Written in 1933, this is framed with a story of an American finding a discarded manuscript about the werewolf, Bertrand Caillet. Set in France in the late 19th Century, this tries to be for werewolves what Dracula is to vampires, filled with lots of werewolf lore.
The novel doesn't gloss over the original legendary nature of werewolves as savage, uncontrollable and dangerous, not just smexy men running in a pack with a furry problem... It's what I appreciated in the book more than anything. It's hard to find straight-up horror these days. Vampires sparkle, and werewolves are mannerly professors or suave sophisticates, so I enjoyed finding one that's an out and out monster, mad, bad, and dangerous to know.
There are risque and disturbing elements--rape, incest, etc, yet the story is shot through with dark humor. The secondary characters are finely drawn and the historical backdrop of the Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune well-detailed. However, it often has tedious, rambling parts that have nothing to do with the story--mostly in service to the rather obvious communist point-of-view. Way too much of the material about the Paris Commune had nothing to do with the werewolf.
