A call to a Peeping Tom incident starts Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman on his strangest case yet in this nicely low-key but compelling page-turner. True, the Iowa lawman encountered Satanists in his debut, Eleven Days
(1998), but the perp described hanging in thin air outside the upper story window looks like Bela Lugosi. When a body drained of blood is reported in a rural mansion, Houseman realizes this investigation isn't going to be routine, or easy. More bodies pile up, in Iowa and across the Mississippi in Wisconsin (with a fellow cop noting, "Vampire. Suspect that weird has to be from your side of the river"). Police radio chatter—"Ten-four, Comm.… I'll be ten-seventy-six to the scene…"—and details of the manhunt could not be more authentic, since the author (Known Dead; The Big Thaw) spent 26 years in law enforcement. He even includes a glossary of ten codes for the curious. With laconic masterstrokes, Harstad complicates his plot with the arrival on the scene of a professional vampire hunter, problems with a disgruntled subordinate and Houseman's introduction to the sexual underworld of blood sports. Series regulars such as investigator Hester Gorse and Old Knockle do their turns, with officer Sally Wells copping the funniest moments—why not
bring some garlic on the stake-out, just in case? The suspect is
supposed to be a vampire. Harstad has crafted another engrossing entry in one of the best new police procedural series. (Apr. 16)
