Blood Red


by Heather Graham

Vampire Romantic Suspense with Chills and Humor

Lauren Crow, Deanna Marin and Heidi Weiss head to New Orleans for Heidi's bachelorette party. For fun, the three girls seek out a fortune teller and pressure Lauren to go along. When Lauren looks into the crystal ball and hears the warning, suddenly all the shadows in night-time New Orleans take on a malevolent tone. To make matters worse, a stranger seems to appear wherever she goes. Even when she learns his name, Mark Davidson, can she trust him? She is mysteriously drawn to him despite his strange behavior. Mark Davidson follows women, carrying vampire weapons, claiming to protect them. Does his obsession with Lauren, a look-alike for his murdered fiancee, hide a more dangerous obsession?

Lauren is actually a smart heroine unlike in many thrillers, having common sense, but it is her friends that seem to lead her into trouble. She doesn't want to ruin her friend's bacherlorette party so she goes along with them despite her misgivings and against the advice of the fortune teller. The events surrounding and personalities of Lauren's friends add to the suspense of this novel.   Although the back cover blurb intrigued, I enjoyed this book much more than I expected. Don't read it in the dark with a book light unless you want an extra chill. The way she writes the images of shadows and darkness mixed with the shadows on the ceiling from my book light in an almost bat-like image over a full moon. This book is definitely a suspense/thriller with some romance in addition to the paranormal aspect. The first scene in the prologue is really creepy (lots of blood) but, fortunately for readers a little more faint of heart, the creepiness turns more and more into a suspense-laden read with creepy undertones and some crime violence instead of an all out creepy blood-drenched mayhem.

A couple of aspects of this book make this book a special read. Blood Red is infused with a level of humor, particularly in some of the tools to fight the vampires, that keeps this novel from getting too dark for me. The thrilling part of this thriller for me is that I always kept wondering who the bad guys really were. I have read that some readers do not like this aspect of thrillers but for me personally, this is what made Blood Red such an enthralling and fast-paced reading ride. I thought I knew and I did at times, but the author always kept me guessing and imagining all sorts of scenarios.

The book has a youthful tone that made me think of some horror movies. You know how in horror movies the girl always does something stupid that a normal person would never do? In this thriller, Heather Graham writes the heroine so well. I understood why Lauren left the safety to do things that might endanger her and not just remain a catatonic person, immobile and waiting to be a victim...and I probably would have done what she did as well given her courage. This was my first Heather Graham read and I want to read much more by her.

Warning: crime violence including decapitated bodies and blood in this thriller.

New Orleans here has a very different feel than the swamp land of Rita Herron's thriller, Say You Love Me. Here it is more focused on the bar and night life scenes and crimes. Has anyone else noticed that a lot of books (especially thrillers) now are being set in New Orleans and the Katrina-ravaged part of the country? I have read several including thrillers like The Dollmaker by Amanda Stevens, Rita Herron's Say You Love Me as well as the Hotel Marchand romance series.  I wonder if New Orleans is emerging in the imagination more after Katrina. I sort of like to see that. I feel so ashamed how this unique area of the country has been forgotten when I hear tales of what it is still like there from friends who live there. I feel ashamed that political wars of all sorts took on more cause than doing something. I feel ashamed that I only gave boxes of books to evacues sheltered here.  It is not the same as helping via the Red Cross or other agencies as I once did but I do like seeing so many novels set in this forgotten treasured place--not in a preachy way (I already feel guilty enough) but as a sort of cultural memory repository for a unique part of the country. I liked the way Heather Graham described the funeral parade. My mom lived in New Orleans in her youth and to this day, she always says she would like to have her funeral with a real jazz band playing "When the Saints Go Marching In." I can see the shocked faces in her staid and proper Episcopalian church. Yep, my mom can be a bad girl too thankfully. I don't intend to get preachy...I just wonder sometimes if writers have a way of moving people's hearts and imaginations in a way that those jazz bands move my mother's heart 50 years after living in New Orleans.