About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

BITE CLUB
by Hal Bodner
Alyson, June 2005
320 pages
$14.95
ISBN: 1555839037


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Normally I do not like vampire novels. I have never been able to fathom the attraction of a quite literally blood-thirsty serial killer. But I confess that I sped through BITE CLUB laughing aloud much of the way. And when I tried to skim the novel in preparation for writing this review, I found myself instead reading it through once again.

It's campy, it's satirical, it's clever, it's outrageous, it's politically incorrect. Its characters all border on being caricatures, though the most adorable is an unlikely cute ghoul on vacation from Chicago. It's obviously not to everyone's taste. But it just may be, at least so far, the best gay mystery of the year.

It is an inverted detective story. The reader quickly learns that an incredibly ancient vampire, one Rex Castillian, is taking down young gays in West Hollywood, though all that the city officials know is the victims have all been drained of their blood. Clive Anderson, the fastidiously neat African American police chief, tries to suppress childhood memories of tales he heard while growing up in Louisiana. The overweight, candy-crunching, Jewish city coroner, Becky O'Brien, thinks it is just someone with a Dracula obsession.

She summons the aid of a chum from her med school days who has written a book about such a killer. She has long maintained a crush on Chris Driscoll, even knowing he is gay, but she has no idea that he himself is a vampire. Chris flies in with Troy, his 70-year-old, utterly flamboyant, Southern boy toy, his 'renfield' (a label that drives Troy crazy), and quickly realizes the truth.

Chris also knows that the killer must be dangerously egomaniacal to risk exposing the existence of supernatural creatures to the normals of the world. In order to stop the perpetrator before his true nature is unveiled and a potential campaign to wipe out all vampires can be unleashed, he calls upon his network of vampire friends for help.

Meanwhile, he and Troy scout the gay bars near which the victims were picked up. As a result of one of Troy's more extravagant escapades, the two encounter the ghoul, Scotty, who turns out to have a key bit of information about the killer's whereabouts. But the rogue vampire proves he is not going to be taken out without a fight.

The author, an entertainment lawyer and owner of a West Hollywood pet boutique, describes his hometown with bemused fondness. Another major character is an eccentric and elderly city manager, Pamela Burman, whose outlandish wardrobe is imitated by drag queens and whose every pronouncement is designed to elicit controversy. Her efforts to stop the annual Halloween festivities, which she fears will provide the perfect cover for the killer, sets off her latest political firestorm. But she proves herself indispensable in the end.

A scene midway through the novel involving werewolves does not quite work. And the novel has perhaps one too many moments of suspense near the end. Still, a final irrelevant, and wondrously irreverent, moment in which a poor leopard trainer meets her death had me laughing as hard the second time around as it did the first. Do I really need to say, then, that if you're also blessed with a warped sense of humor, you might want to check this novel out?

Reviewed by Drewey Wayne Gunn, October 2005

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]