic or supernatural but there it was in front of me.

It has taken me far too long to get round to reading this book, but I'm very glad I did. The introduction gives a very detailed, if somewhat dry, account of how each of the stories came to be written. Haining provides curious readers with details of Buchan's influences and goes into some depth about Buchan's fascination with the supernatural world. Although interesting, the introduction is, at times, a little bit too academic, leeching a little bit of the fun-factor out of some of the sillier stories in the collection.

Whilst a couple of the stories are pretty uneventful affairs and will be quickly forgotten, there are more hits than misses. Journey of Little Profit is written with a tremendously broad Scottish dialect and is an evocative little tale of a lawless drover's unlucky encounter with a substantially more wicked being. The Outgoing of the Tide is a slow moving tale about witchcraft but is a great example of how the atmosphere of a story is just as important as the action. The Green Wildebeest is an African-based adventure which reminded me of Rider Haggard whilst The Grove of Ashtaroth and The Watcher by the Threshold are Lovecraftian tales of old gods and their lingering influence on the world. The Magic Walking Stick is a charming little tale about a young boy who finds himself in possession of a walking stick which enables him to travel instantaneously anywhere he desires. Clearly aimed at younger readers, this story is beautifully simplistic but also artfully crafted. Tendebant Manus is a tale of supernatural possession but Buchan sidesteps the cliché by choosing focus on character rather than cheap ghostly thrills.

One tale in particular stood out above all the others. Indeed, no-man's-land is such a brilliant story it alone makes the book worth tracking down. Fans of monsters and things that go bump in the night will be delighted with this stunning little novelette. The plot is pure pulp and all the better for it. An Oxford academic with a particular interest in Celtic history and mythology goes on holiday to the highlands of Scotland where he encounters a race of proto-humans whose continued survival has led to the myth of the brownies. Buchan's characteristic skill of cranking up the tension through the course of the story is used to marvellous effect and his descriptions of the Scottish landscape manage to capture both its beauty and its bleakness.

The Best Supernatural Stories of John Buchan is great fun and well worth scouring the internet and second-hand bookshops for a copy. Fans of Buchan's thrillers will be entertained by seeing how the writer's confident, direct writing style is well suited to other genres. Hard-core fans of horror might find some of Buchan's stories a little bit bloodless but those who stick with them will see that his supernatural tales weren't exercises in the grotesque but great examples of how tension and atmosphere can be used artfully to create stories that are both gripping and unsettling without resorting to shock tactics.

Hereward L.M. Proops

DOOMSDAY

by Graham Brown
472 pages, Ebury Press
Published in the US as Black Sun, by Dell

Review by Pat Black

Doomsday is the sequel to a novel I reviewed a year or so ago, The Mayan Conspiracy. A mixture of Dan Brown, Clive Cussler and Tom Clancy, it was a serviceable enough adventure story following a group of secret service operatives and scientists trailing a mystery energy source into an ancient Mayan pyramid in the Brazilian jungle. It had baddies chasing them, lots of gunplay, nasty natives and – star prize - monsters.

Here’s the sequel, then, featuring the surviving characters – led by Hawker, the mysterious pilot-cum-mercenary with a past, Danielle Laidlaw, the secret service action girl, and Professor Michael McCarter, eh, the science guy.

This story picks up a couple of years after the group’s jungle japes, as the Mayan Clock ticks down to December 21, 2012, when of course the world ends, or something.

Fresh from having recovered an ancient stone in the Mayan pyramid, which emits a previously unknown type of energy, Laidlaw and McCarter are on the search for the three other stones referred to in an ancient prophecy. Hawker, burned by the CIA despite his services for Uncle Sam in the last novel, is off saving remote communities in the Congo – until a call to rescue his former buddy Laidlaw puts him back into the thick of things.

The Russians and the Chinese are after these energy stones, too – the Chinese, led by Bond villain billionaire Kang, and the Russians, helmed by Ivan Saravich, ex-KGB true believer and now-disillusioned capitalist. Dig out the black hats, here’s the bad guys!

On top of the villains, there’s a strange Russian child, named Yuri, who may yet hold the key to the whole mystery.

The first thing to say is that this is a far superior book to the first story, which had the feeling of a first act that was extended to book-length, leaving itself a little threadbare in the process. Doomsday is a much leaner beast in comparison, covering around four times as much ground in what seemed like half the time. It never feels laboured, nor does it linger in one spot for too long. The thrills include a shoot-out in Mexico, a daredevil rescue in a Hong Kong skyscraper, an encounter with sharks during an underwater sequence in the Gulf of Mexico, a helicopter shootout in the Mexican wilderness featuring a baddie in a reinforced exoskeleton and a tense stand-off beneath the Yucca plains in the US.

Brown keeps his plates spinning well, taking a break from the pyrotechnics involving Hawker and Danielle to cover a no-less-fascinating stand-off between Laidlaw’s boss, Arnold Moore, and Stecker, his poison apple nemesis from the CIA. As the energy given off in incrementally increasing bursts by the ancient stones takes out spy satellites and darken cities, foreign powers begin to get suspicious of each other. Nuclear warheads are primed, and as Hawker and Laidlaw race to find the secret of the stones it appears that the Mayan doomsday prediction might be right on the money.

