Books about werewolves are not, for some reason, generally considered "serious" literature. This one should be. It's about so much more than werewolves, but like any really good novel addressing a serious question or two, it addresses them through the medium of its central story " in this case, werewolves. But before I go off about how great I thought Bareback was, let me give you a little introduction so that you don't get too lost.

Bareback would probably be best described as alternative history -- the story is set in a world where lycanthropy is by far the norm, and there are a small minority of people who, thanks to a very slight birth defect, don't turn into wolves once a month. And because on the night of the full moon everyone turns canine and can't think rationally, there's a a government curfew once a month, so that people can lock themselves up and be sure they don't cause unnecessary damage to other people or property. Of course, it's the non-lycanthropes -- or "barebacks" -- who have to enforce this curfew.

This is where we meet our heroine, Lola May Galley, a woman who -- like all barebacks -- works for the Department for the Ongoing Regulation of Lycanthropic Activity, as a legal adviser. People in wolf form -- "lunes" -- who break the curfew have to account for themselves, after all, and it's D.O.R.L.A. that has to deal with them. Lola tells the story from her own point of view, in the present tense, and Whitfield very effectively puts the reader behind Lola's eyes. Her private thoughts are dribbled out artfully enough that it's easy to think "Yes, that's exactly how I would feel", and though the changes in tense are a bit clumsy Whitfield manages to stay just on the right side of annoyance in leaping back and forth to give the reader a full picture of the situations Lola finds herself in.

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The little snippets of reviews splashed liberally across the book's cover use words like "gritty", and tell us that the plot "rattles along at such a pace". If "gritty" means realistic, and not overly fluffy, then Bareback is certainly gritty -- but the word holds little meaning. The last time I read a book that was overly fluffy, and had anything to do with werewolves or the supernatural, it was Laurell K Hamilton's work -- and Anita Blake deserves a special category of her own for complete lack of realism or logical thought. The plot cannot be accused of rattling along at much of a pace, either -- it's a murder mystery, and it unfolds slowly, over weeks, while we get to know Lola and the world she lives in, see what it's like to be a bareback on a full moon night, patrolling for uncontrolled "lycos", and explore what makes being a bareback so hard.

The book's real strength is Lola, the way in which Whitfield gets the reader into her head, and the subtle differences between her world and ours that, to put it badly but accurately, make all the difference. But sometimes Whitfield gets a little carried away with her richly imagined world, and her vivid metaphors go beyond what we're used to -- like when Lola "leans [her] tired soul against" her lyco boyfriend Paul, and when his "absence flows through [her] veins". I'm not sure whether this is a plus or a minus, to be honest -- it raised my eyebrows, but if anything it made Lola's thoughts more real to me, and that can only be a good thing. And in focusing so closely on Lola, a "normal" woman in an abnormal world, it gets serious.

I don't generally like to interpret literature, because what people read into novels is very often complete bollocks, but I think Bareback asks important questions about the differences between people. Racism seems absent in Lola's world -- culturally mixed names like "Adnan Franklin" or "Lisa Rahman" aren't given a second thought by even the most narrow-minded of characters -- and in emphasizing the lack of real differences between barebacks and lycos, whose biological non-similarity manifests itself in the most blatant of ways once a month, Whitfield could well be saying something about the artificial barriers of prejudice in society.

Less interpretive and more obvious is Lola's struggle with her murder mystery case, with the suspicion (and treatment in D.O.R.L.A.'s cells) of her boyfriend Paul, and with her responsibility to her murdered friend once she finds out the causes behind his death. There's no question that there are serious issues being dealt with here, and the answers Lola arrives at are irresponsible enough to be real (and to feel like she's following her heart) but sensible and nuanced enough to make it clear that these are issues that need more thought than can be given in a few short pages.

It's not all roses, though. The plot has a slightly hard-to-guess twist just before the finish, and it ends sufficiently ambiguously not to fall headlong into cliche, but it certainly teeters on the edge of it. Lola's relationship with Paul, for instance, is hardly original: introduced early as a seemingly sympathetic lyco social worker on the other end of a official e-mail, he conveniently turns out to be the gorgeous man who catches Lola's eye at a local bar when she's drowning her sorrows. And of course, after rushing out and undergoing sufficient insecurity and angst, she sees him again (in an official capacity), and they get along well, and tumble headlong into love. It's hardly a surprise when Paul is implicated as being one of a group of rogue lycos suspected of the murder central to the plot, and not much less predictable when he is exonerated but his relationship with Lola is forever tainted.

Bareback is Whitfield's first novel, and it's certainly a fantastic debut. I won't lessen my praise by saying it's very good "for a first novel" (How much does that mean, anyway? In a creative process like writing, practice doesn't necessarily make perfect). It's not perfect -- what is? -- but it's certainly excellent, and without a doubt worth the 7 quid Borders ask for the paperback.