A Chill in the Blood (Vampire Files, No. 7) - Hardcover

Elrod, P. N.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0441005012 ISBN 13: 9780441005017

Publisher: Ace Hardcover, 1998

Synopsis

During his life Jack Fleming had been a reporter with a nose for the grittiest news, and now that he is dead, Jack is a vampire private eye with a thirst for blood and justice, but he may be the only one in a world of guns and gangs who can stop an all-out street war before it starts.

About this title

Review

Gangland Chicago, 1937. Jack Fleming, vampire PI, doesn't care for the Mob. He was killed once by a Mob boss, see, and he's seen too many shot down since. Ambitious gangsters are like roaches--there always seem to be more coming out of the woodwork. And the wise guys never seem to learn that knives, bullets, and drowning don't kill the immortal Jack. They just make him mad. In A Chill in the Blood Jack has good reason to be mad. The prohibition laws have just been repealed, and the mobsters are immersed in vicious warfare on his turf. Jack's very mortal partner, Charles Escott, has a hit placed on his life, and Jack is forced into negotiations with a powerful gang leader--Angela Paco. It turns out that Angela is the daughter of the mobster who ended Jack's human life, thus transforming him into a vampire.

A Chill in the Blood is the seventh book in P.N. Elrod's noir detective series, the Vampire Files. Mixing horror, mystery, and comedy, these books really bite! Nona Vero

From Publishers Weekly

Brisk and bloody action paces this slick new case in Elrod's Vampire Files, which picks up where the series left off with Blood on the Water (1992). Conscientious PI Jack Fleming, who's a vampire, still prowls the mean streets of Depression-era Chicago, putting the bite on crooks and reflecting wryly on his divided nature ("Sure I was a vampire, but like everyone else on the planet I'm still only human"). Although one of the undead, he's the least cold-blooded character in this hard-boiled shoot-em-up laced with larceny and murder. From the moment he's fished off the bottom of Lake Michigan in the opening pages, he finds himself a pawn in a brutal turf war waged by mob moll Angela Paco and a rival from New York eager to usurp her control of the Hydra syndicate. Jack's efforts to contain the combat and save the skin of a bookkeeper caught in the crossfire are complicated by the intrusion of Merrill Adkins, a federal crimebuster as vicious as the hoods he hunts. And when $700,000 secretly skimmed from the Hydra coffers becomes part of the spoils, even he can't keep track of the double-crosses and betrayals. Elrod excels at creating sticky situations that test Jack's resolve to limit displays of his vampire powers to hypnotism and invisibility, and she finds room in the busy narrative to accommodate the involvement of debonair sidekick Charles Escott, alcoholic sawbones Doc Clarson and other series regulars. Echoes of Hammett and Chandler abound, but the novel succeeds in its own right as an entertaining exercise in supernatural noir.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ace Hardcover
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0441005012
• ISBN 13: 9780441005017
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 327