It’s a fine adventure story with stirring conflicts and a great big pay-off – something its predecessor lacked – but there are other, intriguing aspects. In unexpected ways, Doomsday examines the nature of faith, whether that’s in a religion, a political system, your duty to your job or even your commitment to a partner. Brown references Macbeth, as the main protagonists head towards a commitment which could either save the world or destroy it, based on nothing more than a gut feeling. Would Macbeth have wielded the dagger anyway, had the witches just kept their mouths shut? It’s a question that continues to intrigue us. Prophecy and predestination are a key part of the secret of the stones, and these notions themselves are examined as a powerful fantasy which can either spur people on to success (“I was born to do this… this is my destiny,”)… or to goad or manipulate people into doing things (“Your father would be proud of you… I always knew you were a failure”). It was a key component of the book, and an unexpected source of depth.

I read this one on the beach, and it was well suited to the location. Shall we hear more from Hawker, Danielle and McCarter? Aye, why not?

THE HONOURABLE SCHOOLBOY

by John le Carre
686 pages, Sceptre

Review by Pat Black

Well, aren’t I quite the fan? I enjoyed Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy so much, I’ve read the book, watched the old TV show on DVD and now I’ve seen the movie. If there’s an amusing fridge magnet or a T-shirt I can buy, do let me know.

I’ve also watched the Smiley’s People series, which brings an end to John le Carre’s spy saga involving a battle of wits between British Secret Service veteran George Smiley and his Soviet nemesis, known only as Karla.

So, I’ve spoiled the novel of Smiley’s People for myself; I know how it all ends. But what I didn’t know until recently is that the Smiley/Karla story was a trilogy. The Honourable Schoolboy is the mid-point of this, so, unlike with Tinker Tailor, I had the pleasure of knowing nothing at all about the story when I opened the book.

It’s a dense book. Like Tinker Tailor - and like George Smiley - it refuses to be rushed, taking its less-than-sweet time. It’s perhaps a sign of my advancing age (and I should confess that I’ve been listening to Tony Blackburn’s jazzfunksoul show on Radio 2 this afternoon, and enjoying it), but I would probably have been bored rigid with TheHonourable Schoolboy had I tried it 10 or 15 years ago. I may have gotten to the end – I’m one of these people who must see a book through, even if it’s awful – but I wouldn’t have enjoyed it.

Now, a few years and at least three stone in weight later, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this second journey through the heart of the Circus, and beyond. There’s something quite unique about le Carre’s fiction: it is a ponderous, calculated fictional world, and requires more than a video game hair-trigger concentration span to get into. In today’s publishing world that is a very rare thing. I enjoyed The Honourable Schoolboy in the same way I did TTSS; for its calculated, complicated world, its atmosphere of deeply buried enmities and above all, its lo-fi tradecraft. We’re talking about a time in publishing history which took place after I was born, but already the lack of technology feels like it was from a different geological age. Someone refers to a computer, just once, and we imagine a clanking, hissing piece of machinery, spitting out punchcards and possibly psychotic, like Stephen King’s “The Mangler”.

It’s a polite novel, too, in spite of the grating attempts at slang. How does that grab you, sport? In fact, the novel is like a ladies’ luncheon society suddenly turning sinister over whose turn it is to pay the bill, relationships going sour over a period of months without so much as a flicker in the dentures. What the hell am I talking about?

We join Smiley and co after the events of Tinker Tailor. With the mole in his grave, the British Secret Service begins the humiliating business of dismantling its apparatus across the world. In many cases, literally – conferences at the Circus HQ are conducted in crumbling rooms with not even the baize on the tables surviving the purge, having been ripped apart by “housekeepers” looking for evidence of the mole’s treachery in the form of bugs and other recording equipment. As metaphors for the death of Britain’s influence on the world stage go, it’s, er, a bit of an open goal.

Smiley, acting as head of the Circus in the wake of the dreadful Allenby’s resignation, goes about closing down bureaux across the world, on the assumption that just about every operation they’ve undertaken over the years has been blown by the traitor from the preceding novel (who I am struggling manfully not to name here!). But for Smiley – a crafty man with fathomless depths of intelligence and tactical nous – it provides an opportunity to hit back. By means of “back-reaching”, Smiley can look at operations the traitor closed down without good reason – a sure sign that the operation was potentially dangerous to Karla, the Soviet spymaster who directed his activities. One of these avenues of inquiry throws up a “goldseam” – a trail of money, apparently from Soviet funds, which went to an unknown source in Hong Kong (then still under the jurisdiction of the UK, of course).

Enter the honourable schoolboy in the title, Jerry Westerby. Jerry is a journalist, but also a “sleeper” agent, a part-timer kept as a reserve by the Circus until such times as he’s needed. Smiley dispatches Westerby to Hong Kong, under the cover of his day job, in order to find out more about this goldseam, where the money came from, and whom it’s going to.

