Rovers

Set during the summer of 1976, this outstanding supernatural noir from Hammett Prize winner Lange (Angel Baby) follows brothers Jesse and Edgar, both vampire-like creatures known as rovers, as they travel across the southwest, targeting transients, prostitutes, and addicts. The brothers do their best to keep their nocturnal feeding under the radar, but things get complicated when Jesse falls for a bartender who resembles a doomed love who died 70 years earlier. Meanwhile, an undead biker gang blazes its own trail of carnage. The father of one of the gang’s victims devotes himself to investigating his son’s murder and eventually falls in with a man whose mission is to hunt and exterminate rovers. The paths of these conflicting groups converge near Las Vegas, Nev., where a 2,000-year-old rover lives in a bunker-like fortress. Evocative prose illuminates the neon-lit world of small-town 1970s America. Lange succeeds brilliantly at combining the vampire and noir traditions. Agent: Henry Dunow, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary. (July)