Vampires - Softcover

Steakley, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451462262 ISBN 13: 9780451462268

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2008

Synopsis

The cult classic is back?for fans who like their vampire hunters hard-boiled.

You don?t just kill vampires for the money?you do it for the satisfaction. You do it because somebody has to. You do it no matter what it does to you. And you drink?a lot. Some jobs just suck. This one bites.

But nobody does it better than Jack Crow, the leader of VAMPIRE$ Inc. His crack team of hunters takes down the blood suckers with a lethal combination of cojones and crossbows.

After members of Jack?s team are ambushed and slaughtered, however, the survivors need to rethink their strategy. With a new recruit from the Vatican? a priest who?s not afraid to wield a stake?and a sharpshooter loaded up with silver bullets, it?s payback time. The only problem is that the vampires have no intention of going down easy. They have their own hit list?and Jack Crow?s name is scrawled in blood right at the top.

About this title

Review

Vampire$ (the title does end with a dollar sign) is about a tightly knit group of professional vampire killers. They may say they're in it for the money, but their death-defying bravado and warm male friendships are as intense as those in any soldier-hero epic. The irrepressible, foul-mouthed, hard-drinkin' Jack Crow--decked out in high-tech chain mail and wielding a fearsome crossbow--is the leader of the bunch. He's the sort of man who screams obscenities at the pope, and then (after a lot of booze) weeps in the pontiff's lap over the horrors he's witnessed.

Author John Steakley is the son of a Chevrolet dealer from Cleburne, Texas, and he uses his roots to good effect. Not only does much of the action take place in the Lone Star state, but when we first meet the major character named Felix, he's an apparition out of the Old West--living in an abandoned boxcar on the Rio Grande with a Mexican whore, an endless supply of tequila, and a tacky bleeding Jesus on the wall.

Vampire$ is one gaudy, action-packed novel. The men are men, the women are vulnerable, and the vampires are mean, ugly monsters. Unless you don't like that sort of thing, you'll love it.

From the Back Cover

Suppose there really were vampires. Dark, stalking, destroying. They’d have to be killed, wouldn’t they? Of course they would. But what kind of fools would try to make a living at it? One tightly knit band of brothers decides to do just that in Steakley's vampire classic, an exciting blend of horror and western genres.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0451462262
• ISBN 13: 9780451462268
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 368