To reveal more about the plot would take more time than we’ve got here, but Westerby finds himself putting the screws on sources in Hong Kong in order to get account information, before following through on tips and deductions to look into a decorated British citizen, Mr Drake Ko, OBE, who seems to be the key to the whole affair. From here there’s a plot to stimulate the opium market in Red China, as well as an attempted bid to smuggle a senior Soviet operative into Hong Kong.

Of course, there’s a woman involved in this – an expatriate English girl, a high-class escort who seems to have a hand in every single strand of the story. And it’s here that the story’s true “zero on the wheel” can be found. 

Where THS trumps TTSS is in its scenes of violence and peril. It was a lunge into Fleming territory – exciting, sure, but a marked difference from the concealed menace of Tinker Tailor. I was a little disappointed in some of the things the recent movie adaptation of Tinker Tailor inserted into the story, presumably as a sop to stop people getting bored. There were a lot of dead bodies, blood, bullets, brains and general violence (not to mention the curious fact that Smiley’s lieutenant, Guillam, is gay in the film, which he is not in the books). This book has a lot more action in it, as Westerby gets handy with his fists, dodges bullets from the Khmer Rouge and heroin barons in Cambodia as he chases one line of inquiry, and is almost taken out by a fiendishly clever car bomb. So, if you felt Tinker Tailor was missing a bit of oomph, The Honourable Schoolboy ramps it up.

The setting is crucial, too. Le Carre never pulls a punch when he examines what foreign intervention has done to China, and with Westerby taking a detour through unbelievably hostile places in Laos, Thailand and Cambodia just as the US pulls out of Saigon, Le Carre is equally clear on where the US stands as a foreign power under Nixon (I wonder what Smiley would have made of the west’s flatlining incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan?). There’s a sort of Ragnarok feeling to proceedings here, including a surreal dinner party taking place at an ambassador’s house even while mortars and rockets clatter into the building, quivering the cutlery and dimming the lights.

It’s a novel about journalism, too – a viewpoint into an increasingly lost world of male-dominated, drink-fuelled machismo, deadlines and ancient, iron-clad typewriters, lugged around the world in cases like blunderbusses. The foreign stringers Westerby mingles with seem to be right out of a comic book, sybarites and fornicators one and all (whahey!), but I can attest to this portrayal as having some truth to it. Back in the dim days when I first laid down copy, I can tell you that the sleazy booze culture of the newsroom was still alive, although in its death throes. Women were outsiders; male clubbishness was the order of the day, and pecking orders were in place for the young bucks and the old grizzlies alike. 

Should anyone miss those days? Well, with luck, the sexism is on the wane (quite apart from the content of some newspapers and websites), but the day of the booze-addled clichéd hack is just about out the door now, save for the rare occasions when I feel like playing up to it. A lot of those lads I used to do “liquid lunches” with back in the day – less than 15 years ago? Long enough, folks – are in their graves, few of them surviving long past retirement.

But is the journalism any better these days? I couldn’t possibly comment.

This is an extremely class-conscious novel, something I suspect le Carre may not have intended. Everyone who is anyone comes from Oxbridge, and outsiders – the Scots or the Welsh, in this novel – are described as exactly that. The formidable Russian expert Connie Sachs aside, there are few shining beacons of feminism, or even equality, in this book (published in 1977, set two-and-a-bit years earlier). The ladies are either fruity bluestockings to be chased by much older men, fallen angels, full-on whores or simple props to occupy the time, with a nod to Michael Stipe. Much of this is a symptom of the age, but I was confounded by the denouement to the story, which demands that we believe, after everything we’ve encountered in the previous six hundred pages, that an experienced, tough, cynical man involved in a deadly line of work would ignore years of training, narrow escapes and front-line combat because he thinks he might be in love with someone he’s barely met. 

It’s the only part of the book that doesn’t quite work, and the novel is flawed – though not fatally – because of it.

Le Carre is on record as saying that he regrets that this is a “Smiley” novel, feeling that his short, round, bespectacled little owl pulled readers out of the main thrust of the story - Westerby’s eastern odyssey. I disagree; Smiley’s presence is often electrifying. More disappointingly, Peter Guillam, Smiley’s trusted lieutenant, is given very little to do this time. He only really serves as something of an amanuensis, a prism to reflect Smiley’s ponderous, inscrutable genius as he ties together the loose ends in the face of pressure from Whitehall as well as the “Cousins” in US intelligence. Of Ann, Smiley’s unfaithful wife, there is mercifully little apart from one dodgy scene outside her bedroom window which I think I once saw in Holiday On The Buses, or the Benny Hill Show. Just ditch her and get on with it George, eh?

So, The Honourable Schoolboy is a full meal, for sure, with lots of strong meat – a paradox in that it’s dense, slow-moving and considered, and yet a furious page-turner and thriller, too. If you’re on board the le Carre bus and liked Tinker Tailor, then this is more of the same. Roll on Smiley’s People, and here’s to St George – long may he keep slaying dragons, though hopefully for fairer hands.

