Sharp Teeth, by Toby Barlow

Werewolves. In Los Angeles. In blank verse. It's the kind of high-concept pitch that might get Jerry Bruckheimer excited, if he were in book publishing instead of movie-making.

The pitch comes from Toby Barlow, who is a young American writer, and the result is a lean, gripping novel-in-verse that lopes efficiently along the noir-ish paths of its cross-breed genre without ever really throwing up any grand surprises.

Kathryn Bigelow did something similar with vampires in her movie Near Dark. Take a myth heavy with symbolism, strip it of gothic baggage, and drop it in the clear light of a contemporary setting. So long as you insist on underplaying and, above all, avoid camp (think the baroque frills of Anne Rice), it's hard to go far wrong.

The lycanthropes in Sharp Teeth are fully integrated into LA society, to the point of holding down white-collar jobs by day, before changing at will to run wild by night, or when circumstances dictate. When the pack is ripped apart by a less regimented rival gang, its leader, Lack, and its single, totemic female both run to ground. Lack hides out as an obedient housedog to a rich woman who is living in Pasadena. The female – who goes without a name – remains in human form and shacks up with Anthony, a strong, kind man who is from the local dog pound. But they both have revenge on their minds.

The writing slides down the page in rich, jagged paragraphs. I know I should say "stanzas", but if ever blank verse stood accused of being prose with extra line-breaks, then here it is. "The concierge left the world/ bloody and scared./ He was cleared away without a liquid trace,/ the room licked clean, more pristine than/ any maid could leave it." It can't be entirely reconstituted as prose – there are snatches of rhythm to drag you along – but it very nearly can.

As a hip, quick-moving thriller, Sharp Teeth works just fine. The nods to humour (such as Lack, in dog form, seducing his owner-to-be by groaning "like a lovelorn Elvis") balance out the offhand, though grisly violence.

Naturally, given the weight of the mythical premise, few opportunities for existential howls of anguish are passed by. With its clever spin on a cops-and-villains plot, Sharp Teeth is as pleased with itself as a dog with a bone. "We are wolves... We simply eat absolutely/ fucking everything." So yes, it is pretty cool, but maybe that's the most that a novel-in-verse about werewolves could ever aspire to be.

Heinemann, £12.99, Order for £11.50 (free p&p) on 08700 798 897

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