Suckers

Yet another would-be satire of London's media swarm, this debut novel--which inexplicably caused Billson to be named among Britain's best young novelists earlier this year--is a tediously arch farrago whose less-than-inspired central conceit quickly wears thin. Magazine consultant Dora Vale and her erstwhile lover Duncan Fender have a creepy feeling that the vampire, Violet Westron, whom they had chopped into small pieces 13 years before, has returned as head of a multinational media conglomerate with designs on world domination. Of course it's true, and soon Dora finds herself alone against evil forces. Related in glib journalese, Billson's trite observations on contemporary pop culture are never toothsome or original enough to animate her moribund plot. Since Dracula and his ilk have always served as quite self-conscious symbols of cultural anxiety, the end-of-the-millennium-psychosis-blues that Suckers aspires to remain obdurately flat. Nasty and tasteless without being particularly shocking, silly without being very funny, the novel is--sharpened stakes and fangs notwithstanding--pointless and suprisingly lacking in bite; Suckers stands in sore need of a transfusion. (Oct.)