SURROGATE EVIL

In his fourth adventure, Officer Lee Nez, full Navajo, half vampire, goes undercover to catch a monster.

Demonic Newton Glover is the scourge of Bernalillo County, N.M. He preys on the populace, raping and plundering at will, and robbing his neighbors of their dignity by flaunting his contempt for their helplessness. Local law enforcement can’t—or perhaps won’t—do anything to curb him. Maybe they’ve heard too many strange stories about his mysterious, prolonged disappearance and his sudden, unexpected reappearance. Has Glover really “come back from the dead,” as some claim, or is he the source of the stories himself? Back at Farmington Police Station, Lee Nez (Pale Death, 2005, etc.) is getting the marching orders that will send the cop/creature and Diane Lopez, his FBI girlfriend, into Glover territory. No one is clued into Lee’s special status, since he’s a member of the low-maintenance breed. In fact, he doesn’t “really require blood, like with fictional vampires.” A slab of rare sirloin at regular intervals suffices. The very thought of human blood “grosse[s] him out.” Once the battle is joined between the half-vampire and the alleged zombie, an attenuated, metaphorically bloodless battle it turns out to be.

A plodding, by-the-numbers vampire tale.