Kiss of Night

Susan Lambert, while in Prague for her grandmother’s funeral, encounters a mysterious man inside St. Vitus Cathedral. The man, Raphael, later appears when Susan needs help in finding her cousin Wendy, who has disappeared with another mysterious man, Garridan. Thus begins a tale of a human-vampire alliance in a pitched battle against evil forces led by a vampire version of a figure from history. The premise is provocative: can a vampire be redeemed? The execution, however, is clumsy. Viguié’s writing is littered with clichés (“the icy hand of fear,” “pierce her very soul”); clunkers of improbability (security guards at a Czech hotel who sound like they work at a Best Western in Omaha, a transfusion in a country inn that saves a vampire victim); and a basic failure to show instead of tell (“she saw Raphael fighting the man who had caused the accident”). But maybe none of this matters to the hordes of vampire fans who, after their introduction to the vampire Raphael, will clamor for book two and the movie adaptation that must star Johnny Depp. (Oct.)