Review

Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine
December 2002
Reviewer: Charles de Lint

Readers unfamiliar with Hayter's cheerfully quirky voice from her Robin Hudson mysteries might still get a clue as to what's in store for them by the title of her new novel, a cheeky play on that of the William Burroughs classic. But instead of junkies, Hayter writes about another New York City minority, werewolves. Or, as some of them like to refer to themselves, people with Lycanthropic Metamorphic Disorder (LMD).

To be honest, while Hayter does spend a fair amount of time with her werewolves, in both human and wolf shape, and posits a number of considered speculations on their genetic make-up and history, I'd say she's more interested in writing a character-driven novel that just happens to also have some werewolves in it.

She spends as much, if not more, time delving into the psyches of Sam Deverell, a good-hearted if somewhat dim reporter at a local TV network, and his co-workers. Deverell is going through a bad patch with his marriage. So is the city's mayor, as well as the psychiatrist/werewolf Marcho Potenza, who runs a clinic for werewolves. Come to think of it, relationships on the edge of break-up, or those that have already disintegrated, touch pretty much all the characters in this book, from Annie Engel, the nicest girl in the city who, as the book opens, learns that she's a werewolf, to Jim Valiente, Potenza's rival, a renegade werewolf who was presumed dead.

But none of this is delivered with teariness and angst. Hayter's trademark wiseacre voice is in full-throttle here as she pokes fun at social climbers, gossip columnists, news agencies, multi-national conglomerates, and anything else that happens to get in her way.

What's surprising, and also so satisfying, is that all of this is icing on a great, fast-paced plot with characters we can really care about. Hayter has been, in her time, a news reporter, a TV producer, and a stand- up comedienne, but what she proves with Naked Brunch, as she has with her mystery series before it, is that first and foremost she's a novelist, smart and talented.

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