A ROOM WITH A VIEW

by EM Forster

236 pages, Penguin

Review by Pat Black

Not so very long ago, I was leaping up and down like a maniac at a wedding. It was a good wedding – everyone was thunderously drunk and having a wonderful time. One key test when we evaluate weddings: were people dancing? If loads of people were dancing then it was a good wedding. This is immutable.

Anyway, I was wearing a kilt – I’m Scottish, and also a bit of a tart – although the do was taking place in the lion’s den itself… well, in south-west London, at any rate. It’s quite common to wear the kilt up north at social functions, and I’d long been threatening to do it since migrating south. There’s a woad-splattered Celt in me who takes a perverse pleasure in being asked about the kilt, or more accurately, being challenged on it.

And so it happened that during the wedding party, New Order’s “World In Motion” was played. I was already up and running on the dancefloor, and myself and another lad wearing a kilt decided to play along, for a laugh.

The significance of this to the civilised planet: “World In Motion” was England’s official song for the 1990 football World Cup campaign, a reminder of that horrible few weeks when They Nearly Won It. The song is a memorable rose poking out through the landfill site that represents most other football-related musical releases, I would grudgingly admit, madcap genius from an inspired time in British culture. It was at number one for weeks, even before England threatened to win the tournament, losing to the Germans as usual in the semi-finals. The English get rather misty-eyed about this song – a reminder of a better time.

The chorus features New Order, one or two gurning celebrities of the time, and the England squad, chanting: “En-ger-land!”

For any Scotsman, the idea of England winning the World Cup, or even winning a corner at the World Cup, is death. So of course, my fellow Caledonian dancefloor partner and I chanted nothing of the sort, substituting “En-ger-land!” for “Scot-er-land!”

Well, you know, I say “death”… not really. It doesn’t matter. We weren’t serious about it. We were hardly going to stomp off the dancefloor in a huff, swearing blood oaths or anything. It was a giggle.

So after the music stops, this fellow taps me on the shoulder. He sneered: “But… you’re wearing a kilt! And you’re singing ‘World In Motion’.”

“Yes,” I said, “it’s a joke.”

“You’re singing ‘En-ger-land’! I heard you! Ha ha ha ha!”

“No, I wasn’t. I was singing ‘Scot-er-land’. And, it’s a joke.”

He shook his head. “En-ger-land! Ha ha! And you’ve got a kilt on! You do realise what this song is about?”

“It was a joke, mate.”

In some parts of the world, another key test of a good wedding is whether or not there was a fight, but we shall skip over that. 

Finally, I spit out my point: acting out of place is still a very frown-worthy endeavour for many people in England. That could refer to a sight such as a Scotsman doing the highland fling to New Order; or it could be something a bit more subtle, and much more sinister. A sense of place is not an exclusively English phenomenon, of course, but you do still encounter it here and there. Writers of the late Victorian and Edwardian period captured this beautifully.

I once heard about someone who retired to the south of France (without bothering to learn the language), complaining about the influx of refugees and asylum-seekers into that country. EM Forster understood this attitude acutely – that proper behaviour travels only in the cool English blood, with savagery and base passions diverted to alien veins. The notion is illustrated, and subverted, in the best way in A Room With A View.

It’s a two-parter from the Edwardian era, when the British Isles still had plenty of clout in world affairs, and modern warfare and Bolsheviks were still to crush notions of class, place and society. The nation was also slowly shedding the mantle of Victorian repression, too. European sensibilities (even I’m buying into that sense of one’s place… what the hell does that even mean?!) were starting to cross the Channel to England’s green and pleasant land. Conservativism and buttoned-down social barriers were being challenged by new attitudes.

Forster’s heroine is rosy-cheeked ingenue Lucy Honeychurch, taking a tour of Florence with her horror of a cousin, Charlotte Bartlett. The older Charlotte is a waspish prig who acts as chaperone to young Lucy, and along the way they meet several comical characters including Miss Lynch the hopeless novelist and the father-and-son act of Mr Emerson and his boy George, the latter pair sharing the Italian pension they are staying in.

“They’re socialists,” Charlotte hisses.

In many ways the book’s key scene comes right at the start, when Charlotte complains the girls didn’t get a room with a view. The Emersons gallantly offer to swap their rooms with the two ladies.

There is an embarrassed silence.

Finally, once an awkward sense of protocol and one’s place is followed to the letter, Charlotte finally agrees to the swap deal and the journey continues. Along the way, Lucy and George witness a fatal stabbing in a town square, close enough to bloodstain the picture postcards the girl has bought. Swollen with a sense of occasion and of violent passions building up in even the most chaste breast, Lucy and George share an intimate moment during a flash of lightning.

And intimate moments, particularly with people like the Emersons, will not do. Especially when they are also witnessed by a breathless and conspicuously scandalised Charlotte.

A hasty retreat is beaten, to Rome, where the Vyses have a place that would take in Lucy and Charlotte at a pinch. From there, the story moves to England, where we meet Lucy’s family a number of months later. It turns out that Lucy has agreed to marry Cecil Vyse, a nice enough chap, but one who “would never wear another fellow’s cap”, as Lucy’s brother Freddy puts it.

