Night Hunter

Michael Reaves

This on the surface appears to be a Vampire novel, the cover art suggests this as does the title, but perhaps not all is as it seems.

The story is part horror, part mystery, there is a serial killer on the loose in the Hollywood Hills, the killer has been putting a clove of garlic in his victims mouths and then driving a hardwood stake through their hearts, this has earned the killer the title of “The Night Hunter” and to the police trying to catch him “Van Helsing”. For the most part it revolves around the investigation.

This MO looks a lot like how one would kill a vampire, is the killer hunting vampires or do they just think they are? Is Hollywood teaming with Vampires? Is it even anything to do with vampires at all?

I could tell you what it is, but that could lessen the enjoyment, not being totally sure what was happening was one of the things I really liked about this book.

There were quite a few interesting characters to be met, the police investigating the murderers, a comedian, an old actor that used to play a vampire hunter in B grade horror films and currently lives above a morgue, a rich Satanist with a coven of male prostitute street kids, a social worker that runs a safe-house for homeless kids and a medical examiner.

The book reads almost like it was the novelisation of a movie, this would probably be due to the fact that the author is also a screen writer, this is the first novel of his that I have read, but what was really strange was that after I finished reading this novel I rolled some dice to chose the next book to read and discovered that it was written by the same author (the Darth Maul book).

That's about it really, I bought the book cheap because it has a cheesy cover that looked like it was a vampire novel by an author I had never heard of and was pleasantly surprised when I got around to reading it. It is definitely worth checking out.