By Paul Hoffman

Red Opera, out now

Aaron Gall is out for revenge against those in the Catholic Church he feels have wronged him – and thanks to an accident at the Large Hadron Collider, he has certain new abilities that will help…

There have been some unusual werewolf tales related over the years, that have used lycanthropy as a metaphor for other conditions, or wandered into the pretentious or the absurd. Scorn is in a class of its own: it’s a werewolf story, where the lycanthrope engages in philosophical discussion before ripping his targets apart… and eventually he targets the Pope. (Via Tony Blair, Chris Patten and Wayne Rooney but that’s a whole new level of weirdness.) At the same time, he’s being hunted by two police officers, neither of whom are exactly what you’d expect from Officers of The Law.

Hoffman’s style is eclectic, sometimes hectoring, sometimes blackly humorous, but it serves to draw you into the narrative and before you realise it, you’re a third of the way through the book, and the insanity is starting to feel normal. There are clearly particular issues that he wanted to work through via his characters, and it helps to have some knowledge of both the Catholic Church and its practices (dubious and otherwise), not just of the past few decades, but the past centuries.

If you’re looking for a werewolf story that expands the mythos, pick up Robert McCammon’s The Wolf’s Hour or Ben Percy’s Red Moon, but if you’re in the mood for something rather different – and enjoy a philosophical backbone to your horror – then Scorn is for you.

Verdict: A very unusual horror story. 7/10

Paul Simpson