But fate – and maybe mischief, on the part of the faux-innocent Charlotte, who of course swears she never told a soul about what happened on the violet-strewn Italian hills – intervenes to place the Emersons once more into Lucy’s path. From there, she is forced to confront a rather un-English idea indeed – following one’s heart, in defiance of all social conventions.

It’s a brilliant novel, with great comic moments. There’s one particular scene where George Emerson, Lucy’s young brother Freddy and the Reverend Beebe, the vicar, decide on a whim to go skinny dipping in a pond. This being an English comedy, and this being an English vicar, the trio are of course discovered in their plashy endeavours by a passing troupe of flustered parishioners, including Lucy and Cecil.

As it’s a comedy, the story has certain lines that it must travel along. But it has a very dark heart. The elder Mr Emerson’s impassioned plea to Lucy near the end of the novel puts a dagger to the throat of convention, spits in the eye of a sense of entitlement, and punches the idea of turning away from our deepest desires in order to do the decent thing - right in the balls.

Forster could well have written a different ending to this novel, one which might have had more in keeping with Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady, and certainly one which would have been in keeping with the occasionally dark tones he strikes. We know only too well how this story would have ended, and which suit Lucy would have accepted, in the real world. But A Room With A View stands as an irreverent masterpiece, and showcases the British class system in the best light possible – by not taking itself in any way seriously.

ALEPH

by Paulo Coelho
288 pages, Vintage

Review by Pat Black

Reading Paulo Coelho is a bit like being sat next to an unexpectedly charming stranger at a boring dinner party. You’re entranced, laughing where you’re meant to laugh, pondering where you’re meant to ponder. You’re given plenty of space to put forward your own ideas and concepts. There’s no argument involved, just a genuine exchange of stories, memories and imagery. You’re open-minded, uncynical and even unguarded. What a clever and articulate chap! you think to yourself, as you fork another slice of melon. I feel like I’ve known him all my life. Jesus, I might even Facebook him.

And then, out of nowhere, you slam on the brakes. The wine goes down the wrong way. Paulo has to reach over and thump you on the back. Other guests look over, amused at first, thinking he’s told you a capital joke, and then concerned that your mirth might be fatal. But he has not told you a capital joke. And you’re not amused.

Finally, once your tubes are clear, you roar: 

“You believe in what? Are you insane, mate?”

Aleph refers to a story of the same name by Jorge Luis Borges, another man given to odd, though compelling concepts about life, belief and infinity. The Aleph is a place, or a thing. It’s a point in the physical universe from which every other thing can be seen. Allowing us to look through the eyes of God.

Brazilian mega-selling author Coelho believes in God, and appears to be a devout Christian, but he believes in a lot of other things, too. In this book – narrated by a Brazilian writer named Paulo, who travels the world going to book signings and parties – many things are examined, from philosophical points of view which we can all relate to, to utter arcana which we cannot.

I like Paulo Coelho. I’ve read his first book – The Alchemist – and now his latest, and both have been fantastic pieces of work in all senses of the word. There’s a synchronicity to this, as I took Aleph on holiday with me, much as I did with The Alchemist on my first big holiday which did not involve causing chaos in Europe with my equally psychotic friends, 10 years ago. I won Aleph as a prize not long before I set off – almost as if fate pressed it into my hands at the right time. In the author’s world, this fact cannot be a coincidence, and its interpretation is not a glib one.

The difference between the two books is that you can take The Alchemist for what it is – fiction – but Coelho seems to want you to go a stage further in Aleph. It seems to me that this book is most definitely angled as non-fiction. Basically, we’re meant to see Paulo Coelho, as he is written in this book by an author called Paulo Coelho, as some sort of modern-day mystic or wizard, a warrior of light going about his business trying to understand the universe, part of some kind of inner quest or journey as he travels the world signing books and meeting fans. This book’s events and divinations are not portrayed as fictional devices and storytelling flourishes, which we can all take in without prejudice, but as actual things which happened in the real world.

Houston, we have a problem.

The plot, if you can call it that, is negligible. Paulo starts off meeting a mentor figure called J, who has to help him rediscover his pathway in life. So there’s a hint that Paulo has lost the way a little, something to do with life becoming routine, and also something to do with disconnecting with people. J urges Paulo to follow his instinct and succumb to the random to rediscover his mystical mojo and get back on the right road. Sounds a bit like Shelley’s negative capability to me, or perhaps using the Force. Hey, I’ve tried to use the Force loads of times. I keep trying to move beer glasses along bar-tops into my hands, using only my mind. It never works, and I look constipated.

Anyway, Paulo, being a bit of a famous author, is invited to book-signings across the world. He is accompanied by a retinue of publishers and editors, and along the way he gets invited to other book-signings and launch events. On a whim, and much to his organisers’ chagrin, he starts accepting invitations to visit far-flung places he wouldn’t normally go to – leading to the book’s central journey on the Trans-Siberian railway. The “signs”, you see, are pointing him in this direction.

(Red lights flash... WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP!)

