Tomes of Shadowstalking

Welcome to the land of shadows, where evil is the greatest power, where nightfall marks the birth of terror, where your very soul is at risk. Join me as I investigate worlds filled with black magic and dark souls and encounter the monsters rule these wicked places.

This review does not represent the opinions of the general public. It reflects my personal thoughts and opinions on the book.

That said, on to the review!

When somebody kills the Golden, the culmination of a special breeding program whose bloodline has been controlled and confined, it falls to Michel Beheim to solve the crime. Although he is a very young member of the Family--only two years since he became a vampire--he was in life an outstanding detective for the French police. He quickly finds, however, that solving this crime is going to be nowhere near so easy as the ones he solved in life. Now he is surrounded by powerful political players who use anything and everything that comes their way to advance hidden agendas and private schemes. Moreover, he must find a way to circumvent the mystical powers of vampires centuries, even millennia older than himself without being marked as an enemy himself. Can Michel, young in the ways of the vampire, find it in his human memories to solve the crime...or is he doomed to die the true death himself?

The Golden is more mystery than horror novel, but while solving the crime is perhaps the main focus of the novel, it is impossible to forget that the suspects involved are all vampires who live according to laws entirely unlike human laws and to dictates and purposes wholly different from human morals and ideals. And when you consider that these people care little enough about human life and instead reshape human minds and flesh to shape their ideas and embodiment of art...this is most definitely the stuff of horror.

Ignoring for a moment the fact that this is a novel of vampires, it is interesting to see the growth (or decay, depending on how you look at it) of Beheim as he continues his investigation. It seems as though close association with vampires (despite being one himself) erodes his human morals and ideals which indicate, however reluctantly, how close to humanity he still is. By the end of the novel, though, he's begun to drift away from his humanness to embrace his new role in existence. I can't say that it is a development I like, but it does make for interesting reading.

My version is fairly short--196 pages--yet it is all quality. The writing is clean and evocative, the imagery is dark and sensual, and the vampires are suitably inhuman and malevolent. Approach this novel with caution, though, because the subject matter is definitely mature!

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