I've had this softcover on my keeper shelves for years now, and I think it's time it went traveling.

I enjoyed Somewhere in the Night, McMahan's short-story collection, which featured two stories about Andrew, the pragmatic and oddly charming gay vampire with a conscience (of sorts). This novel expands on his life and romantic ups and downs.

First, let me just say that the cover art on this book - while interesting - gives me the creeps. That aside, I really enjoyed this book; I adored the "Andrew" stories in "Somewhere" and was pleased to spend more time with the character.

Andrew is refreshingly practical, as literary vampires go. He's not one of the nice, romance-lite ones who can live on a sip of blood now and then, or even off of dreams - no, Andrew has to kill his victims or else risk them either revealing his nature and whereabouts, or becoming vampires themselves and competing with him for the food supply. On the other hand, he's not cruel by nature, and he tries to select victims who seem to be better off... well, as victims; then he gives them a really good time [the bit about vampires being incredibly sexy *is* part of McMahan's mythos, thank goodness] and, once they're sated and sleeping, does them in. However, his lover Pablo (whom he sort of accidentally-on-purpose forgot to kill at the end of their first lovemaking session) is not as content with his vampire status as Andrew is, and has begun to act out - getting sloppy in his hunting, messy in his feeding, and generally threatening to attract the wrong sort of attention (as in a vampire hunter and lots and lots of police). Pablo even joins a support group to try and give up human blood entirely, although Andrew is sure it's a scam of some kind - if it were possible to give up blood, he'd know it. But he tries to stay out of it, hoping Pablo will settle down, until the unthinkable happens and he has to take action to save himself...

There's a lot of gore in this one, and plenty of dubious moral ground [if that bothers you when reading fiction] - in some ways Andrew's a lot like Highsmith's Tom Ripley, and now and then I realize that I'm rooting for the mass murderer and hating the guy who's trying to save lives. But the characters as drawn are so compelling that I put my doubts aside and continue to hope that Andrew will triumph! (The book's also - despite the gore - very, very funny; Andrew's just so *cheerful* most of the time...)

I'm sending this book to BCer HI77 in Florida, as part of the US/Canada wishlist-tag game. Enjoy!

*** Released for the 2018 Spook-Tacular October release challenge. ***

Everybody thinks life is tough,

but some lives have too
long to be right about that.