Along the way, he meets a very unusual young lady of Turkish extraction, a violin virtuoso called Hilal who pleads with Paulo to be allowed to accompany him on his journey. Paulo, a man who listens to and believes in portents, energy fields, past lives, soothsaying, clairvoyancy, magic, and many other things besides, takes a leap of faith and invites the young lady to a posh dinner, seating her at a top table along with some publishing executives. At this dinner, Hilal announces to everyone that she was sexually abused as a child. 

Go, go, Gadget Embarrassed Silences!

Now with the best will in the world, you’d think that Paulo’s every instinct would be screaming at him to ditch this unfortunate individual at the first opportunity. You might even be tempted to order security to remove her from the dinner itself – leaving her with helpline numbers to call. But no; the girl, who keeps giving Coelho creepy come-ons and frankly stalkerish pledges of love and loyalty, the kind that a rational person would suspect might end with murder, secures herself a place on the train through Russia with the author and his team. From there, things get weirder. Paulo and this girl encounter the Aleph together – a moment of understanding where they both look into each other’s souls and see a past life. It seems that they have both encountered each other before, and Coelho understands that there is some kind of lesson here for him through their connection. 

The Aleph, by the way, appears in a physical place, a psychic ley line, if you like. This location is in the partition between two railway carriages. What is not clear is how this fixed point in time and space should be on board a train, which of course passes along many physical points in the real world. Maybe it’s to do with other dimensions. Maybe it’s a state of mind. Maybe it is all complete and utter rubbish.

Paulo is married, and although he loves his wife it is clear that the Turkish girl is not unattractive. She’s 21 or so, and Paulo is in his late 50s. She comes into his room, and they cuddle together in his sleeper carriage. Sometimes she is naked. Paulo is tempted but it’s made clear that Paulo desires spiritual communion, not carnal. At this point, I almost cast Aleph into the sea. You’ll believe a book can fly.

I shall say no more about the plot, if there is one. What frightens me most about this book is that the events in it, ignoring the spiritual world for a moment, may actually have happened. They are certainly packaged that way. If they did, then I should say in all sincerity that Paulo Coelho should think very hard about inviting strange people on tour with him ever again. Paulo, mate, there are a lot of nutters out there. It’s got nothing to do with negative energies, the hand of fate, or anything else – stay safe, fella. I mean that.

Two things stop me from slaughtering this book. First, Coelho is a persuasive, refreshing writer. There are clean lines in his prose which hint at the truth he is searching for, or looking to impart. When he is at his absolute best is when Paulo is walking with other characters – the elderly translator, Yao, in particular - and sharing a dialogue with them on what life is all about. There’s a meandering, Platonic tone to these exchanges and they’re enriching and engaging.

Then, God forgive me, the mumbo jumbo comes in and from there on it’s all about tolerance, or perhaps open-mindedness. If you’re a cynic, or if you believe that we amount to no more than a coordinated mess of matter making its way through the world, surviving as best we can and reproducing before physical dissolution brings down the curtain, then Aleph is best avoided.

This leads me to the second point which prevents me from putting this one on the “not even sure I should loan this out to people” pile. Any worthwhile literary endeavour points out – even Hemingway’s leanest, most spiteful efforts – that we are quite patently not just lumps of flesh, bone and nerves, blundering through the jungle of life. Art is one thing that sets us apart from the beasts. Since the dawn of history, humans have wondered what it’s all about, and have sought to express it, question it, give it meaning. We will continue to do so until we have an answer.

We can be cynical about the spiritual world - and to be honest, I could scoff at it all day long. But we don’t have all the answers, and life does throw up strange coincidences and ironies which we are at a loss to explain. There are moments which even the most rational of us cannot just explain away by waving in the general direction of chance or chaos. I’ve always held that it’s arrogance of the most extreme kind to assume we have all the answers. And belief isn’t nothing – it can spur people on to amazing feats… and it can also corrupt and manipulate.

In universal terms, it’s only a wink of time ago that we were running around in caves and thinking fire was the work of the supernatural. In the millennia to come – to appropriate Arthur C Clarke - many of our current concerns will be indistinguishable from the gibberings of cavemen to our descendants. In an increasingly well-educated, secular, and yet still troubled age, agnosticism is the only sensible point of view when it comes to that which we cannot fully explain. 

If there was no more to it than just breathing, drinking, eating and shagging, we wouldn’t put down a single keystroke as writers; we’d never even cast a glance at a book. As Borges might agree, we’d never have written things down – the act of transmuting a thought into a symbol on a page - in the first place. What would be the point? Just as George Orwell insists that everything he ever wrote concerns a political belief which he denotes as democratic socialism, then Paulo Coelho wouldn’t have so much as lifted a pen if he didn’t want to follow his own codes, systems and spiritual governance… no matter that many of them are patently batshit.

If this was the X-Factor, you might say that Paulo is on a journey - and, despite everything, despite my own deep-rooted meanness, I wanted to believe in it.

We want romance and mystery and strangeness in our experience – what a boring life it would be without them. We want to believe that ultimately, as our existence ends, it was all worth something, not just a matter of taking up time and space, a lump of cells serving an earthly sentence before we bequeath our energy to the earth or the air.

