Between blotch and blok

Skimming through the book reviews in yesterday's Grauniad, I encountered one of those pieces where the reviewer evidently felt that denying a novel's being of or even like a particular genre is high praise.

... the novel cleverly avoids teetering over into horror or fantasy. Instead, from under a crime genre surface an interesting parable about social justice emerges.

That's praising it for being not horror, not fantasy and not crime. It's set in a "parallel London"--alternative history anyone?--and it's got bleeding werewolves in it. In fact they're the norm. So, mainstream fiction it is, since the reviewer appears to like it.

One for the Amazon wish-list.

The review's partway down this page.