The Reading Bud

Book Details:

Author: Mark Leslie
Release Date: December 12, 20016
Series: Canadian Werewolf (Book 1 of 9)
Genre: Contemporary Fantasy, Humour, Supernatural Fantasy
Format: E-book 
Pages: 352 pages
Publisher: Stark Publishing
Blurb:
ALPHA WOLF. BETA HUMAN. BIG APPLE.
Michael Andrews seems to have it all. He’s a successful author and a minor celebrity living in Manhattan. It’s a pretty big step up from his humble Canadian upbringing.
Of course, his lycanthropy poses a bit of a challenge.

Review

A Canadian Werewolf in New York by Mark Leslie is a self-aware urban fantasy that combines werewolf mythology, detective fiction, romantic regret, literary satire, and an affectionate portrait of Manhattan. It is a briskly conceived supernatural mystery built around an appealing central contradiction: Michael Andrews may transform into a dangerous animal during the full moon, but in his human life, he is remarkably conscientious, compassionate, and determined not to become a monster.

Michael is a Canadian-born bestselling mystery writer who has made New York his home and the Algonquin Hotel his residence. More than a decade earlier, while hitchhiking towards the city, he survived an encounter with a wolf that left him with lycanthropy. Since then, he has learnt to accommodate the monthly transformations, although the amnesia surrounding his nights as a wolf remains a constant source of anxiety. When he awakens naked in Battery Park with blood in his mouth and a bullet lodged in his thigh, he fears that he may finally have harmed someone innocent.

The opening establishes the novel’s comic sensibility immediately. Michael’s improvised journey across Manhattan, scavenging clothing, helping a vulnerable man named Wally, confronting bullies, navigating the subway and attempting to reach a breakfast meeting with his literary agent, turns what might have been a grim supernatural premise into a highly episodic urban misadventure. Author Leslie repeatedly finds humour in the logistical problems of being a werewolf: ruined clothes, inconvenient transformations, unexplained injuries and the considerable difficulty of returning home naked without becoming tabloid material.

Michael’s enhanced senses are among the book’s most effective narrative devices. Smell, heartbeat, emotional chemistry and physical movement become forms of evidence through which he reads the city and its inhabitants. These abilities make him an unconventional detective, but Leslie wisely prevents them from making him infallible. Michael sometimes misreads what he perceives, reaches the wrong conclusion or allows his emotional involvement to cloud his judgment. His humiliating mistake at Grand Central is particularly useful because it establishes that supernatural perception is not the same as wisdom.

The novel’s emotional centre lies in Michael’s relationship with Gail, his former girlfriend. Their relationship ended because he concealed his lycanthropy, allowing her to believe that his mysterious monthly disappearances meant he was unfaithful. When she returns and reveals that she now knows the truth, Michael is forced to recognise that secrecy, not his supernatural condition itself, destroyed their intimacy. His regret is intensified by the discovery that Gail is engaged to Howard Clark, whose disappearance draws Michael into the criminal plot.

This relationship gives the novel more substance than its comic premise initially suggests. Michael wants to protect Gail, but he is also jealous of Howard and not entirely unhappy when he discovers evidence of Howard’s dishonesty. His motives are therefore emotionally complicated rather than heroically pure. He can act courageously while simultaneously indulging in resentment, wounded pride and romantic fantasy. That contradiction makes him more recognisably human.

The mystery surrounding Howard initially appears to involve gambling debts or a straightforward kidnapping, but gradually expands into financial fraud, organised crime and betrayal. Howard has participated in a penny-skimming scheme with the criminal family connected to his assistant, and the violence around him is partly the result of choices he has already made. This prevents him from becoming a conventional innocent hostage and complicates Michael’s mission: he must rescue a man he dislikes, who has betrayed Gail and helped create his own danger.

Running alongside this criminal plot is Michael’s search for the second werewolf. The “Wolf Night” interludes are particularly effective in this respect. Written from the animal’s perspective, they provide fragmented glimpses of the previous night while preserving Michael’s uncertainty. They also establish a moral distinction between the two creatures. Michael’s wolf may be instinctive and dangerous, but it responds protectively towards someone familiar. The other wolf regards human beings as prey.

New York itself is rendered with obvious affection. The Algonquin, Battery Park, Grand Central, Rockefeller Center, Manhattan streets, subways, hotels, crowds and television studios give the novel a strong sense of urban geography. Michael does not merely live in the city; he continually interprets it through scent, sound, memory, literary history and personal association. The Canadian perspective also contributes to the humour, particularly in his fascination with the city and the gentle mockery surrounding his nationality.

The novel’s greatest strength is Michael’s voice. He is personable, observant, rambling, earnest and frequently amusing. His narrative is full of popular-culture references, writing anecdotes, sexual memories, comic digressions and minor acts of decency. His instinctive willingness to protect strangers establishes his moral character long before the larger mystery is resolved.

The humour is broad and will depend heavily upon the reader’s taste. Some scenes are genuinely inventive, while others rely upon bodily functions, sexual jokes, humiliation or exaggerated characterisation. Readers who enjoy conversational, slightly bawdy urban fantasy are likely to find the tone charming. Those seeking a darker or more tightly controlled supernatural thriller may find its comic detours disruptive.

Overall, A Canadian Werewolf in New York is an entertaining introduction to Michael Andrews and his unusual world. It offers a distinctive blend of supernatural mystery, writerly comedy, romantic melancholy and urban adventure. More importantly, it gives its werewolf mythology a clear ethical centre: Michael’s humanity survives not because he can suppress the wolf completely, but because he continues choosing responsibility, mercy and loyalty even when instinct offers an easier path.

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