Paulo in this book doesn’t espouse any particular philosophy, although he does give us some theories which err on the side of “f*cking crackpot” – he’s pleasingly vague, open to possibilities and wholly mesmerising. Unfortunately, this kind of charisma is very similar to the sort you might encounter among snake-oil salesmen, corrupt clerics, televangelist fraudsters, grifters of all rank and hue and, worst of all, politicians. You will need to put a lot of things on hold in order to read this book, and still more to enjoy it. Staking one’s finances on mysticism is usually a mug’s bet. But you’d remember your conversation with Paulo at the dinner party, and you’d probably Facebook him anyway.

I started reading this book on a plane, during mild turbulence. For me at least, it is in these conditions when I am at my least cynical, and the ideas of spiritual benevolence, deism or supernatural agency become palatable. Much moreso than when I am back on the ground, when I should say such ideas are negligible. No atheists in a foxhole, they say – very few on a wobbly plane, either. I’d say that, coincidentally, these are the optimum conditions for reading Aleph. Paulo Coelho would say there’s no “coincidentally” about it. I will read more of his stuff.  

THE THINARA KING

Child of the Erinyes
by Rebecca Lochlann
286 pages, Erinye Press

Review by Melissa Conway

I am acquainted with the author via social networking, which should in no way be construed as an admission that the following review is biased. If I don’t like a book, I won’t finish reading it no matter who wrote it. And, just so you know, there was never a chance that I might not finish this one, and not because of any sense of obligation. This is the second book in the Child of the Erinyes series, the first of which, The Year God’s Daughter, I reviewed here - and you can see by my enthusiasm I was eagerly awaiting the sequel.

We take up where the first novel left off (and it would be a major spoiler for the first book if I told you exactly where that was), but the brief idyll in princess Aridela’s young life is to be short-lived. With the violent suddenness only a mega-burp in the earth’s crust can dish up, her lush and peaceful home island of Crete is assaulted by a deadly pyroclastic blast from the volcanic island of Callisti, seventy miles away. Aridela and the newly crowned bull-king Chrysaleon barely survive, and to make matters worse, she believes she is the one who caused the devastation by angering the goddess Athene.

Author Lochlann does a fine job describing the destruction: inescapable waves of blistering heat and choking ash; the endless series of earthquakes and resulting tsunamis. The survivors are soon subjected to even more horror at the hands of a vengeful and opportunistic conqueror from the mainland, whose soldiers overrun the embattled island and pillage what little is left of the once proud and mighty civilization.

These are dark days for Aridela - sometimes graphically so; what she endures is not euphemistically portrayed - but deep inside she clings to the hope that she can withstand the abuse and prevail in order to appease Athene and restore freedom to her remaining people. Chrysaleon, too, endures much. On the verge of death, he has visions of an out-of-body journey to the heavenly land of the gods that enlightens him to his new status as The Thinara King - the one man with the power to change the destiny of everyone in the mortal world. But will he choose the right path?

I don’t want to give too much away. Let me just say in closing that this series is my new addiction. Lochlann is a meticulous writer, and I predict that the outpouring of accolades she is already receiving from her readers will eventually give her a well-deserved boost onto the best-seller lists.

THE LAST WEREWOLF

by Glen Duncan

346 pages, Canongate

Review by Pat Black

A while back, when I was reviewing a compendium of vampire short stories, I lamented the fact that we already have the ultimate vampire novel in Dracula, but not its lycanthropic equivalent.

I do have a theory about this: werewolves, much moreso than vampires, are cinematic creatures, their bloody horrors and fuzzy outfits tailor-made for the big screen. Creating these monsters can have a much more spectacular outcome than putting plastic fangs in actors’ mouths and daubing heaving bosoms with blood (with all due deference to Ingrid Pitt, the naughty nightied Twins of Evil and many other femmes tres fatale in Hammer’s gloriously garish undead wankfests).

Shapeshifting is a common part of most cultures’ mythologies, from the heart of Africa to the long grass of the Sunderbans and stretching across the great American plains. But, while werewolves have been a part of European folklore for centuries (such a beautiful word at its blunt etymological roots, werwulf), our understanding of these creatures comes from modern times.

In 1941, the Universal Studios movie, The Wolf Man, tied together many ancient myths to make the beast we know today. Cursed to become a monster every full moon; having it passed on to you, like rabies, by being bitten; fatal allergy to the element silver, especially if it’s moulded into a bullet and fired at you; these were all tied together nicely by the screenwriter Curtis B Siodmak.

It’s all about the change. In the early 1980s in particular, make-up artists like Rick Baker, Rob Bottin and others vied to out-monster each other with the most eye-popping practical effects ever seen. It’s becoming something of a lost art now, in these days of increasingly seamless computer effects. But for films like An American Werewolf in London and The Howling, the transformation scenes were almost the centrepiece of the films themselves; they became legends in their own right, myths that your older brother and his friends slavered over, which you then pretended to school friends that you’d seen yourself. This is something best lent to the visual arts, rather than literary. The moment man becomes beast.

