9-24-2026 Latham's Last Words: The Wolf's Hour by Robert McCammon
Welcome to Latham's Last Words, where I give you my last words on vintage horror books I've read. Let's look at The Wolf's Hour from 1989!
I had heard such great things about this book and I have to say I was disappointed in it. I know I'm in the minority when I say that, but it just didn't do it for me as a werewolf book. If I ignore the fact that Michael Gallatin is a werewolf, I will say this was a great WWII thriller!
The first reason I was disappointed is that there is really no werewolf action. The entire book Michael is ruminating on why he doesn't want to "wolf out" and concentrating on staying human. There are really only two scenes where we get some werewolf. The first time is when he's on the train trying to escape, but only his hands transform. The second time is towards the end of the book when they are on the island. He does turn fully into a wolf, but is kind of pathetic. He just goes and hangs out with the pack that is living on the island. I thought we'd finally get to see some werewolf action, but nope. He turns back to human to go fight the Nazis and rescue his friends.
I also thought the book was way too long. The last 150 pages were just a slog to get through. Time after time something goes wrong to interfere with the mission, it got to be a little ridiculous honestly. I started to wonder if McCammon kept throwing obstacles in the way of the mission just because he had a page count he needed to hit for his publisher.
I really enjoyed the flashbacks to when Michael was Mikhail. That was the best part of the story in my opinion. If the book had focused on that storyline I would have liked this book so much more.
For a British vs Nazis thriller, this was a great book. For a werewolf book, it fell flat for me.
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