Vampire$

by John Steakly and John Steakley

Book Overview

A novel from the bestselling master storyteller of the sea. ?????1899, China. The Mandarins are becoming troublesome again and there are rumors that attacks will soon begin on British trade missions and legations. Captain David Blackwood of the Royal Marines, received a VC in the bloody battle for Benin, Africa but is now being packed off to this apparent backwater. ?????But there are plenty of troubles in store for Blackwood in the shape of an errant...

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0451451538
• ISBN13: 9780451451538
• Release Date: May 1992
• Publisher: Roc
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 4.2" x 6.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

Vampire Hunters as it would be...

Jack Crow and his Team don't fool around. They go after the vampires with stakes, crossbows and dynamite while wearing chain-mail. And they go after the vampires during the DAY, because this professionals prefer to have the sun as backup.They get paid LOTS of money, they play hard, they drink hard and they have the backing of the Church. How good can it get?Team Crow are doing great till the vampires decide enough is enough. And the Masters, the powerful vampire elders, who are the ones coming after him also know his name. The book is ten times better than the movie that was based on it (not that the movie was bad - but you know movies and the books they're based on). John Steakley is a great author. I would also suggest his sci-fi book - 'ARMOR'

Please don't blame the book for the movie...

I mean that. "John Carpenter's Vampires" was a decent movie, if a bit trite (a black cross? reverse exorcism? please...), but this book is anything but trite. It is vulgar, edgy, dark, and very very good. Forget the limp-wristed characters Anne Rice writes about. Steakley's vampires are a monsterous lot, full of violence and horror. Brian Lumley's books are a much closer comparison, and that is high praise in deed (for me, anyway). It doesn't hurt that I grew up not ten miles from Cleburne, Texas, and it was a kick in the pants when I saw the city represented in the book (it's a small, dusty, Texas town without much of note), not to mention the fact that John is from there. On a side note, his dad's dealership has moved to Fort Worth, I believe.Anyway, before I digress further, go buy this book! It was action aplenty, characters that just grab you by the lapels and shake you, and a story that never tires no matter how many times I read it. This is a first class American vampire novel. Forget about Rice. THIS is was a vampire book *should* be.

Interesting take on the mythology of Vampire$

After being shaken to my very core by "Armor", I ran to the book store to find anything by John Steakly. At the third one I finally found Vampire$. While not nearly as intense or gripping, this book merits reading. Incidentally, the movie unforgivably omits the character Felix. Anyone who knows Steakly's work intimately couldn't do such a thing. The idea of vampire hunters for hire is a novel one and Jack Crow comes off like Abraham Van Helsing in a steroid rage. The role of Felix was made for Gary Oldman, an emotionally crippled killer with a dead on shot. I liked the idea that these guys listen to SRV. The dialogue is stardard Steakly; Hemingway influenced, stream of consciousness banter that is very real sounding. Kind of like sitting in an empty bar in the afternoon, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, listening to a great storyteller spin a yarn you half believe and half don't want to. Besides the names of the main characters, another thread tying Steakly's books together is the emotion he conveys in his writing. The emotional level in his books reaches high levels, you really feel for the characters, even if you don't like them. I definitely recommend this book if you like vampire stories, and who does'nt. While not as fully fleshed out as the very gothic works of Anne Rice or Brian Lumley's British Necroscope, the American twist on the vampire theme is interesting. In a way, this is the definitive American vampire story. And whether you liked Vampire$ or not, for God's sake read "Armor". Long live Felix.

Well done, if morose.

John Steakley's first novel, Armor, ranks with my top ten books of all time. If you haven't read it, it's even better than Vampires. I have long awaited a sequel to Armor, which I hope may still come. I was happy to stumble across Vampires, which is also well done, but left me a bit depressed. Any fan of Armor will see many parallels in these two books, aside from the obvious reincarnation of the Jack Crow and Felix characters (in name only) from Armor. The "Antwar Saloon" was cute. As with Armor, we have a powerful character endowed with extraordinary strength and a sense of duty to wipe out evil, despite the toll it takes on his loved ones and his own psyche. You find yourself enthralled by the action, but drawn into a morose, visceral world where the characters all have pretty depressing lives but are connected by a kind of macho doomsday comaraderie. You can really feel how immensely TIRED everybody in the story is. For all of its action noir, it's a great read. Just keep the Prozac handy.