13 Bullets: A Vampire Tale

March 12, 2007
Minimally plotted and driven by nonstop action, this gory vampire tale is of a piece with Wellington's zombie novels (Monster Island
; Monster Nation
). Special deputy Jameson Arkeley stopped a vampire rampage 20 years earlier, during which he whittled down all known bloodsuckers to a single survivor, Justinia Malvern. Kept alive at a sanitarium in rural Pennsylvania by minimal life support and bizarre laws preventing her extermination, wispy Justinia seems a threat to no one—until a series of vampire killings in the area suggest that she has found a secret way to spread her taint. Convinced that Justinia's minions plan to spring her and revive her to full power, Arkeley commandeers state trooper Laura Caxton to help him find their lair and wipe them out before they can get their vampire queen the blood she needs. A surprisingly anticlimactic finale leaves loose ends that will likely be tied up in subsequent volumes of a projected trilogy.

April 15, 2007
In a time when most humans believe vampires to be extinct, Special Deputy Jameson Arkeley of the U.S. Marshall Service knows otherwise. Twenty years earlier, he led a SWAT team in a gory confrontation with Lares, a vampire responsible for a string of vicious murders. Lares had used his superhuman strength to murder everyone on the team but Arkeley, who managed to escape. Arkeley eventually destroyed Lares and finished off this ruthless species, with one exception: the imprisoned leader Malvern. Fast-forward 20 years, and Malvern, despite his confinement, has mysteriously found a way to create new vampires, setting Arkeley once again on the trail of the undead. To help his search, Arkeley demands the aid of Pennsylvania State Trooper Laura Caxton. In this first installment in a trilogy (following the "Monster Island" trilogy), Wellington's vampires have no redeeming virtues: they show no mercy and take great delight in tearing apart their victims. There is plenty of gripping, fast-paced action and enough carnage here to delight the hearts of horror buffs (or turn some readers away). Recommended for libraries with horror collections. [Prior to publication, the book was serialized in its entirety on Wellington's blog: www.brokentype.com/thirteenbullets.Ed.]Patricia Altner, BiblioInfo.com, Columbia, MD

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