Snag The Wolfman Designed By Nicholas Pekearo Publication
had so much fun with this book,
It delivered everything I love in a novel great characters, clever dialog, well paced, interesting plot, and of course a rad monster werewolf and it introduced some rather brilliant concepts within the werewolf mythos Id never seen before.
I can see why its so highly regarded in the genre,
Its a real shame there will be no more books in what was clearly meant to be an ongoing series.
Though this
one works well as a stand alone, Nicholas Pekearo had a gift for storytelling,
The piece he wrote for the Empire State College literary magazine, Many Waters, included at the end of this novel, was entirely heartbreaking.
Now Im sad, This is one of the most entertaining novels Ive read in a good while, The main character is charming, the plot moves at a steady pace and seeing a Werewolf kill people is always a delight.
There were some good one liners here and there too, with some jokes actually landing quite well, physically making me laugh out loud, which is no easy feat.
That being said, despite my enjoyment of this book, it bore a lot of writing that made it sub par on a technical level.
The prose lacked flow, bearing way too many sentences where a comma or semi colon couldve helped with immersion.
Telling instead of showing character relationships was also an issue, especially when we consider the lack of emotional attachment I had with these people.
It felt more like the writer was dictating characters to do certain things rather than coax them along whatever path they desired.
The plot was also rather predictable, with many twists in the story feeling rather predictable,
Though Id chalk up the following to more personal tastes, I also found the similes to not be all that impactful, and even repetitive in some cases.
This book did bear a bit too much edge for my liking, but I would be lying if I said this wasnt one hell of a time.
The action sequences are fun and the gore described is over the top in the most delightfully of pulpy ways its a love letter to horror and to classic, indulgent action thrillers.
If you hunger for Werewolf fiction, then youre missing out if you dont read this, Though if youre not already invested in such fiction, then this could prove to be monotonous,
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Marlowe Higgins has had a hard life, Since being dishonorably discharged after a tour in Vietnam, he's been in and out of prison, moving from town to town, going wherever the wind takes him.
He cant stay in one place too longevery full moon he kills someone,
Marlowe Higgins is a werewolf, For years he struggled with his affliction, until he found a way to use this unfortunate curse for goodhe only kills really bad people.
Settling at last in the small town of Evelyn, Higgins works at a local restaurant and even has a friend, Daniel Pearce, one of Evelyn's two police detectives.
One night everything changes, It turns out Marlowe Higgins isnt the only monster lurking in the area, A fiendish serial killer, known as the Rose Killer, is brutally murdering young girls all around the county, Higgins targets the killer as his next victim, but on the night of the full moon, things go drastically wrong.
I was in the mood for a werewolf story, and this one was number one on Barnes and Nobles list of "mustread werewolf novels.
" As BampN pointed out, most werewolf stories are formulaic, for example paranormal romances, but this one offers a new take a man who has, over the course of time, learned to use his werewolf transformation for good.
He uses his detective skills to find a target dangerous criminals not yet identified by the police, When the moon is full, he uses the wolf's supersenses to track the target and satisfy the wolf's blood lust.
The author writes with both skill, imagination and streetsmarts, He worked as an auxiliary policeman in New York City fromto, when he was shot stopping a gunman in Greenwich Village.
Unfortunately, he never saw his book published, It was still in the editing process when he died,
If only someone else could write a sequel to the book and carry on his vision, I wanted to like this book so much, Everything about it's overall premise sounded like it had great potential, and the introduction and first couple of chapters were great in their narration.
Unfortunately, the book quickly lost me, I'll get the positives out of the way quick and say that I really liked the overall prose of the story and the flashback sections that deal with the protagonist discovering the werewolf curse are really well written.
Unfortunately, everything else is insufferable, The protagonist is a thoroughly unlikable, reflecting the worst, most dated tropes of hardboiled detective fiction, and his unbearable dialog is filled with slurs and things that seem characteristic of every meathead, backwater cop rolled into one insufferable jackass.
The constant naming of characters after characters in other works of fiction, such as naming the first victim after the first victim in Halloween, or the soldiers named after Larry Talbot and H.
G. Wells respectively really sucked me out of the story, reminding me of fiction I'd much rather be consuming than this tired abomination of a novel.
I was tempted to make it two for the well written flashback scenes, as they are, on their own, worth reading and really well done, but the book itself is too poorly written and unbearable otherwise to justify doing so.
Marlowe is a Vietnam war veteran who returns to America after his platoon is ambushed in the jungle, He has no memory of the events that brought him home, but soon learns that he's brought with him a deadly curse.
After settling in a small town with a job at a diner, the lycanthropic protagonist loses the equilibrium he had established when a new monster moves into town in the form of a very human murderer.
The Wolfman is ragged around the edges and shows none of the polish of a seasoned novelist, but given the openness of the the very satisfying ending, it would make sense to assume the author had more in store for Marlowe.
