Vampire Shift (Kiera Hudson #1) by Tim O’Rourke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Quite fun and compelling for the most part. Less a police procedural with vampires, more a vampire tale with some mediocre police work involved. It’s packed with horror-movie-cliché: small town of oddballs, check; love-interest with a secret, check; dead spot for phone signal, check; bad weather so you can’t leave, check; crappy car, check; useless police that can’t/won’t see the obvious answers, check… I could go on.
So the police continually send brand new trainees to this little town, who promptly go missing, and so they just send another one next year. OK, so I’ll let that one pass for now. The “local” police don’t seem particularly bothered about a spate of murders and grave desecrations, and our plucky new police officer Kiera offers “amazing” insight because she can “see” details that others miss. But in fact is less Sherlockian observation and deduction, but rather stuff the regular police should be seeing and documenting anyway. This mostly works for this story because the local police are being purposefully obstructive (that’s not a spoiler, unless you can’t spot the obvious within the first couple of chapters of the book – the clue is in the name of the book!). Leading up to the inevitable boss-battle, Kiera needs to work out who she can trust in this strange corner of England.
As a reader, if you’re after a fairly non-taxing mystery, with some amusing vampire creatures (who aren’t really all that scary – despite looking like full-on demons – but at least they don’t sparkle!), then give this book a read. If you want something to really scare you… find something else.
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