The Lesser Dead (Christopher Buehlman)

The Lesser Dead
Christopher Buehlman
Berkley
Fiction, Horror
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: 1978 New York City is a happening place, with night clubs and disco and a lively underground - not to mention the vampires. Since being turned as a spoiled brat of a 14-year-old some decades earlier, vampire Joey Peacock has had a fine time, prowling bars and dance floors and keeping up on modern sitcoms (even though his closest vampire friend, bookish philosopher Cvetko, insists television will rot his brain). So long as he takes care not to "peel" (kill) too many mortals or endanger his peers or their leader, the fiery Irishwoman Margaret, afterlife is good. Since nothing short of immolation, decapitation, or a stake through the heart will kill him permanently, Joey figures he has essentially forever to party... until the night on the subway when he sees an unsettling pair of little children - children who appear to be stalking and hypnotizing mortals, just like vampires. But what kind of monster turns young children - and are these newcomers friends of the local vampire community or the deadliest of foes?

REVIEW: As in his other books (the ones I've read, at least), Buehlman does not pull punches or spare lives (or bloodshed) in spinning a solid horror tale, this one set firmly in the late-70's Big Apple - perfect hunting grounds for the undead, especially the undead who have a taste for disco and rock music and cheesy television. Buehlman's vampires are not the "nice" ones popularized in modern romance crossovers, drawing instead on their original, darker, predatory roots; though they are capable of friendship and love in limited ways, they're far more interested in personal short-term pleasures and slaking their hunger, where dominating human wills and drinking blood is at least as erotically satisfying as sex. For all that he's unapologetic about his life, Joey is just as happy hypnotizing victims into "donations" of blood without resorting to draining them dry; indeed, it's considered bad form to kill too many victims, if more because of the potential headache of police involvement/investigation than about anything like moral constraints about murder in general. He's not an old enough vampire to have the weight of ages and downsides to his new condition truly hit home, like those vampires who succumb to "night fever" and eventually commit suicide by sunshine, but he's old enough to recognize the children as something potentially destabilizing to what passes for the vampire neighborhood... something hinting at an enemy more evil than his own brand of vampire, even though such distinctions - even a "good" vampire can at best be described as "not quite as monstrous as theoretically possible" - can seem like splitting an already-fine hair. The true threat becomes all too apparent as the story unfolds, leaving Joey on the run and running out of places to hide and people to turn to. Things take increasingly dark turns, some of which comes across as grinding in the gore, before an ending that feels a bit less revelatory and a bit more like an author getting a touch too clever for his own good; one too many whiplashes kept it from rising above four stars (and came close to knocking it down to three and a half). On the other hand, Buehlman again succeeds in capturing a time and a place and complex characters, which helped buoy the book against an ending that felt like it was trying too hard for the Shock And Awe factor.

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