Blood Lust by Rhys Wilson
01/05/2003 . Source: Sue Davies 

Pub: Vanguard Press. 254 page enlarged paperback. Price: £ 8.99 (UK). ISBN: 1-903489-85-7.

Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK.

check out website: http://website.lineone.net/~mannafanna

A vampire story set in Leeds of all places - what will happen to Brian's fish and chip shop?

Cameron's day starts badly and gets worse. All his worldly goods are repossessed and he ends up on the pavement in his boxers. Setting off for home, he considers it a good idea to get to his girl-friend in Leeds.

Gillian may just be the love of his life if only they had spent more than 23 days together in the year and a quarter since they started going out. Meeting a nutter on the way, Cameron finds out just what he believes in and things start to get even worse.

Over at the bank, John Settle is also having a really bad day, which only marginally improves when he gets killed by a vampire...

Taking revenge on his bank manager is just the beginning. Before long he has turned his family and all the vampires in Leeds are coming out of their coffins.

It gets to page 114 before Buffy even gets a name check but this comical and really very violent (only if you stop to think about it), book owes a lot to the hard-hitting, verbally adept, young lady of the night.

The novel draws on several sources and owes something to the humour of 'The Young Ones' and probably some later student stuff I don't know about. It also reminded me of 'Night Of The Living Dead' as these vampires are completely driven by hunger and become a mass mob.

The older 'B' movie legends also get a look in. Student life is made up of watching Australian soaps and going down the pub after the occasional lecture so having to save the world (Leeds, anyway) comes as a bit of a shock.

Playing with the vampire genre, Wilcox uses the old and new clichés to good effect and with a keen ear for dialogue creates some witty verbal exchanges between the characters. Superbly visual, this book cries out for a big budget film treatment as an antidote the dire hack and slash movies so favoured these days.

Mr Wilcox has combined much comedy and horror and produced, well, a great, fast-paced comic-horror novel that demands a one sitting read. I couldn't put it down but I'm not sure about the population of Leeds.

Sue Davies