Expected Publication date: April 9, 2024
ASIN : B0CBJNHW5F
Publisher : Ballantine Books
(Advance Reader’s Copy)
Previous novels: The Chalk Man (2017); The Hiding Place (2019); The Other People (2020); The Burning Girls (2021); A Sliver of Darkness (2022); The Drift (2023).
Setting: Deadhart, Rural Alaska.
Characters: Beau Grainger (old codger at 79 in his final lap of life who has hunting trophies on his walls); Detective Barbara Atkins (lead character; a forensic detective from the vampyr anthropology department); Mayor Rita; Chief Pete Nicholls; Marcus Anderson (teenage corpse); Jacob Bell (friend of the deceased); Nathan Bell (had been one of Todd Dane’s friends, left town, and now returned decades later); Reverend Grey (preacher); Tucker (former sheriff, now a recluse and a weirdo, blamed for what happened to Dane); Athelinda (Queen of the Vampyres).
Instead of a murder mystery with supernatural elements, Tudor’s latest book is a deep dive straight into Vampire horror with a sprinkling of detective thrown in. The entire novel is set in a small rural isolated Alaskan town (Deadhart), where a colony of vampyrs (note the spelling) has existed before the settlers came to mine ore. In fact, there are apparently colonies of Vampyres here and there in the world, coexisting on reservations and there are explicit laws on how to deal with Vampyrs. Yet, often people finding themselves alone without the security of armed society sometimes take it upon themselves to do a culling, that is, a progrom to end the nearby vampyr colony, particularly when unexplained deaths appear to be the result of vampyre feeding.
As the story opens, we are told that a storm is coming and something foul is on the air. ”They were back. It was about to begin again.” We are also told that nature has an appetite for the unwary and “You gotta make sure you’re the hunter, not the prey.”
The story is told mostly through the point of view of Detective Barbara Atkins from the Forensic Vampyr Anthropology Department, who was called in from New York, to investigate a suspicious death, one the likes of which had not been seen in twenty-five years. Atkins is like a fish out of water in a small town where everyone knows each other and everyone is suspicious of strangers. The townfolk (even without their pitchforks) want Atkins to finish her investigation quickly and recommend a culling so that the town can get rid of the vampyr menace once and for all. You almost get a sense that the vampyr colony is unfairly discriminated against and that the local townsfolk are just bigoted monsters themselves who want to hunt and hang trophies of creatures they do not consider human. Some even sport Helsing tattos, a hate symbol supporting the genocide of vampyrs.
It is an easy-to-read, engrossing tale that (once you accept the vampyr premise and the laws regarding how vampyrs are dealt with) captures the imagination. It is not Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but a far more modern version.
Pulp, Crime, & Mystery Books 