The New York Times – Justin Cronin
The challenge for any writer working within an established genre, especially a genre with a reputation for high camp, is to bring something new to the table while adhering to tradition. On both points, Duncan…scores high marks…Marlowe…deliver[s] his lengthy confession…with the pounding energy of water shot from a fire hose. Two centuries of undead living have endowed him with a vast pile of cultural capital and a linguistic style that swings gleefully between the wisecracking cynicism of his noir namesake and the syntactical curlicues of Humbert Humbert. Like Nabokov's dandified pedophile, Marlowe imparts the contents of his inner life and his impressions of the world around him in a series of succulent verbal morsels.