If you're a vampire, please pay close attention. Do you find your immortal life increasingly burdened with the effort of keeping up false appearances? If so, you're not alone. Garreth Mikaelian, a sleuthing vampire, knows how you feel in his third (and tedious) mystery (after Blood Hunt
and Bloodlines). He's only been a vampire for 15 years and already it's evident he's unlike his fellow humans. They grow older, while he stays young. His own son looks more like a twin brother every day. The time is coming, his vampire-friendly advisers warn, when he'll have to abandon his old life. Meanwhile, he's still a Kansas cop and on the trail of an albino psycho whose victims include Garreth's partner and sometime lover. Complicating the chase is the possibility that the vicious killer may be a vampire. An indiscreet vampire is a threat to all vampires. Garreth must determine whether to kill him if he is or jail him if he is not. So begins an interminable manhunt. But then just about everything in this novel is interminable. As the popularity of Anne Rice's novels (or on the cult level of such films as Near Dark
and Innocent Blood) shows, there's always room for another original take on the vampire theme. Unfortunately, Killough has nothing new or imaginative to offer. Her vampires are a boring lot without a good scare in any of them. (June)
FYI:The first two titles in the series are available in a joint paperback,
BloodWalk.
