Bloodletter

In this erratic stab at neo-gothic horror, Eva LaPorte, a Beverly Hills psychologist, takes as a patient suicidal novelist Stephen Albright. Creator of the hugely popular Bloodletter series, about a vampire who can enter our world to slake his thirst only when an artist or magician invokes his spirit, Stephen is convinced that he himself is one such artist and that he must die to stop the monster's current reign of terror--which he believes is manifest in the form of Diver Dan, a brutal serial killer who has been murdering women in the Bloodletter's name. Unable to resist Stephen's morbid appeal, Eva immediately becomes his lover and, it seems at first, a player in his dark fantasies; too soon, though, the vampire reveals himself, alive and well. Beath ( The Death of James Dean ) handles the female characters with a degree of misogyny unusual even for a genre not known for its feminism; in fact, the only character who seems to get a wry, tacit stamp of approval is Diver Dan. And though the premise is clever, the prose energetic and Beath's love of the genre apparent, the jerky, uneven plot proceeds largely via characters' explanations of their slenderly motivated actions. The novel's imaginative dismemberments might please splatterpunk fans, if they're willing to take their gore without a redeeming modicum of suspense. (Aug.)