True Vampires: Blood-Sucking Killers Past and Present - Softcover

London, Sondra

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0922915938 ISBN 13: 9780922915934

Publisher: Feral House, 2003

Synopsis

Some vampires are not fictional creatures.

About this title

From Booklist:

To begin with, London considers what a vampire is. Precise definitions are elusive, it seems, but given blood drinkers, flesh eaters, corpse fuckers, and their deeds that London efficiently presents, so what? She nicely balances old and new ghouls, reviewing the cases of Vlad Tepes, inspiration for Dracula, and fellow Transylvanian Countess Bathory, who bathed in blood rather than consumed it. Among contemporaries, London notes six-foot-eight aspiring rapper Big Lurch, arrested in L.A. in 2002, "buck naked, loping down South Figueroa[,] . . . his mumbling mouth slathered with blood, raw gore streaking down" his front. He was fresh from dispatching his girlfriend, having pulled out her right lung for a chew in the process; a "medical examination found human flesh and blood in the rangy rapper's stomach." Since London also discusses noncriminal, self-styled vampires and their motivations and exploits, perhaps it's wrong to view this as just a particularly bloody true-crime compendium. Still, gore is probably the main attraction of this exposure of some of "our most primordial fears." Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review:

"Destined to become a classic of the literature ... The author, best known as a fine criminologist, here reveals herself as a remarkable historian."

About this edition

• Publisher: Feral House
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0922915938
• ISBN 13: 9780922915934
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 380