Sure, there are werewolf novels, some of them very good indeed. Robert R McCammon wrote a real cracker, a doorstopper called The Wolf’s Hour which managed to blend shafeshifting horrors with Nazi villains. I utterly devoured it one day as a teenager when I really should have been outside vandalising phone booths and beating people up. Historically, there are a few classic texts, too, from Guy Endore’s The Werewolf of Paris to GM Reynolds’ penny dreadful classic Wagner the Werewolf. But nothing definitive. No stuffed, mounted head which you could point to in the study and say: That was it. The biggest and best of them all. The granddaddy.

In Glen Duncan’s The Last Werewolf, it could be that we have at last tracked an elusive beast down. If not the greatest werewolf book of all time, then certainly the greatest of the modern era.

For a book which features giant, hybrid-style wolfmen and vampires, this is a brilliantly lyrical, even literary, novel. We come to our narrator, 260-year-old Jacob Marlowe, in a bit of a pickle. He’s the last werewolf on earth, hunted by the anti-paranormal human agency WOCOP, with a man called Grainer at the helm. Marlowe killed and ate Grainer’s father 40 years before, and the man is obsessed with leaving Marlowe to the last. Marlowe, an old dog happy to learn new tricks, must employ every means necessary to stay ahead of the pack… but he’s getting old, and weary. He knows his next full moon could well be his last. And part of him relishes the fact.

What could be more uplifting for a lad with his tail between his legs than a new girlfriend?

Marlowe is a wonderful creation, and he rolls around in Duncan’s baroque prose. He’s put his time on earth to good use, amassing a fortune and garnering all the survival skills he needs to avoid WOCOP ever since he was bitten by a werewolf at the foot of Mount Snowdon in Wales. He comes across as a louche, Byronic semi-aristocrat with a prodigious sexual appetite and a wicked tongue; the fact of his lycanthropy is almost incidental.

With the Curse, Marlowe becomes a werewolf every full moon, when he goes through several hours of hunting, killing and eating humans in as messy a fashion as he can. He has to be quite systematic about selecting victims, modern crime detection rates being what they are. Dispatching them is not quite so scientific a business, though. He’s unabashed about how he does this, completely in thrall to the insane lusts of the Curse. I guess after 200-odd years of anything, you get used to it. When you find out who his first victim was, you can understand why; you can’t get too much more appalling than that.

He isn’t quite immoral, and in his human form he does lend himself to good causes, but every full moon Marlowe surrenders to the bloodlust. There’s not much choice involved – he has to. Hunting animals just won’t do; the most dangerous game of all is where it’s at for wolfies.

Marlowe isn’t just wanted by WOCOP; it turns out the vampires – here painted as sublime supernatural beings who nonetheless cannot have sex (Marlowe titters, Muttley-style, up his ripped sleeves) – have designs on owning themselves a dog, something to do with their search for the ability to walk in the daylight. He has an ally, though: Harley, an insider at WOCOP whom he once saved from a gay-bashing as a wolf.  Through his agency and information Marlowe is able to stay one step ahead of Grainer and his protégé, Ellis.

It’s a wild ride, and Duncan tickles behind our ears as the debauched, dilettante man-beast follows through his mission statement: f*ckkilleat. It’s an almost densely sexual novel, infused with Duncan’s rip-snortingly florid descriptions. One comparison in particular between a woman’s anus and the smirk of a coquettish secretary of the Third Reich had me howling with laughter. Indeed, there’s a knowing chuckle employed all the way through, here, a low growl in the background. An altogether different “transformation” Marlowe undergoes in order to throw his pursuers off the scent was one of many nods and winks to the audience.

The narrative does show a few fleas through some story weaknesses. In the near-affable stoner Ellis we have a terrific villain, and in his boss, Grainer, an “off-the-page” head honcho whom we barely even meet until the conclusion. The latter was sparingly used to the point of being wasted - the Darth Maul of the tale, if you will. There were also too many loose ends in this story, little plotlines here and there which weren’t developed – deliberately so, you feel. The Macguffin of an ancient text which Marlowe has been obsessed with is dangled in front of our nose like a dog biscuit, then snatched away. The journal structure also gives us a problem in the conclusion, where another character takes the reins, leaving us a bit shellshocked by the resolution (and mistrustful of it).

Having the Curse being a once-a-month deal also gives us a distinct lack of wolf time. Although there are plenty of recollections of previous attacks and action replays of the sensations and benefits of being a dog, there’s little of it taking place in media res. Also, key characters are dropped with almost indecent haste, and things are left annoyingly open for a sequel on several fronts. Consider, for a non-spoiler start, what became of the character Marlowe furnished with a lovebite.

It’s all made up for by the sumptuous prose, the positively filthy contemplations and a mordant sense of humour. Part of me would have preferred to read about Marlowe’s day-to-day bump and grind, just a series of episodes in the life of a charming dirtbag with the inner wolf kept straining at the leash in the background.

But isn’t a sense of restraint part of the appeal of the werewolf story? The idea that something wicked lurks within, just waiting for an excuse to burst into life and enslave you to your own base instincts?

If you absolutely must do it, please don’t be biting at the curtains – they were very expensive, you know. And leave the postie alone, those boys work hard.