Field of Blood: Jerusalem's Undead Trilogy

The first in Wilson's Jerusalem's Undead trilogy mixes vampires and religion with awkward results. After a prologue depicting Judas Iscariot's suicide in A.D. 30, the action shifts to 1989, near Jerusalem, where a work crew accidentally awakens the evil Collectors of Souls, whose spirits have been trapped in ground stained by Judas's blood. Once the collectors assume corporeal form, they begin to feast on human victims. Their paths eventually cross with a Romanian girl, Gina Lazarescu, who may be one of the Nistarim, the 36 people on whom the world depends to hold back the Final Vengeance. Stilted prose (""His stare collided with Ariston's and, like one icicle jabbed at another, glanced off in a shower of black splinters and chipped courage"") and thin characterization limit this one's appeal. Wilson is the author of two novelizations, Facing the Giants and Flywheel.