There is a passing similarity to Robert McCammon's somewhat juvenile Wolf's Hour, only one of several stories he wrote about werewolf Michael Gallatin, but Pekearo paints a less cartoonish picture with his warweary Wolfman.
With enough time, I believe Marlowe's stories could have been impeccable, The story doesn't ask its readers to do much digging, but there's something to be said for an enjoyable experience earned with minimal effort.
Solid werewolf story. ahh. . how i wish i could give this book a five,
so you can pretty much figure out what's going to happen by chapter, thanks to the intro on the bookflap, you know that there is going to be some type of murderer and that Marlowe's first attempt to kill him goes wrong.
as soon as the "prettyboy" Anthony walks inmarlowe even says something like, "this day would change everything"you know he's the killer.
and then the clues start raining down, both the killer and Anthony are traveling from one coast to another, they both like to take pictures, and anthony is creepily present at all the funerals, not to mention his obvious morbid interest in the other murders.
also, he hates women.
since Pearce is the werewolf's only friend, you know he's the one who gets killed, also easy to figure out because, for one, the incident occurs early in the book, too early for it to be the real killer, and Marlowe tells us that he never sees him again.
so the easiness bothered me a lot, it would be acceptable if this book were intended for kids and tweens, but there is no way that youngin's should be exposed to that much gory violence, profanity, torture, and sex.
it is an adultthemes book with a kid level mystery,
that being said, i absolutely loved the book itself, the premise was original, and Pekearo's narration kept me racing towards the end of the book, even though i knew what was going to happen.
the dialogue seemed so real, so natural, and Pekearo put a human face on an "abomination": made the reader feel sympathetic and endeared towards Marlowe, see both sides, not just bad.
even, in the end, the rose killer gets a bit of sympathy, showing his circumstances growing up, it's all very interesting and very gripping,
i am sad to know that there will be no more stories about Marlowe Higgins, this book was obviously intended to be the first of a series, perhaps if they had gone on, the mysteries would become deeper, supposedly, there were other books that Pekearo wrote, and i hope that one day, those will find their way onto bookshelves too.
The Wolfman may have a title most readers will resonate with the classic Lon Chaney Jr, film of old, but the novel itself offers more than a simple lycanthrope tale, It's a great debut from who seemed to be a promising young writer in the form of author Nicholas Pekearo unfortunately, Nicholas Pekearo was killed right before the book was scheduled for publication.
Such a true shame for a man who clearly held a lot of emotional depth in his writing,
The Wolfman is oftentimes funny, with the charismatic and slightly aggressive protagonist of Marlowe Higgins growing on you with his crude humorous remarks and vulgar dialogue.
Yet it can also be surprisingly powerful because as most people know, most comedy is used to shield the world away from the pain and grief of the world.
In the case of our obscenityladen main character, we get insight into a plethora of heartbreaking moments that makes an equal balance between the sad and the funny.
There's only a couple of defining segments that can be called tense or even remotely scary, but Pekearo is more of an author who payed substantial credit to having his characters heard and the mythology of his creation expressed instead of focusing on the cliche of terrifying his readers.
It's a bit predictable in the end, but overall the whole experience is worth having, A great read! This book was interesting, It follows Marlow, short order cook, werewolf, and vigilante, To satiate his inner animal, he finds people he thinks are worthy of death but have escaped justice, The book was ok. It seemed more like a rough draft, There is a minor mystery about a serial killer in town, However you arecertain who the killer is because a random stranger has shown up in town just as the killing start.
The author died young, so I see this novel as more of the promise of who he could have been rather than a good novel in its own right.
It is an okay werewolf novel, but relatively forgettable, เรองเกยวกบมนษยหมาปารวมสมยในมมมองใหมตามการตความของผเขยน มทงเอกลกษณเดม ๆ ทคงเอาไว ผสานกบความแปลกใหมทผเขยนคดขน เปนสวนผสมทลงตวด เสยดายทผเขยนเสยชวตแลว โอกาสจะเหนภาคตอของตวละครทโดดเดนแบบนจงหมดไปโดยปรยาย The concept was solid but the execution was a wee bit boring for me, This should have been a book I loved, based off of my taste in books, but very early one I just couldn't get into this story.
Usually when I give astar rating there is something wrong with the book to make me dislike it, but this book is unique as there isn't really anything wrong with it.
I can see many people liking and even loving this book, but I just saw the book as uninteresting.
To me, the narration read a bit monotonous and I didn't really care about the main character in the sense that I didn't really care what happened to him after a while.
My interest throughout this book was a straight line that never really changed, There were plenty of moments I thought about DNFing this book but I hoped that I would be surprised by a turn in the story.
I'm sad to say that never happened because I really wanted to love this book,
Don't let my rating influence those who want to read this book, If you find the premise interesting then give it a shot, As I said before I can see plenty of people liking and loving this book, All I'm trying to say with my rating and this review is that the story wasn't bad, it just wasn't for me.
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