PALE DEATH

What does it take to catch a vampire? Another vampire, of course.

And if the model vampire is also a New Mexico state cop, the bad vampire is in for it. All right, so Officer Lee Nez is only half vampire, he’s still got plenty of game—able to leap tall fences and run like an Olympiad. So how does one go about shrinking to half-vampire status? If one finds the full condition as onerous as Officer Lee did, one seeks the help of a savvy medicine man and in due time one emerges “only partially afflicted with the rare condition.” That was back in ’45, which makes Lee a nonagenarian in a Gen X body, glacial aging being one attribute of vampires. Return now to Stewart Tanner, the so-called bad vampire, though a more-sinned-against-than-sinning case could be readily made. Kidnapped and imprisoned by the evil government scientist, Dr. Victor Wayne, and cruelly used in a variety of inhuman experiments, Tanner finally breaks free. Enraged and vengeful, he goes on the killing spree that sets Lee in hot pursuit. In this, Lee is joined by his girlfriend, FBI agent Diane Lopez, not the first toothsome female to be charmed by the blood brotherhood. Most of the rest is vampire-chase, which turns out to be pretty much like cops-and-robbers chase.

As vampire novels go, the third in the Lee Nez series (Second Sunrise, 2002, etc.) is solidly minor-league: thin characters, under-imagined plot and only low-grade blood-curdling.