Author: C. J. Tudor
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine
Date Published: April 9, 2024
This book was a great example of how to scare me without really scaring me! I really liked C. J. Tudor’s other books so I must have skipped over the vampyrs bit in the synopsis! But this is vampires done right – Tudor has humanized them and treated them like any other community of outcasts, showing the fear of the townspeople which is bred on myth, suspicion, and tradition. I loved the portrayal of vampires living among us, and I was thoroughly invested in the fate of the Colony.
Then we have the police procedural portion. Deadhart Alaska’s Police Chief Pete Nichols is required to bring in a detective from the Vampyr Anthology Department to determine if the killing of a young boy was vampyr related. This is not a traditional portrayal of a pretty young detective breezing in to save the town. Tudor’s detective Barbara Atkins (Fang Doc) is middle aged and as the former police chief, Tucker, tells her, “overweight and unfit”. And while Barbara’s job is to determine if there should be a “culling” of the Colony, she’s not one to make snap decisions or bow to pressure. She is skeptical of both sides’ version of events.
And Tudor’s skill was in making the reader skeptical as well as feeling compassion for both sides. So I am happy to continue to auto-buy C.J.’s book without reading the synopsis because I know they will be both readable and engaging!
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine for an advance reader’s copy.
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