13 Bullets by David WellingtonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
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This book filled the 13 square of my Halloween Bingo card, but it could have counted just as well for the Vampires square. These are not the elegant, wealthy vampires of Anne Rice, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, or Charlaine Harris. No one in their right mind would want to be one of these creatures: translucently white, bald, toothy, with red eyes and misshapen ears. Living in squalor, hiding from humanity until they need to feed. And contrary to other mythos, these vamps need more blood, not less as they age.
Laura Caxton is an unlikely main character. In fact, she can't figure out why the Special Deputy from the Marshal’s office has chosen a lowly highway patrol officer as his assistant. She's been beaten down by the misogyny of the male officers in her department and longs to spend more time at home with her girlfriend and her rescue greyhounds. The reason that she's involved won't come clear until the book's end.
A lot of the action takes place at night, of course, due to the nocturnal habits of the vampires. But little of it takes place in towns or cities. The author instead gives us remote rural locations where help is not to be found and back-up is a long time coming. The feeling of being abandoned to your own devices against overwhelming odds gave me the cold chills. Not to mention that it is set in the fall, when temperatures are dropping and daylight is decreasing. Brrr!
I am only a recent convert to horror literature and my tendency still is to peek through my fingers during the parts that I find scary. And I'm a chicken, so I find my imagination gets away on me frequently and I probably cringe where seasoned horror aficionados would be gleeful. This was definitely one of my “read only during daylight" books.
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